News of the Arroyo


Title:

NFL Pits Hurray Against Ho-Hum

Subtitle:

Date:

2004-08-27

Summary:

August 27, 2004 - Reaction to the NFL's courting of Anaheim? "Who cares?" Does anyone really think that the franchise will go anywhere other than LA?

Author:

Kimi Yoshino and Hector Becerra, Times Staff Write

Publication:

Los Angeles Times

Content:

Now that the league has added Anaheim to its list of potential sites, some in O.C. are thrilled. Many in the Southland have lost interest.

With one word — \"ecstatic\" — Anaheim restaurant owner and football fan Joe Manzella captured his feelings about the prospect of the NFL returning to Orange County.

\"Pretty big, huh?\" Manzella said with a grin, reveling in the news Thursday that the league has asked Anaheim to join the competition for a football stadium that could host a Southern California team by 2008. \"I\'ll be one of the first people in line for season tickets.\"

But many football fans in Southern California reacted instead with skepticism and ambivalence. They wondered if the National Football League is serious. They questioned whether L.A. fans would be willing to travel to Orange County. And they wondered, most fundamentally, whether the region really needs a pro football team.

Take Bob Oldendorf, 53, of Yucaipa. He\'s still a Rams fan, even though the team has been gone for nearly 10 years. But he doesn\'t care that he now has to watch them from afar.

\"I\'m kind of apathetic,\" said Oldendorf, who was having a fast-food lunch across the street from Angel Stadium, near the prospective site of a football venue. \"I thought we were going to miss them a whole lot, and the truth is, I don\'t.\"

Boston native Adam Kretowicz, a long-suffering Red Sox fan who moved to Los Angeles six years ago and manages a Hooters restaurant in Santa Monica, has an even more radical take: \"L.A. doesn\'t deserve a football team. Turn on a Laker game and it\'s 10 minutes into the first quarter and half the stadium is empty. And we\'re going to fill 70,000 seats, on a hot beach day?\"

That reaction, experts said, sums up the 10-year challenge the league has faced in trying to return professional football to the nation\'s No. 2 media market.

While some cities have begged the NFL for a team — with petition drives, candlelight vigils and a full-court press by the local media — Southern California has been less than enthusiastic.

When the Rams and Raiders departed in 1995, for example, stands were only half-full.

\"Los Angeles has presented particularly vexing and Byzantine problems for the league so far,\" said agent Leigh Steinberg, one of the NFL\'s most influential behind-the-scenes players and a key player in Anaheim\'s efforts to keep the Rams.

\"There\'s been an attitude in this market that the league needs to prove to Los Angeles why Southern California needs a team. Los Angeles has almost been a reluctant suitor.\"

The NFL might be wise to start wooing, rather than playing cities off each other, some observers said. The L.A. Coliseum, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and Carson have spent months in talks with the NFL.

Proponents of those plans said they were disappointed to learn Wednesday that the league had been quietly scouting Anaheim as well.

This is a region that\'s home to Hollywood and Disneyland. Its two baseball teams are in the playoff hunt, on pace to sell a record-setting 7 million seats this summer. Throw in the Lakers, UCLA basketball, hockey — no shortage of sporting options.

Seattle resident Carroll Moseley, who was visiting his old stamping grounds in Anaheim on Thursday, joked: \"You already have a pro football team in Southern California — USC.\"

Los Angeles-based sports business consultant David Carter agreed that fans are apathetic, particularly when so many transplants are happy to head to their neighborhood bar to watch, say, a Packers game.

\"We\'ve been 10 years without a franchise,\" Carter said. \"The ambivalence is off the charts. There have been so many times when we thought football might come back that until it\'s here and we are there to watch the coin toss, we are not going to believe it.\"

If a team does play in Southern California, many people said, it had better be a winner.

Jack Lindquist, a former Disneyland president who along with Steinberg co-chaired the \"Save the Rams\" campaign in the mid-1990s, watched support erode as fans grew tired of the NFL and team management.

\"Fans are fickle and particular,\" Lindquist said. \"They know the game and they\'re not going to buy a second-rate product. You have to be good and you have to be a champion to get our attention.\"

But that didn\'t keep fans from sounding off Thursday, especially on the new stadium\'s location.

Some people, like Brian Harms, 37, of Playa Del Rey, said they were doubtful the two rival counties, with their divergent identities, could come together to support a football team.

\"There\'s such a division of culture between L.A. and Orange County,\" Harms said as he lunched at the Hooters restaurant at the Santa Monica Promenade. \"People from one place see themselves as completely different from each other. It\'s hard seeing people joining together in this.\"

At a Montebello mall, rabid Raiders fans expressed only tepid interest in an NFL team in Orange County.

\"Shoot, if the Raiders come to O.C., I have no choice: I have to go and root for them,\" said Mario Gutierrez, 28, of Boyle Heights, assistant manager of the Raider Image.

Agreed salesman Carlos Romero, 21: \"It would be good only to go watch the Raiders when they come to town.\"

Orange County residents also had doubts — about supporting an L.A. County team. Some wondered if their cars would be safe parked near the Coliseum. And, noted firefighter Steve Van Horne, \"If you look on a map, Anaheim is centrally located. And look what we have to offer. We have all the attractions here in Anaheim … restaurants, nice hotels … all the conveniences.\"

Steinberg said he thinks the NFL would rather be in Los Angeles. But with Anaheim\'s plan to inject life into the stadium area with shops, apartments and restaurants, the NFL may want to develop a \"sports Disneyland\" of sorts, with a Hall of Fame museum, virtual-reality games and other entertainment, he said.

\"If you were a betting man, you would bet on a Los Angeles venue,\" Steinberg said, \"with Anaheim being a very interesting dark horse.\"

Url:


Back