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Post by erik on Jan 12, 2016 21:01:51 GMT -5
The end of a 21 year-old error came down in Houston today, when, by a 30-2 vote, the National Football League, to paraphrase the Eagles/Linda classic "Desperado", finally came to its senses, came down from its fences, and re-opened its gates to Los Angeles. Even more, it allowed the team that gave L.A. such stars as Norm van Brocklin, Bob Waterfield, Roman Gabriel, Merlin Olsen, Eric Dickerson, and tons of other guys the go-ahead to come back: www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-nfl-la-chargers-rams-20160113-story.html |
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Post by Sloan on Jan 13, 2016 14:57:44 GMT -5
Now if only Cleveland could get an NFL team, heh heh heh...
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Post by erik on Jan 13, 2016 20:02:03 GMT -5
Quote by Sloan:
Yes, Johnny Manziel (alias Johnny Football) isn't working out for the Browns, is it?
This whole saga of the NFL coming back to L.A. began its climax two years ago, when Stan Kroenke bought the first small plot of land on what used to be the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood. At first, it just looked like one of those ploys that the NFL's owners had been using to force new stadium construction with public money in other cities--something that L.A. and its surrounding cities have emphatically rejected. But then, on January 5 of last year, he upped the ante by buying up the entire Hollywood Park property, which stands just south of the Inglewood Forum and covers something like 250 acres. The revelation sent a lot of shock waves throughout the league; and then, six weeks later, both the San Diego Chargers (which began their existence in L.A. in 1960 as a member of the old American Football League before making the 120-mile trek down I-5) and Oakland Raiders (who had been in L.A. from 1982 to 1995) announced that they had bought that plot of land in Carson, right off the San Diego Freeway for their own stadium.
Both sites posed their problems. Kroenke's sits just four miles east of L.A. International Airport, and is underneath the flight path of any jets making their landing; while the Chargers/Raiders site in Carson sits over what had once been a landfall and the soil is loaded with potentially dangerous methane gases. But the advantage to Kroenke's Inglewood site is that it can encompass retail space, a performing venue, new facilities for the NFL Network, a hub for the NFL's West Coast base of operations, and the 70,000-seat stadium; and it has been vetted in terms of environmental concerns.
Of course, nothing of this size gets built overnight; and the stadium itself will take at least two, probably three years to get completed, meaning that the Rams will make their return to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where so much of their history was made, for 2016-18. But by doing it this way, it will give them the opportunity to reconnect with a fan base that has wanted to be on the NFL's map again, though not on the taxpayer's dole.
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