Fans on the Street Want an NFL Team at the Coliseum

Camera in tow, Ernest Strickland stood before the peristyle of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Thursday, contemplating the possibility of a professional football team once again calling the cream-colored marble arches home.

The former Los Angeles school bus driver, 64, supports the city’s latest push to bring the NFL back, but he has one request:

“Bring us something we can grow with out here,” said Strickland, who was visiting from South Carolina with his girlfriend. Not an existing team, Strickland said, but an expansion team whose players will grow into the city.

The city is trying to draw the NFL back to the stadium where, for more than a decade, the only football frenzy has come from the USC Trojans and their fans.

Some of those who live or work near the stadium agreed with Strickland, emphasizing that the city desperately needs an NFL team, even if some financial sacrifices are necessary.

“Just make it happen,” said James Egans, 26, who was in a shopping center near the Coliseum. “We need this team ... as soon as possible.”

He believes that having the NFL back would bring “more nostalgia to where we are,” his own memories of buying hot dogs with his uncle at Raiders games still vivid.

“We do need some excitement -- we do,” said Onniiimerah Q’onz, 60, who owns property on a residential street south of the stadium. Q’onz recalls drinking tea outside her house and chatting with people who were attending football games. She used to sell parking spots around her house -- usually for $10 -- and snacks.

Soccer store manager Remi Noibi, 50, said he looked forward to the business that an NFL team was bound to generate. A professional team means more jobs at stadium concession stands and retail stores, he said, plus more customers for taxi drivers and hotels. Even if crime increased with the influx of fans, he said, security companies would flourish.

“Everybody should be able to benefit,” Noibi said.

But Micala Jacobo, 37, questioned just how much the NFL would mean to the immediate area, where she has lived for about 20 years. The predominantly Latino and African American neighborhood surrounding the stadium may need football, she said, but not the American kind.

“People around here like soccer and basketball more,” Jacobo said in Spanish, adding that spending money to get an NFL team seemed to be an unnecessary expense.

Not so, said Derrick Collins, 25, who believes that the city’s efforts are “definitely worth it.”

Collins is unfazed by the increased traffic that would pass by his Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard home, from which he has a direct view of the Coliseum. He is used to the congestion, Collins said, and just longs for “something to go to other than baseball, basketball.”