NFL.com's Albert Breer gives us what purports to be a rundown on the prospects of moving a NFL team to Los Angeles:
The league actually has found L.A. to be a profitable market from a TV standpoint if it's simply fed the best games week to week, which happens because there isn't a local club to stop that from happening.
That means the NFL can pick its spot. And with the league hell-bent on getting it right the next time in L.A., the ability to be patient is considered key. As one NFC executive said, "The league will wait until they get L.A. perfect -- perfect team, perfect owner, perfect location, perfect situation."
I don't expect objectivity from the NFL's in-house shills, of course, but Breer should have acknowledged that the perfect will always be the enemy of the good in this context.
You see, I simply don't believe the NFL wants to put a team in LA. As long as the nation's second-largest market has no team, NFL clubs can use LA as a threat to extort better deals from their current home cities. "Give us a taxpayer-funded stadium or we're off to LA." See, e.g., the Viking's new deal.
Put a team here and clubs lose a huge amount of leverage. And so we'll never get one.
