Posted on 09/22/2017 11:00:27 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
Just think, if Barron had held on to the team, it might still be here, and owned by Paris Hilton.
Lance Alworth’s grandsons play and played football for Torrey Pines High School. He goes to the banquets and provides autographed jerseys and things like that. Great guy.
If they got a $500 million bump, it cost them $500 million. Dean was never very good at math.
Maybe not an NFL town, but it most certainly is a college football town. The USC Trojans have been drawing huge crowds since 10,000 fans turned out to watch them upset Cal in 1915..
But here we have a prime example to support that assertion: LA didn't have, nor want, desire or really care for, an NFL franchise team for over 20 years. And the reason why? Because we have alternatives.
True, it's mainly due to the weather and natural environment (ocean, beaches, mountains, deserts, etc) that discourage sitting around watching TV during the daytime. And true, LA is very spread out and comprised of people who **moved away** from close knit social constraints ie fan support, group settings, etc.
But the prime reason is the essential fact: alternatives. And now that there are multitude of (technology driven) alternatives available throughout the country, the rest of the nation is now asking the same exact question(s): why am I wasting my time/money watching this sh!tty game? Sure, it's got a few moments of excitement, of really excellent plays, but the rest of the time I'm being lectured, criticized and condescended.
And the commercials! Jeez, you can really tell the (lack of) respect the NFL has for viewers. In essence, mindless sheep willingly exposing themselves to the most inane portrayals of the clueless, dopey white guy in every possible situation.
What the NFL (and libs for that matter) has failed to comprehend is that the emotional ties fan had to "their" teams has in many ways been transferred to America in general, with the league playing the part of the hated rival. Now, I don't care if the Rams win; but I certainly enjoy watching the NFL lose.
1. It's a large metro area that is hard to get around.
2. There are simply so many entertainment options that very few of them have enough of a fan base to generate the "critical mass" they need to survive. The Dodgers and Lakers might be the only L.A. teams that can consistently do well in attendance and in TV ratings. The NFL teams aren't even as popular as USC.
Your post is exactly what I said immediately after that (#2 in my post right after yours). LOL.
The subtext is that the Chargers were always planning to leave, that’s why they didn’t ask for what was doable, a new stadium at the site of the current stadium, and instead asked for a stadium downtown on the waterfront that was fraught with problems (interfered with the convention center and Comic-con, no parking, no mass transit and expensive), because they knew it would never pass and would give them the excuse to claim they tried. They have been planning to leave for about 10 years now, but Kroenke made them move on it more quickly than they had planned.
Saying LA Rams is not hard to do, it’s what I did for 20 years after they moved. Saying LA Chargers is just wrong. I like that Kroenke is spending his own money to build his own stadium. Dean could have done that, but they are too poor to do it themselves, and they wanted taxpayers to do it for them. That won’t work any more, especially since the NFL is now a bad investment. It is a dying business, they just don’t know it yet.
More of a futbol state.
I’ve been to more than a few NFL games. I never went because of the stadium.
ML/NJ
Why not force the Pats to play in the following cities: Hartford, Providence, Portland, Manchester, Montreal and Burlington, the Browns to play in Akron, Erie and Columbus and the San Francisco 49ers to play in Sacramento, Bakersfield, Reno and Eugene?
I was 14-15 and the old man took me to a couple of Rams games.
Nobody gave the AFL much of a chance of surviving more than a few years.
What a difference seven years made.
Their owner is Woody Johnson, a fabulously wealthy heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. He lives right across the road from Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.
He was named by Trump as the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. It's pretty much accepted that he took the position and moved to London because didn't want to watch the Jets this season. LOL.
Actually, the stadium financing plan that the city and county endorsed had Spanos contributing “only” a few hundred million. The NFL was chipping in, too, and taxpayers were going to pay $400 million. That does not include the fact that the site, 200 very valuable acres, is worth billions if developed. The City was contributing that as well, instead of requiring Spanos to buy it.
And, he would save the relocation fee.
Spanos never considered it. He simply had to have the downtown waterfront. Why? Because he knew it would lose and then he could leave.
I think they will be welcomed back, but they might not get the same deal they were offered before they left. It is becoming more apparent that the NFL is a bad investment for public financing.
People like to knock California because of their politics but of all the places I lived, that was my favorite. I especially liked the Joshua Tree National Park area and Oceanside Beach - where I would spend entire days.
I remember a lot of passion however with the USC football team. I saw a couple games at the Coliseum and the place was always jammed with a lot of frenzied fans.
It ain't a major time/money/effort commitment. They both play at home multiple dozens of times each month, and games are almost always in the evening. It's trivial to head to a game whenever the mood strikes that isn't sold out, that doesn't cost that much money, and delivers a fun, casual, social environment.
I don't need to bore everyone with how beautiful Dodger stadium is, and for those who haven't been to Staples, it's in the center of the of the most vibrant (and safest) part of downtown LA.
However, getting to the Coliseum (and Inglewood for that matter when the new stadium is completed) is a major PITA. USC games continue to do well, because the fans used to live in the area and know the ins/outs of parking, dining, and of course have fun socializing, etc.
But the Rams? All that time/money/effort for what? To support a carpet bagger like Kroenke? Besides, like many places throughout the country, fall is the nicest time of year. If you haven' visited the state or SoCal during the fall, you're missing one of the earth's natural wonders. It really is perfect.
So that's why you won't see either the Rams or Chargers with full stadiums. The 9ers blew it moving from SF. SF had all the classic elements/advantages of attending a home game. Now, not so much.
Chargers can come back to San Diego but the money leeches, the Spanos’s, can go to Stockton. If the NFL wants to build a stadium at no cost to the tax payers, fine. Otherwise not in my town
AFL had some advantages over the NFL.
In the early to mid 60's, few homes had color TV's but bars often did and advertised that they had them. And they would run AFL games because they were on NBC which was the only network running in color in those days and they liked showing off their tv.
AFL put the players names on the jerseys and actually kept time with the clock on the scoreboard instead of the refs stopwatch. Made it more exciting.
NBC would run the scores for NFL games run on CBS but CBS would not do likewise for AFL games run on NBC so it was much easier to keep up with out of market games.
Also the NFL was an east coast/mid west league, they scrambled to get the Dallas Cowboys started to try to expand West while the AFL was a nationwide league.
But I soon soured on the NFL thanks to a number of factors--antics of the owners, strikes by the players, the puerile behavior of team members such as Eric Dickerson, and so on.
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