It’s never too early to laugh at the NFL. I will, over the course of the season, chronicle the experience of the LA football fan and compare/contrast the performance of LA’s real teams (USC and UCLA) versus those money-grubbing assholes trying to “Fight for LA” (RAMMIT and Shitty Clippers).
Here is a handy table that I will be updating each week:
As you can see, there are laughs aplenty to be had. For one, the record of the two college teams is 5-1 while the NFL teams are 1-3. Quite honestly, they play better football too.
Also, as others have pointed out, RAMMIT and the Shitty Clippers COMBINED couldn’t outdraw the USC-Texas game. This, of course, assumes that the announced attendances are even accurate. Multiple reports say that the actual crowd that showed up for last week’s RAMMIT win over Indy was closer to 48,000 than the 60,128 announced. For comparison purposes, though, we will go with the “official” figures.
It’s actually interesting that the NFL is releasing “official” attendance figures for the LA teams. Last year, RAMMIT were the only team in ESPN’s attendance tracker to not have attendance reported. If you followed the link, you will have seen that RAMMIT is not represented this year either. Also, the Shitty Clippers only have their road game represented. Notable teams with only one game shown include Washington (RAMMIT opponent Week 2), Indianapolis, (RAMMIT opponent Week 1) and Tampa Bay while Miami is the only team besides RAMMIT not shown on the list. This, of course, is because they played the Shitty Clippers in Carson and their game against Tampa Bay got moved due to the hurricane.
There were a ton of articles and tweets talking about this from the likes of:
I could go on, but I think you get my point. Everyone is making a big deal of this, which is all fine and good. The one thing that irks me, though, is this piece from the Deadspin article:
Could it be possible, after the NFL spent decades using Los Angeles as a threat to strong-arm cities into building stadiums to keep their teams, that Los Angeles didn’t actually want its own team, let alone two?
To this I say:
WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING THESE LAST 30 YEARS?!?!?
The only people that wanted the NFL in LA were employed by the NFL. As the author notes, most people in LA already have a team and it’s not from here. To that I will add that the team with the highest concentration of fans is the Oakland soon-to-be-Vegas Raiders. The drive/flight up to Oakland for Raiders games has been a tradition among SoCal fans for decades which will now be made even easier with the team in Vegas.
Of course, the NFL is now trying to do some damage control saying that they “are confident” in the LA market. If you read the article, the author is basically putting all the chips in the new stadium attracting fans. That is laughable. Yes, there will be a short-term effect as everyone will want to check out the new thing in town.
HOWEVAH, they will quickly be reminded that the new thing in town is in Inglewood. The town that is always up to no good. And that has really shitty freeway access and in which the closest freeway boasts the worst traffic in all of Los Angeles.
USC plays and sells out games at the Coliseum because of four major reasons:
- The security is top notch.
- The pre-game activities are held on-campus and there is a safety corridor that leads from the USC campus past the beautiful Exposition Park museums and to the Coliseum.
- The 110 freeway entrances/exits are within a block of the stadium/parking areas.
- The subway has two train stops within walking distance of the USC campus/Exposition Park.
There is no reason for fans to be interacting with the neighborhood south, west, and east of the Coliseum. Which you don’t want to because reasons.
Inglewood, on the other hand, is at least a mile away from the two nearest freeways and has no public transit options.
Getting in and out of that stadium will be an unpleasant experience to say the least. It was difficult enough when the Lakers played at the Forum and that only held a quarter of what this stadium is supposed to hold.
What does this all add up to? Well, if you read Florio’s article on the Pro Football Talk site, there is a very telling sentence:
Regardless, the question now becomes when/if someone will be making an exit from the L.A. market far sooner than planned.
Read the last four words again.
FAR SOONER THAN PLANNED.
The NFL was never committed to the LA market. All they wanted was to continue to use the lure of the LA market to get other communities/suckers to pony up for new stadiums. Kroenke was able to get the stadium in Inglewood built because he BOUGHT the land! He was going to make out either way by turning the area into a residential/commercial mall complex like the many others that are sprouting up in LA all of a sudden. That was the only way they could get into LA.
RAMMIT and the Shitty Clippers were never meant to stay in LA.
The league talks about London all the time and expanding to other countries. You know that the LA teams will be the ones to go there, right?
While the NFL is publicly bemoaning the attendance and making transparent “shows of faith” in the LA market, it is actually happy. This was their plan all along.
How do I know this?
I was one of the people chosen by the NFL to respond to a survey years ago about the possibility of one or two teams moving to the LA market. I gave an honest assessment and indicated that it would not work. Our good friend from the old site, Sarah Sprague, also filled one out and, while her responses were a bit more optimistic than mine, they still pointed to difficulty in a team succeeding here. I’m pretty confident that the vast majority of survey recipients responded in a similar way.
As the league brought the two teams here, I figured that they ignored the survey results and just did what they wanted to do all along. Which, they did. However, they didn’t really ignore the survey results. The survey results gave them valuable information that was revealed in Florio’s article. They figured they could move teams to LA and then blame the market for their failures when they relocated them somewhere else. For a princely sum.
The owners may be morally reprehensible assholes, but they are not idiots. Who are the ones laughing all the way to the bank?
So, the big question going forward is how long they will last here until one or both leave. The new stadium will be supposedly ready by 2020. The Olympics will be here in 2028. I’m guessing about midway through is when the first team leaves, most likely the Shitty Clippers and most likely to London. RAMMIT may stay for a bit longer unless Kroenke is able to get St. Louis to bend over and take it again.
Or maybe Mexico City.
Nah, we all know Mexicans are all RAIIIIIIDERRRRSSSS fans. And Steelers fans and Cowboys fans and Patriots fans and Packers fans and…. Just like LA.
When I took Sports Law in 2004 (long story), my professor would cite to a study that the NFL could support up to five teams in the New York City metro area, but that there are legitimate political and economic reasons for there not being that kind of concentration. As it turns out, the NFL has fucked up so much that there is no way it could garner that kind of support because how it would situate those five times would somehow alienate not only the mew franchises before they finishing unpacking, but would further infuriate the existing Jest and Giants fans.
Anyway, fuck the NFL. I’m been drinking.
I’m convinced that the NFL is evil enough to be behind the earthquake machine currently reducing Mexico to rubble, and that they will build a new stadium out of the wreckage.
That’s some good anal* from Balls.
(*Short for analysis, because that’s what the kids are saying.)
Chargers are gone in 5-6 years, maybe to London, maybe to shaky Mexico City, maybe to San Antonio. But I kinda like the ring of the St. Louis Chargers. Build a new dome entirely from public money.
Over the fence at the V.I.P. area at StubHub Center: Nothing but the finest.
Casa Blumpkin?
That’s the closest thing to a throne any Spanos will ever sit on.
“Take a shit in the middle of all the StubHub action, just like Younghoe Koo.”
Interesting Saebermetrical #TAEK.
If I ran the NFL (and didn’t want to run it straight into the fucking NCAA in a massive fireball, consuming anyone with the authority to sign a check), I’d expand the league with an interest in generating some 2n tier or non NFL-affiliated development league teams. Then you could still dangle that NFL carrot to any city with a team — but mark a stipulation that, to have an NFL team (Premier 32 teams) you need to have certain stadium standards. So the Chargers can be a division 2 team because they’re good enough but not an NFL team because they play in a tiny stadium that cannot generate enough revenue. Similarly, New York would need to build a second trillion dollar stadium to house only the Giants/Jets. Mexico City could have a Division 2 team and, if they ever got around to ‘truly committing to the NFL’ then they could build their own Jerry Dome (Gerald Dome).
I could go on and on but, overall, it’d make it more like college (and look how much money boosters throw at college facilities) where you keep every city tasting pro football — and you also make the city decide if they want to be an NFL town or just a place for some lowly millionaire to tax-break out a minor league team that will never see a winning record.
I like it. Not to mention having a 2nd or developmental league could set up the possibility of relegation, EPL style.
No more tanking for you Cleveland!
i like it too, but relegation is wayyyy to confusing for 99% of the NFL fans.
So is the catch rule.
So is 2 + 2
Can we apply it to the NCAA too?
The NCAA should be abolished.
True, but relegation would be delicious schadenfreude for so many fanbases.
I still think having 1 (one) single team could have worked. I’m probably not the only one who won’t set foot in the colliseum for many reasons but I will indeed see a game or two at the new stadium. The second team dilutes the market and takes away the exclusivity.
Absolute shortsighted, greedy, ignorant bullshit to bring the Chargers up here.
Assholes.
Just because you can pass by Bare Elegance on the way home…
Who says I’m passing by.
So, what becomes the new LA in terms of a city used as a bargaining chip to get new facilities publicly funded? Is London really an option?
I think so because London has £ and existing stadiums that don’t get much use (Wembley being the prime example). Mexico City cannot afford NFL ticket prices.
It would have to be preexisting structure mostly because I doubt London or any European city would put up with footing the bill for a billionaires stadium for American Football.
Is there anywhere left in the US that would take on that albatross?
Stupid suburban cities adjacent to major cities. There is a reason the LA stadium is in Inglewood. Many NFL stadiums are in suburban cities, not the main city.
That’s what I’m getting at, in a round-about way; staying in the states, where can TGDND* and the owners point to and say, “If’n you don’t do what we want, we’ll get the movers here tonight and go there.” Most of the heavy metropolitan areas already have teams now. They’re not putting a second one in Chicago, or a third in NYC.
Are any of these really viable locations?
San Antonio
Raleigh/Durham
OKC
SLC
Portland
Albuquerque
*The Gott Damned National Disgrace
As much as the league wants a team in London, teams dont want to travel there
I think what winds up happening is one team moves to London, uses preexisting stadium. Eventually, they get a deal with a soccer team to build a joint stadium.
The Raiders after great success in LV, move back to Oakland. The other LA team goes to Las Vegas, and LA is once again a threat to use against other markets. It will take about 10 or 15 years for people to forget the failure of teams in LA, but they will. People are dumb.
Rinse and repeat.
Neither can 99% of L.A. The NFL doesn’t care.
The Football Clippers? In LONDON?! Blimey! That makes me chuffed and randier than when the missus opens wide for a “spot o’ tea” each fortnight!
EY? WOT? EY? SHOVE OFF, TOSSER!
“WHAT CURRENT AND VOLTAGE DO THE SUPPLICANTS USE THERE, ASKING FOR A FRIEND?”
STOMP STOMP CLAP
/femur drums boom in the distance
Hate to say it but Wichita is the answer.
“That windswept moonscape? It just might work! DO SOMETHING, CONGRESS!!11!!”
-Ima Douchebag, Montclair, NJ
The NFL just reminds me of what happened to pro wrestling when WCW collapsed. The NFL is a victim of its own success. Its simply too easy to see the games from home. I don’t even have a TV packaged and it takes me maybe 10 minutes to find a high def stream of every game.
There is zero emphasis on teams to put out decent teams. The make pretty much the same money no matter what. Granted, there are teams that at least appear to care about winning…the Pats, Steelers, etc, but for the most teams, its a secondary concern and for a couple (Bengals, Browns, 49ers, Rams) its not even a goal to put out a good product.
And with parents now knowing the dangers of repeated concussions, fewer and fewer kids are going to go into the sport. Its going to turn into boxing, were only desperate Eastern Europeans and Mexicans are participating. I really think that in the next 15 to 30 years, we will see a steady decline in the talent as the pool of potential players dry up.
It used to be baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Two of those sports are barely around. What I think will be really interesting is to see if athletes that used to go into football start going into other sports, primarily soccer. I could see the US becoming a global powerhouse as more and more kids go into a sport that doesn’t turn their brains into complete mush in very short order.
Could info on these hi-def steams be offered on the 506 weekly post or in the gamethread, perhaps?
https://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams/
What brah no pro LaX teams?
Wait so is it a conspiracy that the NFL is relocating the Raiders who have a large LA fan base to Nevada in hopes that the fans will just say fuck it we’ll watch Rammits and the Shitty Clippers?
Actually, the conspiracy is that the Raiders move makes it easier for fans to say “Rammit or Shitty Clippers? Fuck it, let’s go to Vegas!”
I would admit not knowing or caring how USC students get to the Forum for basketball games, but I don’t think anyone at USC knows or cares, either.
If that stadium fucks up traffic to or from LAX, it will be knocked down in seconds by a sledgehammer-wielding mob consisting of the ten million people who live in the basin and actually use the fucking airport.
The tides have turned. As this has shown, they don’t have L.A. to use as a threat anymore. It’s not like they can actually use London, Mexico City, or Toronto as threats, either. Any city large enough to host a team has gotten wise to their bullshit, and won’t stand for these backdoor shenanigans. It’s not like they can just wave a team in front of Portland or San Antonio or SLC. They don’t want NFL teams or stadiums anywhere near their metro cores for countless reasons (funny enough, all of the reasons are the same or similar). But more importantly, they will never move a team to Canada or London for the same reason: no one is buying their bullshit. Jeremy Corbyn will burn down Westminster before contributing one fucking pence to the NFL for construction. Trudeau is a centrist cretin, but it’s still immensely more difficult to bribe him and everyone necessary for the funding than it would be in the U.S. They can try to threaten a move to Mexico City, but even the NFLPA isn’t stupid enough to hop onboard that flaming bus to Hell. In conclusion, the NFL and everyone involved can get fucked sideways.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the NFLPA.
I try not to, but I figure the brain cells have to spark once in a while. At least to simulate continuing function.
I bank on Silicon Valley to buy teams and move them at part of their plans to develop entire MAJOR cities dependent on their operation. Tesla has a factory in Reno? Buy the Chargers, move them to Sparks, call them just The Bolts (no geographic naming). Fuck, Netflix is yet to turn a profit — why wouldn’t you take the minimum returns on an NFL franchise?
And, as goes disruptive silicon valley, you then get other companies doing the same thing. It’s no longer area business leaders working to convince teams to move/expand to their towns; it’ll just become them buying a team. If STL wants a team back, it’s a matter of AB-InBev purchasing the Jets and transplanting them to be the Pigskin Cardinals. Then the city can justify a new stadium because, hey, we’re doing it to keep jobs!
See I think it’s just that LA is full of God-fearing Christians who are repenting for their Saturday debauchery by going to church Sunday morning.
Indeed.
Great, another reason I’m angry to be back at work