27 Reasons an NFL Team in Los Angeles Will Never Work

Los Angeles has been the host to at least two professional football teams, and there is clearly talk about bringing football back one more time.

But having lived in Southern California from 1982-2010, I for one am able to verify that there are plenty of other options to keep NFL fans occupied and content. We have come up with 27 reasons to be exact on why football will never work in Los Angeles, try as hard as they might to be bring it back. It is because of all these reasons, that NFL football is doomed to fail in Southern California.

One other thing to consider, is that the only way a team is coming to Los Angeles is if they are struggling where they are now, which doesn't necessarily lead a city to get excited about rolling out the red carpet for some other city's reject. Unless Al Davis wants to pack up the moving vans one more time.

27) There Is Only Room for One Professional Football Team in Los Angeles

There is already one professional football team in Los Angeles, and it is the USC Trojans. If you ask Reggie Bush or other players that played for Pete Carroll, players got paid well to play football there.

Oh, you mean that is illegal? Sorry, let's just brush that little zinger under the rug for now, but we may come back and visit this one later on.

Pete Carroll was a popular figure in Southern California, but somehow he knew just exactly when it was the right time to flee the city for Seattle.

26) Southern California Beaches

From Newport Beach, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach up to Santa Monica or Malibu, there are always people flocking to the beaches for a chance to relax and get away from it all.

Fresh air, and the chance to work on your tan. Plus, you never know what you might happen to see at the beach, which is another reason to go. 

25) Surfing

Maybe you are not in to laying on the beach and working on your tan. Perhaps you like to be more active and want to take up surfing. There are lots of people that love to surf in Southern California. If you aren't able to tame a surfboard, there are boogie boards, wake boards, something for everyone.

24) Sports Bars

Why go to the expense of tickets, parking prices, gas, traffic, and waiting in long lines for the rest room, when you can go to your favorite sports bar, and watch your favorite team and have a waitress take care of all your food and drink requests?

As a member of the Buffalo Bills Backers of Southern California, we have met for years at establishments like Hooters and Q's in Pasadena, Bobby MaGe's in Burbank and there were at least four other charter clubs in Southern California to visit as well.

The other neat thing is that you could check out how your fantasy team was doing by walking around and looking at all of the other screens, and scouting out potential free agents for your team. Much harder to do that if you are at the game or sitting behind your steering wheel sitting in gridlock.

23) Disneyland

Why bother going to NFL games when you can go the happiest place on earth and see your heroes up close and personal at a Disneyland parade?

You get a chance to go on all the rides, treat your kids to a memorable day and don't have to worry that you are wearing the wrong team jersey or fear for your life.

22) Beach Volleyball

If you hit Newport Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach or Santa Monica on Saturday morning or Sunday morning, you can watch some great beach volleyball games. There are the pro tournament stops, and then there are plenty of pick-up amateur games for men, women or co-ed games to join in and play.

Great exercise, enjoy some sun, or just come with your towel and cooler and a book to read or just watch the action.

21) Fill in the Blank

Almost forgot to add this, but one of the other hidden benefits of attending beach volleyball games is that you can brush up on your _______________ (fill in the blank).

a) Volleyball scouting for strategy sessions

b) sign language skills

c) detective analysis work on specific types of sand grains for the next CSI episode

20) Sunrises and Sunsets

Sometimes even football takes a back seat to some of the other splendors in Southern California to behold. This would be one of them.

19) Bryan Stow and Los Angeles Gangs

Part of being a football fan is supporting your team on the home or the road. But the terrible incident where San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow was badly beaten up by a gang of thugs at a Los Angeles Dodgers game is nothing new for the City of Angels.

When the Raiders were playing in Los Angeles, I used to attend the games downtown at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The crowd never had a hard time picking on anyone that wore the jersey of the opponent. There are strength in numbers, and after drinking enough alcohol both before and during games, fans start to think that it is perfectly within their right to start violating the personal space that fans from other teams are entitled to.You must have been dumb to wear that jersey here, so let me teach you a lesson.

I have witnessed enough fights at Raiders games and Dodgers games to know that this is one ugly bi-product of what bringing football back to Los Angeles would mean.

18) Four Games vs One Game

Another factor for why football would fail is that fans can watch three NFL games from home or watch one game live. When you factor in the round-trip drive to the stadium, dealing with the crowd to get in and then the long line of cars to leave, you get home and you have missed the rest of the NFL slate for that day.

By staying home, you get to watch two games in the morning (10:00 am kickoffs) and then one choice game in the afternoon (1:15 kickoffs). Then of course there is Sunday Night Football, and your day is complete. Never had to leave the comforts of home.

So, would you rather watch four games or one? Not only that but you could watch and listen to any interview that Sam Ryan, Suzy Kolber or Erin Andrews is conducting. That is just too easy a call to make.

17) Los Angeles Kings

This year the NFL season starts on the weekend of September 11th. The NHL starts its season on Monday, September 19th. The NFL is allowed to have the full attention of fans that love hard hitting contact sports for just two weekends, before the NHL kicks in to full gear.

The NFL doesn't have special rules for how you hit certain players that play a specific position on the ice. All players are treated the same, well except for the goalie of course, but I think you get the point.

Who knows who you are going to be rubbing shoulders with when you attend a Kings game. Maybe the Great One himself.

16) Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers will do whatever it can to persuade fans to come to their games and forget about the NFL. Look at all of the empty seats for a day game in Los Angeles? Pitiful. Rue the day Los Angeles that the MLB owners voted to let the McCourts take possession of the team.

They couldn't even acquire players for the pennant drive in prior years because their credit cards had reached the spending limit. The franchise is turning into a joke now, which is a complete travesty. Have gone to hundreds of Dodgers games and usually enjoyed the experience, except for when Dodgers fans would start throwing peanuts at Cincinnati Reds fans for cheering for their team. Then when the guy tries to defend himself, a gang of them will beat him up. Stay classy Los Angeles !!

Pretty soon you will be seeing 2 of 1 specials on tickets, half-off nights for any game on a day that ends with "y" and "all you can eat" special prices. They even have discount bins on Mannyworld memorabilia.

Maybe it is fitting that the Dodgers are doing so poor in the standings and at the box office. Blow the whole thing up, but keep Vin Scully, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.

15) Transplants vs Native Californians

The amount of people that continued to move into Southern California was staggering. The hopes of landing a career in Hollywood, or escaping from their own reality in some small town is what led them to the land of sunshine and angels.

The problem with bringing in a football team to Los Angeles, is that only a small percentage of people are actually from Los Angeles. The more transplants that come to Los Angeles and settle down, they still hang on to their original football team, lifers as I would refer to them. I am proud to be a lifer Buffalo Bills fan, in case you are wondering. 

That was how it was for me. I would go to any game that the Bills traveled to on the West Coast - the Los Angeles Rams, the Los Angeles Raiders, the San Francisco 49ers or the San Diego Chargers. I would attend other games of interest here and there, but I was mostly interested in seeing the Bills play. That is how it is with a lot of football fans I met. They will come out to see their team play, and that is about it.

The rest of the time fans stayed at home to watch their team on cable. No wonder the natives are restless. There are just so many things in Southern California to do and enjoy.

14) Santa Barbara, San Diego and Palm Springs

Maybe you had a long week and feel the need to get out of the city for the weekend. Depending on your destination that might mean no football, but that is a secondary issue.

Within a couple hours drive you could drive over to Palm Springs, or take a nice drive up the 101 to Santa Barbara. While you are in Santa Barbara you could take in a polo match featuring Prince William.

You could drive down south and hit San Diego or Tijuana. How about driving east and go to Las Vegas for the weekend?

Maybe you feel adventuresome and want to drive seven or eight hours and take in Monterey and Carmel. Go from there up to wine country in Napa Valley. One of my favorite weekends in the entire year was the Monterey Jazz Festival, but that would always mean missing a weekend of the NFL in September.

That is the point though. There are so many great places to go and they are all so easy to get to. Well sort of that is. Providing that you don't hit rush hour traffic on Friday night or come upon an accident which equals instant gridlock. Sure there were mud slides, and earthquakes that cause bridges to fall apart, but that only happens some of the time.

13) Golf

Whether you are a casual golfer, or are really into following your favorite pros around on tour, the sport of golf is just one option that draws the sports fan away from the NFL in Southern California.

From the Riviera Country Club, to Torrey Pines, to the Brentwood Country Club, there are golf courses all over Southern California. Play where the stars used to play in Palm Springs or maybe you can get in to one of the very exclusive country clubs in Southern California and join a foursome with Judge Smails, Ty Webb and Al Czervik. That would be a blast actually. I can hear them now: "Just be the ball Danny".

Maybe you want to drive up the coast and hit the courses around Carmel. There is Pebble Beach and Spyglass. We can't forget all of the gorgeous courses in San Diego.

One thing I recall is the golf course at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. There is never enough parking at the Rose Bowl, so for football games they let you park your cars all over the golf course. We would walk back to the car and inevitably have to push somebody out that got their car stuck in the sand trap. Then we would return later in the week for our three mile walk around the Rose Bowl and snicker at golfers that couldn't find their ball that landed in the fairway.

Just writing up this slide, I think I might need to make plans to fly back to Los Angeles and polish up my clubs. 

12) Lifeguard Competions

Lots of Californians love to swim. Whether at their own pools or at the beaches. But whenever they go to the beach it is nice to know that they have that added level of protection from accidental drowning due to the lifeguards that patrol the beaches from their little perch.

One other activity that is known to draw some crowds are the lifeguard competitions. I seem to recall a movie with Sam Elliott, but I am getting way off-track now.

The lifeguards get a chance to show off their skills. They don't have to worry about practice, or going to the playoffs, all they have to do is play at their best.

11) Los Angeles Galaxy

If you happen to be torn between which brand of football is to your liking, there is the Los Angeles Galaxy team to consider as an alternative. You don't have to be a strong soccer fan to know some of the names that have graced the Galaxy rosters over the years.

David Beckham, Landon Donovan, Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones are just a few of the many examples of great soccer players that played for the team. Kind of ashamed to admit that with all of that talent, I never did make it to one of their games. Like I said there is a lot of other options in Southern California.

10) Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Or whatever it is that they are called now. So many name changes that it is kind of a running joke now. I personally preferred the Anaheim Angels or the California Angels. Short and direct, to the point.

From the Angels Rally Monkey that helped to rally the crowd to cheer the Angels on to the World Series title in 2002, the team has been very fun to watch over the years. I must admit that whenever I made the drive down to Anaheim, it never felt like I was still in Los Angeles anymore.

The Angels have struggled recently, but usually were in the thick of the playoff races under Manager Mike Scioscia. Since those tight pennant races come down to the final days of September and then the playoffs in October, it really cuts in to the NFL season. Just one more major diversion for the Southern California football fan to contend with.

9) Anaheim Ducks

That was the scene outside of the Pond in Anaheim as the Anaheim Ducks celebrated their 2007 Stanley Cup Championship. Thousands of the Ducks fans came out for the rally, and have been loyal season ticket holders for many years.

Do you think that any of them really give much of a rip that the NFL does not have a team in Los Angeles?

8) UCLA Bruins Football

The UCLA Bruins have been down for awhile, but I have to tell you that going to a college football game at the Rose Bowl is just an unbelievable experience.

There have been many years going back in history where the Bruins have fielded some great teams, but they have been outmatched lately by USC.

If you have the need to see football live, going to a UCLA game can be a very fun experience. After the game, you can hop down to Old Town in Pasadena, and cruise up and down Colorado Blvd.

7) USC Football

Okay, I will admit it, I was partial to UCLA football while I lived in Southern California. It is not that I had anything against USC personally, I just preferred to go to the Rose Bowl to watch the games, then to deal with the crowds in Downtown Los Angeles surrounding the Los Angels Coliseum.

USC has turned out some fine NFL players over the years. You may not agree with all the things that have happened in their recruiting efforts, but that is really for another story and another day.

As USC has turned out so many first round draft picks over the years, you really could just attend their games and walk away knowing that you just witnessed some future NFL stars in action. If you went to a UCLA or a USC game on Saturday, and then went to an NFL game on Sunday, how do you think the spouse would react?

Did you ever wonder why there was already such a high rate of divorce in California? The divorce lawyers are already probably slugging it out in the lobby at City Hall, bring the NFL to Los Angeles !!

6) Unemployment, Arnold and Ticket Prices

Ex-Governor Arnold Schwarznegger did a real number on California. He allowed the overhead expenses on most California businesses to reach such staggering heights that they had no choice but to pack up and move their companies out of state. As a result, not only did unemployment rise, but it left the other businesses in the state that stayed behind to be taxed to pick up the slack for the companies that left.

Schwarznegger did a "Terminator" number on the state of California and on his own marriage to boot. For the people that still remain in Southern California, they are faced with weak employment options, housing costs that are still way to high to believe, and mounting insurance costs with very little to no help coming from the state.

Who is funding the new stadium to field an NFL team is one major issue. So, who can still afford to pay for tickets or season seats with jobs and hours being cut back. People watch as their investment portfolios go south in the direction of our own country's credit rating. And now they are asked to support a team that was not doing well where they were, which is why the franchise escaped to Los Angeles?

This has all of the makings of one of those movie scripts that Hollywood studio directors would file away in the circular file container.

5) Los Angeles Clippers

Okay, admit it would you rather go to a NFL game or sit in cozy Staples Center and watch Blake Griffin dunking a basketball jumping over a car while a gospel choir sings to the heavens in the background?

If you don't answer Griffin, then you wouldn't last long in Los Angeles. Griffin is the star of the Clippers and as long as he is there, they will continue to be a draw and would take away a percentage of the NFL home gate.

Of course, we aren't talking about the playoffs or anything like that because the Clippers are one of the worst run organizations in the history of sports. Well, at least they have become that since they left the cozy confines of Buffalo, New York.

4) Los Angeles Lakers

Yes, I am fully aware that there is a major labor issue going on right now with the NBA and the players. But since there is no NFL team in Los Angeles in 2011, the benefit of the NBA going away for a year is of no gain to the NFL in Los Angeles.

If a team can come to Los Angeles somehow in 2012, and the NBA still has issues, then that is a different story. But, as soon as Kobe Bryant and the rest of the Lakers suit back up, Jack Nicholson and the rest of the Lakers faithful will be back in full support of the team.

Wonder how often Phil Jackson would get together to talk to Jack and find out what Doc was actually telling Paul Pierce? By the way, I miss the Lakers terribly. I held Lakers season seats for five years during the Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul Jabbar "Showtime" days. The Lakers signed Shaq to a bid deal and tickets went up noticeably. After a couple years of that, had to finally give them up.

Can only imagine what prices will be for NFL tickets in Los Angeles circa 2012 or beyond. Maybe I can work the games as a peanut vendor or as an usher.

3) 1983 the Golden Age of Football in Los Angeles

Ah yes, 1983, it comes back to me like it was only yesterday. I had been living in Los Angeles for a year, and was working security for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Those were fun times, but another story altogether. Los Angeles had not one, not two, but three, that's right, count 'em three professional football teams.

The three teams were the Los Angeles Express, the Los Angeles Raiders and the Los Angeles Rams (they were playing in Anaheim if you want to be technical).

We had the Los Angeles Express in the USFL that played from 1983-1985. You can see from the picture how many fans were turning up for home games to watch future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Steve Young rip USFL secondaries to shreds. The only part that is fuzzy to me was if they had to hire ushers, because so few people came to the games. I remember that people would drive around and hand out free tickets to the games, so that way people would think that the city cared about the team.

The free tickets or other gimmicks didn't work very well. LA Express folded their tent in 1985 and Steve Young and Jim Kelly was forced to eventually play real football.

2) Los Angeles Raiders

The Los Angeles Raiders were very popular in Los Angeles from 1982-1994. The gangs in Los Angeles liked the silver and black colors and people would get all decked out in crazy Raiders garb to celebrate every home game. I never knew what to expect when I attended Raiders games, but I would always have a jacket on over my Bills shirt underneath.

The Raiders played in Los Angeles from 1982 - 1994. The Raiders managed to win Super Bowl XVIII while they were in Los Angeles. The year was 1984 and the city would come to a screeching halt later that summer when the 1984 Summer Olympic Games came to town.

Winning the Super Bowl was the pinnacle for the Raiders fans. The team was in the playoff hunt more often than not. They made playoff appearances in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1990, 1991 and 1993. So while there were a few playoff gaps, the team did fairly well during their stay in Los Angeles. The fact that Al Davis would take the team away and move it to Oakland left a bitter taste for many NFL fans. Some remain loyal to the Raiders to this day, but many others have moved on.

1) Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams played in Los Angeles from 1946-1979. The team then moved from Los Angeles to Anaheim, and played in Orange County from 1980-1994. Following the 1994 season, the Rams moved to Los Angeles.

The Rams were a source of pride for many native Los Angelinos. The team was struggling during the early 90's (you may recall the Jim Rome interview with Jim Everett), so Rams owner Georgia Frontiere sold out the fans of Anaheim and moved the team to St. Louis.

Reflecting now on all the years I lived in Southern California, I have mixed feelings about the prospect of an NFL team returning to Los Angeles. I will try to summarize my feelings with the following:

Fool me once, shame on you

Fool me twice, shame on me

They say that third time is a charm

Fourth time I must be an idiot