L.A. doesn't need NFL
Time is running out for Los Angeles to get
a professional football team. The National Football League gave L.A. until
Sept. 15, to come up with a plan to secure a team, guaranteed in part by
taxpayersí funds. Otherwise, the NFLís newest franchise will be awarded
to Houston.
Chris Ledermuller
For one more week, Los Angeles still has the
ball. On defense is an impenetrable combination of Houstonians who yearn
for a new football team and cynical Angelenos who are adamantly opposed
to public funds used for private benefit. In football terms, itís time
to punt.
The people of Los Angeles are firmly opposed
to paying for a football team because the money spent on getting football
is more than any benefits that football would return to Los Angeles.
First of all, thereís the price tag. If
the government has to spend $100 million, there are far more urgent needs
like improving schools, fixing roads, expanding public transportation and
modernizing libraries. These actually benefit the public.
In football, on the other hand, taxpayer
money gets transferred to an owner who has more than enough money to spend
on a football team but just doesnít feel like it.
Football players get paid millions of dollars
to run around on an Astroturf field 16 weeks out of the year.
Unfortunately, the people who end up paying
the most will never get a chance to meet the owner, get up close and personal
with the players or hobnob with the elite in the luxury boxes.
Chances are, they wonít even be able to
attend a game. It now costs around $100 to take a family to a regular season
NFL game.
Urban affairs analyst David Friedman said
sports teams divert economic development rather than create it. People
who attend a football game would have spent their money in another part
of the city or another activity, like shopping or going to the movies.
Only tourists would actually bring in new
money, but tourists are only a very small number of people attending games.
So, if football succeeds in revitalizing the area around the Coliseum,
it means another part of the Los Angeles area would lose money.
Even the merchants near the Coliseum scoff
at the statement that football brings in more business. Before the Raiders
left for Oakland four years ago, the businesses noticed fans did not stay
in Exposition Park. Fans would get on the Harbor Freeway and leave as soon
as the game was over.
One reason was because Coliseum attendees
perceived Exposition Park as a dangerous area, despite crime statistics
that prove otherwise. In fact, crime in Exposition Park fell after the
Raiders left.
Sports teams abandoned Los Angeles and
Anaheim for greener pastures, and neither area really suffered since the
Raiders and Rams left. People still have thousands of ways to entertain
themselves.
The NFL needs Los Angeles more than L.A.
needs the NFL. If Houston has no problem subsidizing a billion-dollar industry,
let them have the next NFL franchise. It would be no pigskin off our backs.
Chris Ledermuller is a journalism major. |
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