Chapter 19) How Many Members of the Family Go to Los Angeles?
Sports may not be everyone's starting time idea when information technology comes to Los Angeles, only the metropolis'due south proximity to the Hollywood elite makes information technology quite the hub for professional person sports. Everyone from Jack Nicholson to Kim Kardasian to Lizzo has been spotted courtside at Lakers and Clippers games. The Dodgers, Milky way and Kings — the baseball, soccer and hockey teams of La La Country — consistently perform well. Nearby Anaheim has its own professional person sports teams, the Ducks and the Angels.
With popular college football game teams in the area similar USC and UCLA, one would think that an NFL team in LA would be a no-brainer. Today, 2 NFL teams call Los Angeles habitation. The LA Rams and the LA Chargers share SoFi Stadium, but this is a more contempo development.
The NFL'southward relationship with LA has been exciting to watch from the sidelines. Like the celebrities and visionaries that populate the area, the NFL and LA take broken up and gotten back together more than times than most celebrity couples. Filled with lawsuits, proper noun changes and shared custody of stadiums, it's a real journey. So, before you tune in to Super Basin LVI, allow's swoop into LA's complicated human relationship with the NFL.
Everything Was Fine Until 1995
LA's kickoff football squad tin can be traced back to the 1940s. In 1946, the Cleveland Rams moved their professional team over to the Due west Coast. The original LA Rams shared a stadium with USC'southward Trojans and UCLA'due south Bruins. The move came with i controversial condition: integration. Black athletes, like in other sports organizations at the time, played in segregated leagues. But this movement to LA was a catalyst for this social change in pro football.
This starting time incarnation of the LA Rams moved to Anaheim in 1979. They kept "LA" in their name despite their Orange County location. With extra room to spare, the Raiders franchise moved from Oakland to LA in 1982. Both teams coexisted in LA peacefully. The urban center of LA celebrated the Rams' title victory in 1951 and the Raiders' Super Bowl win in 1984.
The Rams were the offset to exit the stadium. When her married man passed away, Georgia Frontiere became the owner of a franchise — the but fourth dimension a woman has outright endemic an NFL team. Frontiere began exploring other options for new stadiums in the 1990s because their current one couldn't proceed up with the growing demands for luxury boxes. Unsurprisingly, the city's fans had an aggressive response when Frontiere ultimately moved the team to St. Louis ahead of the 1995 flavor.
Something must take been in the water of the Los Angeles river in 1995, because the Raiders left the same year. Really, information technology wasn't the water, but the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Repairs were needed, so upgrades couldn't happen. Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders, moved the franchise dorsum to Oakland, making LA "the city without a football team" — at least for a while.
California is dealing with i of its worst droughts in history, but the '90s ushered in a weird era for Los Angeles. There was no pro football in LA but other sports franchises were doing well. In a city where appearances are king, the sports landscape was an incomplete outfit. It was like LA was missing it'south favorite pair of earrings or wearing the wrong shoes to an effect.
In 1996, the Seattle Seahawks almost moved down to LA but it didn't pan out. The California city nearly landed an expansion team in 1999, but that didn't pan out either; that team ultimately became the Houston Texans. Eventually, "moving the franchise to LA" became a punchline as well as a threat from owners and NFL officials alike. Sometimes referred to as a bargaining token, many stadiums were built in the late '90s and the beginning of the new millennium because cities didn't want to lose their pro teams.
A 2007 op-ed from NBC News said it best: "The threat of moving a team to Los Angeles is more valuable for the NFL than really placing a team there. It's the perfect bargaining chip for the league: Why would a franchise stay in, say, cold-weather, small-marketplace Minnesota without a new stadium when big-marketplace, celebrity-studded LA beckons?"
A great question, indeed. It would accept 20 years, but football would finally render to LA in a stadium that's as lux as the people who live in that location.
The Rams' return to LA became a serious possibility later on the 2010 passing of Georgia Frontiere. The new owners of the franchise went back and forth with the city of St. Louis in a legal battle that lasted close to a decade. The Rams were ordered to pay a settlement of $790 one thousand thousand for leaving St. Louis, but, by 2016, football was back in LA.
Around the same time, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers were likewise in talks to move cities. After a long will they/won't they period, the Raiders ready shop in Las Vegas, instead. The Chargers, still, moved back to their original home in LA.
Perhaps following "suit" (or seeing the big payout that St. Louis received), the metropolis of San Diego is now suing the NFL for the Chargers' move. An NFL team tin bring in a lot of tourism and revenue, and so we don't see this issue going away anytime before long.
SoFi Stadium opened in September of 2021. Today, multiple football teams call SoFi Stadium habitation. Typically, the stadium holds around 70,000 spectators, merely for larger events similar the Super Basin, it can concord more 100,000 guests. In that location are 260 executive suites, and so this is a stadium that erstwhile Rams possessor, Georgia Frontiere, would corroborate of. In improver to being the dwelling of both the Rams and Chargers, the stadium hosts the LA Bowl, part of NCAA football's postseason.
Super Bowl LVI is slated to be the first massive upshot hosted at the new facility. SoFi Stadium has as well been used for concerts, local sporting events and equally a vaccination site during the COVID-xix pandemic. In the coming years, SoFi Stadium volition host the 2023 College Football Championship, the 2026 World Loving cup and the 2028 Paralympic Games.
Built atop of a erstwhile racetrack site in Hollywood Park, this space has the potential to see some incredible programming and sports moments in the nearly hereafter. The NFL, in the meantime, remains in adept standing with the city of Los Angeles. And while it looks like it will work out long-term between LA and the NFL, we're ever ready for some football drama.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/nfl-in-los-angeles?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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