by Mark Browning

Created on: January 04, 2007   Last Updated: April 27, 2007

The true reason that Los Angeles does not have NFL football has nothing to do with the availability of a stadium or the lack of investors. It has everything to do with demographics. People L.A. has, some 13 million of them at the latest count. That's plenty of people to support an NFL franchise. Indianapolis, with only 1.6 million, is doing fine, but then what else is there to do in Indianapolis? New Orleans, which had 1.3 million in the years B.K. (before Katrina), has demonstrated that they can actually win ballgames and turn a profit with an in-city population the size of a Montana county seat. Green Bay, at just under 300,000, is some sort of ice-age artifact. The Packers were named for meat packers, but they might just as well be named for packing people into Lambeau field no matter how many interceptions Brett Favre throws. I'm not sure what the critical number is, but as the second largest metropolitan area in America, Los Angeles clearly has enough warm bodies to support a football team. But are they the right people?

The 2000 census says that some 46% of the city is Hispanic. I'm sure there are plenty of Hispanic football fans, just like there are plenty of American fans for Sumo wrestling. By "plenty," I mean that there are plenty to fill a small bus. Should Tony Gonzalez beget triplets who all follow in their father's footsteps, then the Hispanic NFL demographic might rise, but for the near future, it looks as if we're going to see a lot more of this 46% watching the L.A. Express play soccer than watching the Los Angeles Saints play football. This takes our usable population down from 13 million to about 7 million.

Still, though, isn't 7 million enough people to support a football team? It's not when they are as non-NFL as this 7 million is. California is a decidedly blue state, and L.A. is bluer than most of the place. (Don't ask me to explain San Francisco's ability to support the 49ers.) It's not that left coast left wingers can't enjoy football, but most of them are too embarrassed to be seen enjoying it. Why make a pilgrimmage to a giant stadium and risk being seen by some Hollywood somebody who is outside protesting the use of animal products in the ball, when you can dial in a game on your DirectTV dish? And when there's no home team, you don't have to worry about blackouts, do you? By my careful calculations, I'd say that the blue-state effect elimates half of our remaining crowd, taking us down to 3.5 million.

Not only is California blue, it's

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