To live and die in LA

by Tyler Fransen

The city of the angels. The wondrous landscape of Los Angeles, Calif., where sports have a rich tradition and a winning culture. Of course, it was borrowed from everywhere else, but hey, since it’s LA, let’s get another football team out there!

Sure, let’s get the worst team in the NFC West and pair it up with the worst team in the AFC West. Brilliant!

For those that can’t read sarcasm, let those last two sentences serve as your introductory course to snarky comments.

Keith Olbermann once described La La Land as, “the revolving door of sports franchises,” and he’s not wrong. He’s controversial, but he’s not wrong.

The LA Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers, the LA Lakers were the Minneapolis Lakers, the Clippers were in San Diego, and those are just the teams that have (so far) stayed. The Raiders jumped ship from Oakland to LA then back to Oakland and now to Las Vegas. The Rams to St. Louis until they wound up back in LA, and the Chargers who started in LA then fled to San Diego until recently when they decided to come back to LA. The Angels began in LA until 1997 when Disney (yes, that Disney) bought the team and moved them to Anaheim, and then back to LA where they are now called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. (Translated from Spanish, by the way, the team is actually called “The The Angels Angels of Anaheim”).

This means the only team that started in LA and has remained a permanent fixture in LA sports are the Kings.

Teams come in; teams come out, teams come back in, and then teams go back out again. The more I think about it, it’s less of a revolving door and more of a doggy door; they’re in, they’re out, they’re in, and they’re out.

The problem with LA-based sports, in particular LA-based football, is actually quite simple: there is so much more to do in Los Angeles than just go to a game. LA is a big sports market, sure, but do you know why they’re a big sports market? A huge population and access to cable.

They’re watching the games from home like you and me; they’re not going to the games, and paying ungodly amounts of money for a ticket to see the Rams play. They can just get a few of their buddies together, some nachos, cocktail sausages, wings and beer, and watch the rest of the competent NFL compete.

But apparently, somebody hasn’t been paying attention for the last 50 years because now the two-one-three is getting yet another crappy football team: the artist formerly known as the San Diego Chargers.

LA should have taken a few notes when the voters of San Diego overwhelmingly decided that they, John Q. Taxpayer, were not going to foot the bill for a stadium that would house a fan base who barely even showed up to the games in the first place.

Now that LA has two football teams, surely, they’ll need a new stadium right? Well, it’ll cost them, and it’ll cost them a lot more than they think. And you don’t even need to look far for an example of just how much damage a stadium can do.

Remember the Rams? When they were moving to St. Louis, one of the big draws to former team owner Georgia Frontiere was the personal check she’d be receiving for about $60 million and a new stadium for the team. A stadium which, by the way, has not been paid off yet!

The team skipped town before they even finished paying off their house, which the city is now paying for. The consequences? St. Louis is in a bit of a rut. To say nothing of the fact that they now have an empty stadium taking up real estate that could be used for things like, I don’t know, schools, businesses, a hub for downtown, police, fire departments or you name it.

Nope, John, Jack, Jan and Jill Q. Taxpayer are paying for a stadium they don’t want or need, and hurts their economy because their money is being spent on a big ugly thing that’s just going to sit there empty. (Trump’s wall)?

Now, should the Chargers have stayed in San Diego? Probably not for the exact same reason, but if you go to the Wikipedia page about sports in Los Angeles you will find an entire section about civic disinterest.

If an entire section of a Wikipedia page exists on something like civic disinterest it’s a big deal, and it usually involves someone getting the short end of an already corrupted stick. LA meet your new stick, the Chargers!