Spring Loaded

There wasn’t even a hint of doubt in the voice on the other end of the line.

“It’s a little late for this season,” said the NFL executive, “but there is no question you’ll have a team by next season. No question.”

It was June of 1995. I was sitting in an Oakland hotel room doing a story on the return of the Raiders after 13 seasons in Los Angeles.

The second shoe had dropped. Earlier that year, the Rams had deserted Orange County for St. Louis.

The reaction of fans to the loss of two teams? A collective shrug of the shoulders. We’re L.A. The NFL needs us more than we need it.

Fourteen years later, with yet another NFL season looming, I am still waiting to see if that is true.

It’s been 14 years of false starts, bad rumors, proposed stadium sites, planned environmental reports, empty promises and broken dreams.

There was even an attempt by the Seattle Seahawks to force the issue by simply packing up moving vans with equipment and heading on down to Southern California.

Once the NFL got involved, however, those vans headed right back up the road where they came from.

The barrier to an NFL return to L.A. is double-barreled: Who will play and where they will play?

All the teams who have threatened to move in recent seasons seemed to have stopped thinking the grass is greener in Hollywood. And there are no expansion plans being drawn up.

Nor are there any stadium blueprints ready for serious consideration. From Irwindale to the City of Commerce to Carson to Dodger Stadium to Inglewood, proposals have been floated, bloated and busted.

Inglewood was the most viable. Raider owner Al Davis had a solid offer from the NFL for a stadium adjacent to Hollywood Park racetrack, but Davis turned his back on it and headed north.

The NFL still refuses to consider the Coliseum even though the USC Trojans pack it on Saturdays without a problem.

And so, as we head into the 2009 season, I’m sending this status report to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“Dear Roger,

We’ve got the Lakers and the Dodgers, the Trojans and the Bruins, the Angels and the Ducks. And yes, even the Clippers and the Kings. We’ve got Kobe and Manny. We’ve got the sun and the sand, the mountains and the ocean.

And we’ve got every NFL game we want beamed into our homes. We’ve got our fantasy leagues and our Super Bowl parties.

You want to enrich our sports experience even further, Roger, you know where to find us. But as you well know, we don’t pay the freight. We don’t pay for expansion teams. We don’t pay for new stadiums.

That was true back in the days when we actually had public funds to disburse. It’s even more so now that our state is bankrupt and our city’s unemployment lines are long.

Your organization has the billionaires. You’re the ones with the TV money and the gate receipts and enough merchandise to fill Jerry Jones’ new billion-plus stadium.

When Staples Center was going up, an attempt was made to subsidize part of the cost with public funds.

The Staples folks pleading poverty? Ple-e-e-ase.

We weren’t moved.

They built it anyway and, somehow, some way, with the Lakers and the Clippers and the Kings and the concerts and the awards shows and the political convention, they have eked out a living.

We think you could probably do the same, Roger. So give us a call if you’re interested, but we don’t expect it to happen. With the No. 1 sport in the country, you are doing just fine without us, and with the No. 1 sports market in the country, we are doing just fine without you.

You know what they say: "You can’t beat L.A.”