All season long, we’ve heard rumblings of stadium conglomerate AEG finally putting together the pieces to bring an NFL team (or two!) back to Los Angeles. They have the money. They have the location. They have the naming rights. They even have Magic Johnson. You know, for luck. And now, starting this week in Dallas, they will have a public platform.
On Tuesday, those hoping to bring the NFL to a to-be-built stadium in downtown Los Angeles will conduct a press conference that promises to provide a “complete briefing,” which will include “new milestone announcements and current timeline.”
Attending will be AEG’s Tim Leiweke, Casey Wasserman, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and others.
The people behind this LA venture aren’t stupid. They’ve seen so many LA NFL deals fail over the past decade and a half that they know you do the public component of this LAST and all the back room shenanigans FIRST.
This isn’t going to be a campaign to get you to want the NFL in Los Angeles. That’s virtually certain at this point. This is strictly to get you used to the idea, because it’s going to happen. And if you happen to be a fan of the San Diego Chargers, you may as well start planning on driving the 120 miles or so to the new joint every Sunday if you want to keep watching your team play.
The NFL wouldn’t allow this kind of conference during their showcase week if they weren’t reasonably confident everything would go down as planned. So when this labor situation is at last resolved in the coming months(?), expect a team to end up in Los Angeles very, very quickly. It’s not just some dopey pipe dream anymore. It’s looking quite real.
