[dragonsky]

Roski quietly pursues NFL team in L.A. area
He has land near where the 60 and 57 freeways intersect, the financial wherewithal, an entrepreneurial spirit and a plan that is hard to ignore. But he knows the history and the complications.
Bill Dwyre
The Los Angeles Times
December 30, 2008

Somewhere on Sunday, Ed Roski was watching and drooling.

He knew that what he was seeing, on a super Sunday of NFL competition, was what he wants for his city of Los Angeles.

All but a handful of the games had a bearing on the playoffs. There were more permutations than a slot machine. If you were a Philadelphia Eagles fan, you lived and died with what was happening in Tampa and Minneapolis. If you were a New England Patriots fan, your heart pounded fast for the New York Jets over Miami.

This was Chapter One of the book on sports marketing. Almost everything that was happening mattered. You can engage fans with luxury suites in shiny new stadiums, and leggy cheerleaders in sexy outfits. But you can't turn them on with the same passion as you will with games that count and drip with drama.

Somewhere on Sunday, while Roski drooled, the architect of this all, the late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was up there smiling.

Roski wants to make Los Angeles part of this again. He wants occasional grand finale games of seasons -- such as Sunday night's Chargers victory over the Broncos, with the virtuoso voice of Al Michaels describing it all -- to be taking place about 100 miles north of Qualcomm Stadium.

Yes, after nearly 15 years of having his city jerked around like a Yorkshire terrier on a leash and lied to like a jury at a Mafia murder trial, Ed Roski wants to try again. He has land, the financial wherewithal, an entrepreneurial spirit and a plan that is hard to ignore. He even seems to have the NFL's ear these days, but then, with them, it is hard to know which face to talk to.

Roski, president of Majestic Realty in the City of Industry, wants to build a stadium for an NFL team on land near the intersection of the 57 and 60 freeways. He also wants to own whatever team plays there, or at least a major portion of it.

You haven't heard a lot about this for several reasons. Most members of the media -- and readers, listeners and viewers they serve -- have been down this path with the NFL so many times that their minds click off to the words "NFL team in L.A." The old phrase "fool me once . . . " doesn't quite make it. With L.A. and the NFL, it is more like "fool me forever. . . . "

Another reason this is not a daily update news story is because Roski is a quiet man who does things mostly behind the scenes and has been through this NFL shell game, sort of as a bit player, several times before. Roski would rather climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (he has) or walk the wilds of an African jungle (he has) than see his picture in the paper every day.

Few know that he remains a part owner of the Kings and Lakers or that because of Roski's various business dealings years ago with a billionaire developer from Denver, Phil Anschutz was introduced to the Los Angeles scene. All you have to do to understand the import of that is to drive past Staples Center these days and look around at all the new high-rise buildings up, or going up.

Roski has quietly gone about the due diligence it takes to get something the size and significance of a pro football stadium from drawing board to ground breaking. There is some local resistance coming out of the neighboring municipality of Walnut, and there will always be local concern about traffic and infrastructure needs.

But Roski and his aides are chipping away, and a day such as the NFL had Sunday has to make all the work seem worthwhile. Say what you want about the NFL and its ownership club of 32 kings riding on high horses, it has a product that is hard to beat. It televises perfectly, is a game of speed, strength and strategy and has a free feeder system worth billions of dollars called college football.

The thought that Los Angeles is so angry about the way it has been danced around by the NFL since the Rams and Raiders left in 1994 that it won't support an NFL team is silly. Getting 70,000 people to as many as 10 games a year from a population area the size of Los Angeles would be a cinch. Getting Los Angeles a team so it could get back into the Super Bowl rotation is a win for both the NFL and the city.

Still, the same roadblocks remain. The NFL is a 32-team league -- perfect symmetry for scheduling, little likelihood of expansion. So that puts Roski in a position of having to steal a team from another city.

It is at this point, in the city fearing loss of its team, that the weeping and gnashing of teeth begins, followed by lots of speeches by local politicians. That is followed soon thereafter with the improvements in facilities or lease that the local owner was using to justify his possible departure to Los Angeles.

Is it worth going through all this again? If you paid any attention to what happened around the NFL on Sunday, the answer is yes. There is simply no sports product quite like the NFL.

Is there anything Roski should remember as he ventures forth?

Only that he should keep his day job, and his hand on his wallet.