Los Angeles Prepares To Be Played Yet Again By the NFL

Thermometer Test

Right now is no time to come up short.

It's time to fight like hell for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme and cruel agenda, where the Big Lie is called a Big Lie, where facts matter, and where accountability at the polls and in the press has a fighting chance. We have our work cut out for us, and we urgently need to raise about 400,000 by Thursday, June 30, to finish our fiscal year on track and give it everything we possibly can. Please help us get there with a donation if you can right now.

$1,150,000

$1,350,000

Right now is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme and cruel agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability at the polls and in the press has a fighting chance. We have our work cut out for us, and we still need to raise upwards of 400,000 by June 30 to give it everything we can. Please help:

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Here’s your sports factlet of the day:

More than half of the NFL’s 32 teams have used moving to L.A. as leverage since the Raiders and Rams pulled up stakes, playing their last games here on Christmas Eve 1994.

It’s like Lucy and the football. Los Angeles is Charlie Brown, and we keep thinking that this time she won’t pull it away. But she always does. And why not?

The tactic works. Since the last pro game here, 27 NFL stadiums have been built or undergone at least $400 million in renovations. “There’s no question that’s part of the game,” said R.D. Hubbard, who in the mid-1990s fronted an effort to build an NFL stadium at Hollywood Park.

“You always want one guy on the outside and you use him,” [said former Fox Sports President Ed Goren]. “It’s just good business.”

It’s happening again, of course, with the recently floated suggestion that the St. Louis Rams might move to a new stadium at Hollywood Park. For the properly pessimistic take on all this, I recommend reading Michael Hiltzik here. I find it comforting that no matter how skeptical I am about the NFL and Los Angeles, there’s always at least one person who’s even more cynical on the subject than me.