CA will benefit overall as Roski and NFL move toward LA Stadium deal
As a 49ers fan, I had a good laugh in 1994 when the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders both fled their home city in the same season as the likelyhood of new or renovated stadiums for the two teams became increasingly unlikely, despite several promises to the contrary. Nearly 15 years later, it’s no longer a laughing matter.
Los Angeles, the country’s largest media market, has been without a professional football franchise since the 1994 season. The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders both play in venues that are considered to be vastly outdated by modern standards, and the San Francisco 49ers still play at Candlestick Park, which has not undergone a major renovation since 1971 and is widely considered to be the most dilapidated in-use venue in American professional sports.
The news last week that the NFL is warming to developer Ed Roski’s recent LA stadium proposal could serve as the catalyst to turn this situation around.
My Kingdom for a Legislature
Whenever I think about California and its problems, my mind fills with questions, unanswered questions about the state’s various messes and how we got into them. The press is dying, but sometimes I think how nice it would be if the state had some entity … you know… a body… a group of folks… maybe elected by and accountable to voters… you know, with subpoena power… the ability to call hearings… ask all kinds of questions — investigate.
You know. If we had a legislature.
Oh, that’s right.
If we had a real legislature.
If we had a real legislature, we might get to the bottom of any number of campaign finance scandals.
If we had a real legislature , we might learn what’s really going behind the scenes at CalPERS and CalSTRS.
And if we had a real legislature, we might figure out what exactly the state did wrong — or didn’t do that it should have done — to prevent some of the worst problems in the mortgage business.