LA Football Report – 2017 Week 6

We are at the 1/3 point in the NFL season and the 1/2 point in the college season,  so it seems as good a time as any to check in on football in LA.  How are our teams doing?

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USC Trojans (5-1)

Yes, the Beavers got overpowered by Trojans in Dick Joke Bowl 2017, but that doesn’t really tell us much about how good they are.  They are good, though. Possible National Championship good if the breaks go their way.  Which they probably won’t because East Coast bias in college football ruins everything.

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UCLA Bruins (3-2)

The Bruins had a bye this weekend, so that was considered a positive.  You know, the Bruins would actually be good if they fielded like, you know, an actual defense.  The Chosen Rosen can only take them so far.

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RAMMIT! (3-2)

Despite Hippo’s protestations, I refuse to believe that RAMMIT are any good.  I believe you saw some of that this weekend.  They had a perfect opportunity to win it, but they couldn’t come through in the end.  In other teams, this would be a learning opportunity and the team might get better from it.  I do believe, though, that the ghost of Georgia Frontiere has cursed this team and that they will not win a Super Bowl while they are in LA.

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Shitty Clippers (1-4)

They are lucky that the New York Giants are a disaster of hurricane and earthquake combined proportions.  Seriously, I feel bad for Giants fans.  This is a lost season.  They might as well fire up the blender and the 8-track playing this song:

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Here is our handy dandy attendance table:

As you can see, something unbelievable happened this week: RAMMIT outdrew the USC Trojans!  Before anyone gets too excited,  please remember that the NFL counts paid tickets,  not how many people go through the turnstiles.

Media estimates said the crowd was closer to 55,000 on Sunday.

In any case,  it was only by 431 people,  sooooo

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So,  how are things looking in Inglewood? Yeah Right gave you a good update on that earlier this season,  but I wanted more details,  so I dug into the project’s website for info.  They have webcams!

No, not the kind of webcams I was hoping for, but at least we get to see behind the fences.  Those are screenshots of live shots taken on Monday, October 9, 2017.

That’s a whole lot of dirt!  Construction-wise, though, it does seem to be moving along.  Here is a mockup of the entire project that I found on a PowerPoint presentation for a community meeting held roughly a year ago:

As you can see and as I have told you all along, Stan Kroenke doesn’t really need the team in LA to be successful with this project.  There is housing, retail, a performance venue more intimate than the Forum next door (at the top left of the picture is where the Forum is located), and, of course, there is the casino!

I’m not clear on which particular tribe calls Inglewood home, but feel free to speculate in the comments.

There is now media speculation that the Chargers’ debacle in Carson is actually a trial balloon to figure out if an NFL team actually needs a fanbase or not.  It’s an interesting take and I can tell you, based on the Mexican soccer league, that a team absolutely does not need high attendance to make money.

Realistically, it’s the same in many soccer leagues in the world.   The only teams drawing large amounts of fans to stadiums are those that are hugely successful (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, etc.) or those that offer a superlative game experience for a relatively cheap price (EPL teams, Athletic Bilbao, Borussia Dortmund, etc.).

Here is a crowd shot from a game in Mexico City of the Mexican soccer league prior to the earthquake:

The home team, Cruz Azul is one of the Mexican league’s most popular clubs. It is never threatened with relegation and consistently is in the mix for the “liguilla” or playoffs.  I have seen purses sold in Japan with the Cruz Azul logo on them.

This is not a small club.  Yet look at the crowd.  Tickets are relatively cheap, too.  So, why are the crowds that small?

Every single game is on TV in Mexico.  Every one.

All the Mexican clubs make their money from TV rights.  Any income they get from the stadium is gravy.

This may be where the NFL is headed, specially in LA.  I simply do not understand spending $400 per person ($200 ticket, $100 for parking, plus $12 “beers” and $14 sandwiches) on a day at the ballpark where that amount can be used for a weekend getaway to Mexico.  Including flights and hotel.  Seriously.

Now I’m hearing the PSLs for the new Hollywood Park stadium are expected to run in the range where houses used to run a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (or now in the Midwest).  Yes, I’m talking $175,000 to $225,000 per seat.

They say LA is not a NFL town.  That’s fine.  If being a NFL town means getting a mortgage for a PSL, I don’t want Los Angeles to be considered a NFL town.  We have a serious enough housing problem as it is.

The hope is that NFL ratings continue to fall and the next round of TV contracts are not as lucrative as the last.  Only then will the madness stop.

And the Chargers will move to London and the Rams will move somewhere and the shiny new stadium will go the way that many shiny new casinos have gone in Las Vegas:

They’ve already got the hole in the ground…