The rumblings in recent years that the NFL could finally return to Los Angeles have escalated over the past several months and became a full-fledged tremor over the weekend, when L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti told the San Francisco Examiner that the likelihood of a franchise moving to his city was "highly likely."
In an effort to continue the revitalization effort downtown, former Walt Disney Company chief executive officer Michael Eisner has reportedly been regularly lobbying the NFL on behalf of Garcetti and the Anschutz Entertainment Group, and they are optimistic about landing a team as soon as next year.
The city recently granted AEG — owners of both the Los Angeles Kings and the Staples Center, where the L.A. Lakers and Clippers play their home games — an extension through April to lure a team to the city before potentially breaking ground on a new downtown stadium. The Examiner listed the Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams as the NFL's three most likely candidates to relocate.
Los Angeles hasn't fielded an NFL franchise since the Rams and Raiders left following the 1994 season. While Garcetti remains confident the league's absence from the nation's second-largest media market is nearing an end after two decades, Eisner couched the mayor's excitement a bit.
"It's not my decision," he says. "At the end of the day, it's not the mayor's decision. The owners decide."
"It just felt to me that if we could pull this off, particularly in the downtown area, that the renaissance of Los Angeles ... could be enhanced," he said.
Downtown L.A. isn't the only potential landing spot for an NFL franchise. Several suburban communities have also been rumored to be seeking a team, and Rams owner Stan Kroenke's recent purchase of a stadium-sized lot in nearby Inglewood, Calif., only served to exacerbate those suggestions.
Regardless of where Southern California's next professional football franchise would call home, it doesn't appear the owners would hold up a move to a market where the NBA's Clippers just sold for $2 billion.
Any team requires 75 percent approval from the league's 32 owners to relocate and two-thirds of the owners to sign off on a new stadium. However, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested last year the NFL would "love to be back in Los Angeles." Likewise, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of the absence of football in L.A., "The owners don't mess much up ... but we haven't gotten this one right."
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