Rumors that Los Angeles will soon get an NFL team are still flying around like crazy, but is the city really any closer to regaining a franchise?

It is home to the biggest movie studios, brightest celebrities, and most brilliant performers.

It boasts famed beach towns like Santa Monica, sizzling scenes like the Sunset Strip, and cuisine from every nation on the globe.

Doesn’t matter what your interests are or who your crowd is — when it comes to entertainment, there is nothing Los Angeles is without.

Except, of course, the thing that entertains Americans most.

Eighteen years have passed since L.A. last had an NFL team. For nearly two decades, the country’s most popular sport has been detached from its second-largest market.

But while the Rams and Raiders each left in 1994, talk of bringing pro football back to the city has never gone away. And lately, rumors of the NFL returning to Tinseltown have been swirling like a cyclone.

Less than three months ago, the L.A. city council unanimously approved plans to build AEG’s $1.5 billion Farmers Field downtown. In late October, the 30-day window for legal challenges to the venture passed without contention.

Whispers of an NFL return have been an enduring part of living in Los Angeles, and yet nothing concrete has happened.

Could things be different now? How could 18 years pass with no plan coming to fruition? And if a team does eventually come to L.A., are the Chargers likely candidates?

These, along with other economic, logistic, and practical questions, have long pervaded the Los Angeles football discussion. Answers, on the other hand, have been much more sparse.

Risky venture

If “Gilligan’s Island” debuted in 2013 instead of 1964, the show may have been accused of stealing its plot lines from the L.A. football saga. Like those castaways and their longing to return to the mainland, the city always seems on the verge of getting its wish until a last-minute twist or blunder snatches it away.

In 1999, the NFL approved a 32nd franchise and initially awarded it to Los Angeles. But when the city failed to produce a financing plan or settle on a stadium site, the league bestowed the team to Houston.

In 2001, there was a proposal to build a new stadium near Staples Center that would be owned by AEG billionaire Phillip Anschutz and sports agent Casey Wasserman. The L.A. city council, however, failed to support it.

Numerous measures and plans have sprouted up since — such as Frank McCourt expressing interest in a stadium at Chavez Ravine in 2005, or developer Ed Roski pitching a site for the City of Industry in 2008. But for 18 years, each and every idea has remained just that — an idea.

Reasons and theories abound.

For one, Los Angeles politicians once insisted that any NFL team relocating to L.A. must play in the publicly owned Coliseum, which the city could control. However, given that no significant upgrades were made to the outdated stadium — a venue that three different teams (the Chargers, Rams and most recently the Raiders) have departed from — the NFL did not consider it a viable site. The city has since abandoned that requirement.


