L.A. Without the NFL--What a Coup!

Time to examine your life and evaluate what you have missed as the Raiders and Rams play each other Sunday for the first time in a regular-season game since their departure from Los Angeles three years ago.

There has to be something. Come on, think.

Oakland is so excited about having the Raiders back, there are more than 20,000 unsold tickets for

the first “We Left L.A. Bowl,” the only bowl the Rams and Raiders figure to be playing in any time soon.

And for the ninth time in 18 games, the game will be blacked out on Bay Area TV, forcing the Fox affiliate to show the Chicago-Dallas game instead.

The Rams are just happy to get out of St. Louis, where the locals spent much of last Sunday booing them--and they were winning.

Same old Rams, same old Raiders.

The Raiders keep making mistakes, then making excuses, and playing in a warmed-over stadium, have the highest ticket prices in the league.

No team has lost more games in the ‘90s than the Rams, and yet no team in NFL history turned a bigger profit overnight by moving, so where’s the incentive to improve?

It sounded so shallow three years ago when some people pointed out the departure of the Rams and Raiders meant a third NFL game could be shown in Los Angeles each Sunday.

But is life with the NFL seen only through a TV camera so bad?

What happens when the NFL begins making its demands in Los Angeles: a new stadium, seats with premium prices beyond the reach of most sports fans, expansion fees, tax concessions and public funds, friendly infrastructure advantages and new threats 20 years from now to move again if another list of demands isn’t met?

You should see what’s happening elsewhere:

* In Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers are the fairy tale of the year, a new stadium, financed largely by tax money, is being built right next to the perfectly good stadium--for 10 games a season--the Buccaneers are currently playing in. Houlihan’s Stadium lacks only the club seats and luxury boxes that will make team owner Malcolm Glazer richer than he already is, and so after this season it will be torn down, the land to be used as a parking lot.

* In Denver, Bronco owner Pat Bowlen is pushing hard for a referendum to raise tax money to replace perfectly good Mile High Stadium, which has been sold out every year for nearly 20 years and has a remodeled upper deck featuring luxury boxes. But Mile High is no longer good because all of the money from those luxury boxes goes to the city, and there are no club seats to sell. Therefore, it must be torn down.

* In San Diego, the Chargers will be blacked out on TV in their expanded stadium for the second consecutive game. These are the first blackouts since the opening game of 1994. And because the Chargers didn’t sell at least 55,000 general-admission tickets, the city of San Diego, by agreement with the team, will have to make up the difference.

The San Diego Taxpayers Assn. said recently the guarantee could cost the city more than $2 million in rent rebates, even if the team averages 53,000 a game. The Chargers drew 63,149 to their opener, but that figure included 10,000 premium seats, which do not count against the blackout total or the city’s guarantee.

Beginning with the Chargers’ next home game, and all home games from now on, including exhibition, the city of San Diego must come up with money if the team doesn’t sell 60,000 general-admission tickets.

And team owner Alex Spanos is telling everyone he is upset because he didn’t get the sweetheart deal that Rams’ owner Georgia Frontiere got in St. Louis.

* In Washington, management will announce the 231st consecutive sellout for Sunday’s game, although many of the 15,000 club seats in the Redskins’ new 80,116-seat stadium in Maryland remain unsold.

Cooke Stadium already has reduced the number of suites it will sell from 300 to 200, and many of those remain available. Only general-admission tickets count toward determining whether a game is sold out.

* In their second year in Baltimore, the Ravens needed help from three or four corporations to buy up available tickets for their home opener so they could get the game on TV.

Their second home game was blacked out locally, and TV ratings for the Ravens in the Baltimore area remain dismal, an apparent backlash against the NFL for not providing an expansion opportunity and for having to wait more than 10 years for the return of the league.

Los Angeles and Houston had higher TV ratings two weeks ago for a game between Miami and Green Bay than Baltimore had for its Ravens’ game that day.

A new stadium will open in Baltimore next season, and PSL sales are approaching 50,000, which means people are paying a whole lot more money than they previously paid for NFL games. Not surprisingly, the new stadium has not been sold out.

* The Tennessee experience has been an embarrassment for the NFL, with fewer than 20,000 showing up in Memphis to watch the Oilers. And a new stadium in Nashville won’t be ready for business until 1999.

* Buffalo will get public money for new club seats and luxury boxes, as long as the Bills can sell them; Cincinnati and Seattle have won referendums to build new stadiums, and Pittsburgh just made its pitch for public help by promising a contribution of its own. The people in Minnesota are now hearing threats that their team will be leaving for Cleveland, the same kind of threats the people in Indianapolis have been hearing for the last year.

* Atlanta has the Georgia Dome, and for the 15th consecutive game the team has failed to sell enough tickets to lift the TV blackout. In fact, the team has failed to sell enough tickets for 31 of its last 35 home dates, and for John Elway’s visit Sunday, 25,000 tickets remain.

*

What a mess elsewhere. But in Los Angeles on Sunday, the Packers will play the Lions at 10 a.m., and if it’s not interesting, a flick of the channel will produce Jacksonville and Washington. The Bears will follow against the Cowboys, and then later in the evening Philadelphia at Minnesota.

A loss by any of those teams will not send Los Angeles into deep depression Monday morning, and although there will be no Super Bowl parade at season’s end, who needs more traffic problems?

In two weeks, meanwhile, a group of Los Angeles politicians and interested businessmen will go to Washington once again to meet with NFL owners, hoping to learn what Los Angeles must do to win NFL favor.

There is no doubt in NFL circles that a Los Angeles franchise has the potential to be the league’s richest, but the NFL, while always greedy, is concerned about setting precedents it cannot live up to elsewhere. And so it finds itself still in the position of demanding things from Los Angeles, such as public money and a stadium built on speculation.

The league refuses to believe that one day it will have no choice but to return to Los Angeles, to make amends for previous moves to so many smaller markets, and will have to do so on L.A.’s terms.

The NFL owners’ prevailing opinion is that L.A. will come begging for the NFL, willing to pay whatever the NFL asks, just as Baltimore and St. Louis did after losing their franchises.

So for now, the NFL is expected to come down hard on the new Coliseum proposal in Washington, demanding a better financing plan while subtly shifting its attention to Hollywood Park because of Los Angeles’ inability to reach a political consensus on the arena deal.

Yes, Hollywood Park is back in the picture, and here’s something to ponder: If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hadn’t won their stadium referendum, they had an understanding with Hollywood Park to move to Inglewood and be known as the Spidermen.

“That was [Hollywood Park chairman] R.D. Hubbard’s idea,” said Rich McKay, Tampa Bay’s general manager, “although I think he has since said it was agent Leigh Steinberg’s idea.”

Too bad it didn’t happen. They could have had their own web site.

There’s still a chance. There might even be talk--not for the record, of course--about a team like Indianapolis moving to Hollywood Park, as long as it can get the right deal. Translation: PSLs, public money or both. Then construction could begin on a new stadium, PSLs could go on sale, and who knows, maybe by then the Colts will have won a game.

Wouldn’t that be great? The Colts’ name could go back to Baltimore, and fans in Los Angeles would have to worry about only getting one additional TV game each week beyond their very own Spidermen.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave.

But it makes you wonder if it isn’t easier watching the NFL on TV each week--three games at a time--even if it does mean missing such titanic tussles as the Rams and Raiders now and then.