Originally posted by IWASATTHECATCH:
Originally posted by LA9erFan:
The issue with NFL in LA has always been the stadium. The Coliseum was a s**thole 15 years ago, and it's even less suited to host NFL football today. And every effort to try to finance a new stadium has been rejected by voters, and rightfully so.
If AEG, whose developments almost single-handedly revitalized Downtown LA in the last 10 years, go forward with their plans to build and privately finance a stadium, I have no doubt that an NFL team would follow.
And the Rams were as much of an "LA" team as the Sacramento Kings are a San Francisco team.
While agree with you about the stadium (with regards to the NFL dynamic), why is it that the Trojans had that place rocking when they were highly ranked National Championship contenders? People may have complained about it (the stadium), but it still was packed, nonetheless.
Despite the narrative that's developed over the years, drawing fans to the Coliseum has never been the problem. The Raiders drew pretty well when they were in LA. The problem with the stadium is that is has no luxury boxes, which generate a ton of revenue, and that's the primary reason why the Raiders left.
There were (heck, ARE) a lot of Raider fans in LA, but the taxpayers as a whole wouldn't approve tax increases to fund the renovations for the luxury boxes.
Here is an SF Gate article from 1995 about the situation and emphasizes the importance of those LB's.
At some point that story turned into "LA fans don't support their teams", but that's not what actually happened.