AN NFL TEAM IN L.A.?

How bad do we need an NFL team in Los Angeles? That depends upon who "we" are.


If "we" are Joe Sixpack, the archetypical fan living in Los Angeles (myself, less the beer, included), the answer is not at all. We see 50% more televised games than anyone living in an NFL market, because we face no blackouts. If we want to venture into the neighborhood of the Coliseum for a game, we can already do that, USC plays there. When they are on the road, UCLA is playing a home game in the Rose Bowl, 15 miles away. If the arguement is Super Bowl windfalls, we already get that. In mid-January, where else but in Southern California can you play football outside?


If "we" are Tim Taxpayer, the answer is even more emphatically not at all. In 16 years of "negotiations",  the NFL has made it very clear that unless PUBLIC funds are provided to build them a billion dollar stadium, it has no interest in coming here.


The much-chewed Public/Private "partnership" is the catch phrase, yet these have proven to be parasitic relationships at best, with the public needing a permanent tenant to recover our investment, and the NFL demanding stiff concessions every time a short-term stadium lease expires. The public never has any leverage in these negotiations, faced with a vacant stadium if it tries to get fair value.


So who wants it? Only the politicians seeking campaign contributions from hopeful businesses who believe they stand to benefit from additional foot traffic on Sundays. If that was sincere, they would announce the location of the proposed stadium first. As long is it might go anywhere, contributions can be sought everywhere. Even the NFL really has no need to be here, the current franchise-holders (who alone control the NFL) make more in TV contract negotiations off the IDEA of an NFL franchise coming here (as they proved in the last negotiations) than the owners stand to net from an actual Los Angeles team.


If the argument in favor of public funding of what are essentially private enterprises is that it will be good for the local economy, I submit the case of Arlington Texas. A few years ago it spent $ 250 million dollars towards the construction of a new baseball stadium for the Texas Rangers. Then it spent another $250 million dollars towards Jerry Jones new Cowboy Stadium. Both are up and running. Arlington should be a veritable boom town. It clearly is not.


A muddle-headed California assemblyman said on ESPN this morning that the NFL should not be blamed for the lack of progress in bringing a team to L.A., for they have a "right to a profit"!


NONSENSE.


A profit is never a right. Oh, it can ethically be earned by correctly pricing the right product in the right market, but unless this has suddenly become a reverse socialist state, no investor has a RIGHT to a profit, not as long as he gets to choose when and where to invest his money. WHY in the world would the taxpayer want to insure his risk AND contribute to his capital costs as well? Isn't the risk he takes with HIS money the whole of the justification for profit in the first place?  He has a right to put his money elsewhere if he thinks that is in his best interests, and I say, if you can't make an NFL franchise profitable in Los Angeles WITHOUT a public subsidy, go right ahead, spend that money elsewhere.


Maybe he can try his luck in the stock market, for we are already all-in, fully encumbered: we have a chronically dysfunctional State Government to support, an endless inflow of economically unsophisticated immigrants looking for a better life, a badly dilapidated infrastructure to rebuild, public safety to ensure, children to feed and educate, the sick, injured and aged to care for... and a third game to watch on Sunday.


And we've heard it all before.