Whenever the NFL prepares to stage a game in London, plenty of chatter emerges regarding the possibility of a team moving there.
With the first of two 2013 London games about to be played there, the folks in Los Angeles apparently hope to disrupt that talk.
Via CBSLA.com, the Los Angeles City Council’s Economic Development Committee has issued a resolution urging the NFL to return to Los Angeles, a market that was deserted by the Rams and Raiders after the 1994 season.
Said Councilman Tom LaBonge, "[It] puzzles me why, out of 32 teams, one doesn’t want to come here to sunny Southern California.”
LaBonge, who advocates expansion to 34 teams if necessary (the league has said there won’t be expansion) also wrote a letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell and all owners.
“A metropolitan area of our size can support two teams,” LaBonge wrote, per the Los Angeles Daily News. “We can all agree that the NFL must return to this city.”
AEG has one more year to try to lure a team to the only stadium with a naming rights deal but no firm plan to build it. For now, there’s little momentum toward getting a deal done to construct Farmers Field, in large part because there’s no urgency from the NFL to do a deal with AEG.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones nevertheless said in July that one or two teams could move to L.A. soon. His comments could be interpreted as a message to AEG owner Phil Anschutz to continue to be patient.
Still, the league has been even more patient, refusing to do a deal to return to Los Angeles unless it’s the right deal. And by “right deal,” we mean the deal pursuant to which the NFL makes a gigantic pile of money, far bigger than one that would be hidden by a meth kingpin in an storage shed. To do that, the NFL needs a partner who is willing to cobble together an offer that would guarantee that kind of revenue for the league.
And the NFL, which has seen unprecedented financial growth and success in the generation since leaving Los Angeles, has no reason to do anything other than wait for that right deal to come.