Would the temporary Los Angeles options be viable for an NFL team?
Until it happens, I’ll continue to believe that every move the NFL makes in Los Angeles, in terms of bringing a team there, is a bluff.
The NFL hasn’t had a team in Los Angeles since 1994, and it’s not because it doesn’t have the money to make it happen. It decided somewhere along the line that not having a team in L.A. was better for business than having a team there. But let’s humor the league for a moment, and look at the latest report of the NFL issuing proposal requests for temporary venues while a stadium in the Los Angeles area is built. There have been proposals for stadiums in Carson, perhaps for the Raiders or Chargers, or a stadium in Inglewood for the Rams.
The Los Angeles Times reported first about the temporary requests to various venues and said it was with the intent of securing a home for a team in 2016. NFL.com also reported on the requests, and said that the Los Angeles Coliseum and Rose Bowl got requests, and the league had looked at Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium and the StubHub Center in Carson.
The idea of the NFL playing in Dodger Stadium is the most interesting of the lot. There would be some appeal in seeing football at the historic baseball venue. But Dodger Stadium isn’t structured to be good for football, and neither is Angel Stadium (which wasn’t a good venue for Los Angeles Rams games back when, and that was before a remodel to make it a baseball-only stadium). StubHub Center is a nice looking place, but it says it fits 27,000 for football. That won’t work.
So realistically, we’d be down to the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, which have been the common options through the years when the NFL is threatening a Los Angeles move to extort some city for tax money for a new stadium. The Rose Bowl is probably the best option. Residents in Pasadena have opposed an NFL team using it, but local politicians have pushed through measures to allow the Rose Bowl to host an NFL team on a temporary basis. CBS reported last year that the Rose Bowl could not be a host to two teams, if more than one end up moving to Los Angeles (again, I’ll believe one when I see it). But it’s a beautiful venue, and while it’s not the most modern stadium around, it would be usable on a temporary basis.
The Coliseum hosts USC, and was the old home of the Raiders, but one has to imagine no NFL team is excited about the idea of making the old stadium home. It is a historic place, opened in 1923, but it doesn’t fit the NFL’s blueprint of a modern palace.
The Rose Bowl or Coliseum would just be temporary homes, and each would probably be functional while a super-stadium is built. For any NFL team moving to Los Angeles, it wouldn’t be an ideal transition, but there’s no ideal option until something permanent is finished.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
