We have officially reached Full Hype Machine with the NFL-to-Los Angeles rumor: Following on human full hype machine Mike Florio reporting on Sunday that the NFL “plans” to put a team or two in L.A. in the next year or two, the Los Angeles Times’ Sam Farmer has now tweeted this:
An interesting wrinkle in the meandering NFL-to-LA odyssey: Dodger Stadium is in play as a potential temporary venue.
— Sam Farmer (@LATimesfarmer) October 7, 2014
That’s, okay, “interesting” is a decent word for it. Some items of interest that presumably didn’t fit in a tweet: Who told Farmer this? Why would a team (or two) want to play at Dodger Stadium instead of the L.A. Coliseum or Rose Bowl? Does “temporary” mean while a new stadium plan gets approved, or while it gets built after it’s approved? All ripe topics for further investigation by the sports media.
Or, you know, the sports media could just do this. And this. And this.
Well, it would certainly be a snug fit with nary a good seat in the house.
http://postimg.org/image/6jy5n8hqx/
Does that mean everybody will leave in the middle of the third quarter?
budpaul,
That pic is off. Foul poles at Dodgers Stadium are 330 ft. NFL field wouldn’t be quite that cramped.
“Foul poles at Dodgers Stadium are 330 ft.”
His overlay scale is a little off, but at 400 feet to straightaway center field a 360 foot-long football field is gonna be a tight fit.
Terrible idea. Just awful.
I don’t think the overlay is all that off, if at all. A football field is 48.5 yards wide. The distance from third base to first base is ~42.5 yards.
^^^Correction, 53.3 yards wide (~48.5 meters).
Dodgers fans:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers-plaschke-20141008-column.html#page=1
Hah.
(Here’s a Giants’ fan, feeling a little better today. Champagne and sweat sure hurts the eyes.)
Oh the irony if the Raiders were the team to move after this season. From one dirt infiled to another.
I just don’t see the Raiders moving to LA unless Davis were to finally sell off a controlling interest to AEG or someone like Guggenheim. That is unless they’re setting the Raiders up to be team two to the Rams team one if Kroneke is serious about moving west as he’s indicated. Meanwhile the Chargers are still supposedly on track for a 2016 ballot initiative which may leave them stuck in San Diego while the two more desperate teams move into LA.
The reason the NFL is considering Dodger Stadium should be obvious. Dodger Stadium, the largest baseball stadium in Major League Baseball (and the country) has a capacity of 56,000. The NFL wants the country to see a packed stadium and is betting they can fill Dodger Stadium much easier than they could fill the Rose Bowl or Coliseum. The last thing the NFL wants is to have a telecast showing thousands of empty seats at the Rose Bowl or Coliseum. L.A. fans, generally speaking, will not show up to see a losing team. But honestly, I don’t think an NFL team, Raiders, Chargers or Rams could fill Dodger Stadium. The Raiders barely draw 30,000 in Oakland. You have to win and win big. And not only do you have to win, but you also have to be entertaining. That’s the bottom line. Even for a brand new stadium, the NFL would be a hard sell to the public. We just don’t care! Perception is the key here. The NFL wants to trick people into thinking a packed Dodger Stadium means L.A. is crazy for the NFL. We just aren’t. We don’t care!