Houston, go to hell. You too, Bob McNair. On Wednesday, the NFL accepted Houston’s bid to rejoin the league leaving Los Angeles in a cloud of dust and tumbleweeds.
After months of uncertainty as to who would receive the team, a 29-0 vote awarded McNair, a Houston businessman, the team which was at one point conditionally awarded to Los Angeles.
How in the world can Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest television market and home to dozens of millionaires, not afford to surpass Houston’s $700 million bid?
OK, $700 million is very impressive and high, but according to the Los Angeles Times, it was said that Michael Ovitz, who proposed building a stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood and another group seeking a team for the Los Angeles Coliseum did not make an offer anywhere close to the one Houston finally made.
However, the $700 million deal is the highest offer for an expansion franchise in NFL history and the highest for a sports team in the United States. On top of that, $310 million will be placed into the development of a new stadium. The entire Houston deal will be more than $1 billion dollars, which is an NFL first.
The deal has taken the air out of Angelenos who have been without a team since the Raiders left back to Oakland and the Rams went to St. Louis in 1994.
Junior Manny Rodriguez, a Raider fan, said, “I thought for sure that L.A. was going to receive the expansion team. Now that a team will not be in our reach for quite some time, I even miss the Rams.”
People such as Ovitz and Coliseum supporter Ed Roski had enough time, four years to be exact, to have a stadium and enough funds to order a team to be brought back to L.A.
Billionaire Eli Broad, one of the financial backers of Roski, either was not able to or didn’t try to help match the Houston offer. Why didn’t he pull out the big guns and lay down a serious amount of cash? Doing so would be a great investment and he would, without a doubt, make a huge profit in due time.
Obviously this scenario proves that money talks. But does Houston deserve a team over Los Angeles?
Many people believe hat L.A. does not have real fans, only gang-bangers and drug dealers who drink beer and get into fights at games.
Well yes, there were a few bad apples at the Coliseum when the Raiders were here but that claim is a complete overblown stereotype. The only thing in Houston is scorching hot weather, cactus and rodeo clowns.
Southern California is the home and producer of the nation’s top football prospects. Until we get a team, many of those players can’t even play in front of their home crowd.
This madness does not stop in Houston. How can Tennessee, home of and Elvis-impersonating losers and the Grand Ole Opry, have a team and L.A. does not?
Washington and New York, who have multiple teams, have some of the nation’s coldest climate which brings another issue at hand. Southern California, which has an average yearly temperature of 72 degrees, can have football played on actual grass. The Washington and New York teams play on hard astroturf.
The deal leaves L.A. residents with nothing but a pair of losing baseball clubs, a basketball team that has yet to prove itself and a corrupt police force. The closest pro football locals will be seeing will be from the television.
Damien Alarcon, a senior journalism major, is assistant arts and entertainment editor of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at alarcond@ulv.edu.
