Article:Thanksgiving thoughts: get a team here in LA, please!

Popular sentiment has been that the LA area has done just fine without an NFL team for the past 14 years, and of course the NFL has done just fine without an LA area team. The time has come for a new team to come to LA, and despite what the national headlines read, the money is here, and if a new team came here, I would be their fan, and they would go to the super bowl within 5 years.

There is a group that is trying to get a stadium built in the City of Industry, which is a great, centrally located area served by commuter rail and five freeways. Since the proposed stadium is being built into a mountain ravine, they would save billions on construction (millions?).

Pro football needs to return to LA if for no other reason than the 50th super bowl should be played in LA and neither the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl are good enough. A new football stadium could be built along with high speed rail that speeds people between the LA area and Las Vegas. Someone, somewhere, must drool over the revenue possibilities in that.

About the "if I became their fan, they would go to the Super Bowl within 5 years" part. When I was thirteen, my father took me to old Schaefer stadium to see the Patriots upset the Dolphins. At seventeen, we moved to Cincinnati and the Bengals won the AFC in 1981. In 1984, I met Phil Simms at a party in Morehead KY and told him he needed to win since my father was a huge Giants fan. It only took him two years. In 1994, I moved to central Florida and became a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan even though they wore horrible orange uniforms, had had 10 straight losing seasons and played in a tarted up college stadium that looked like a giant nachos tray. By the late nineties they developed their punishing defense and in 2002 rewarded me by winning it all. If a team winded up in LA, which according to some sources, may happen as early as 2009 or 2010, I would be their fan and good luck charm.