Team Movement

When the Oakland Raiders moved south to Los Angeles in 1982 they opened up a new fan base. It wasn't a particularly big or strong fan base seeing as the Raiders were back in Oakland twelve years later. In 1994 there were two NFL teams in Los Angeles. In 1995 there were no NFL teams in Los Angeles. It's been said many times and many ways that the NFL wants a team in Los Angeles. It's always struck me as a strange desire when two teams weren't content to stay there. Three if you count the original Los Angeles Chargers. Some of these Los Angeles football fans want the Raiders back. Or the Rams. Even the Chargers have been in that conversation. The Los Angeles fans always want a team from another city. The Rams came from Cleveland before the Raiders came from Oakland. I guess the fans there can't take the growing pains of an expansion team. If Los Angeles is to get another team, they should experience those expansion years. They should finally get a team of their own but I don't see the NFL expanding any time soon.

I hate seeing teams move. It's all business to the owners. It's so much more to the fans. In my lifetime the Cardinals have called St. Louis and Arizona home. They were in Chicago longer than they were in either place. I watched the maniac Robert Irsay yank his Colts team out of Baltimore in the dead of night and move everything to Indianapolis. At least Art Modell gave the passionate fans of Cleveland advanced warning that he was moving the Browns to Baltimore. Cleveland got to keep their team's name and history but not the actual football team. That team became the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland got an expansion team in 1999. The new Cleveland Browns have resembled the old Cleveland Browns only in name. All of this was probably made even more painful when the old Cleveland Browns, now the Ravens, won two Super Bowls. The only people that lose when an NFL team moves are the people that make the entire league go. The fans. I hate it when teams move.

I've been a lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan. I've spent all of my life in California. If the Vikings had not received public funding for a new stadium two years ago, they would likely be filling that vacant Los Angeles football market right about now. I would hate to see the Vikings playing their home games in the state that I live. It wouldn't be right. The Vikings belong in Minnesota. It's the way that it's always been. It's the way that it always should be. No fan should ever have their team taken from them.