Caution: LA is coming to steal your NFL team in 2011

[copperfiend]

It will be ugly this year. Tampa used to advertise a season ticket waiting list of 50k+ and now you can walk up and buy a seat.

[Ocklawaha]

Check out this website: http://www.losangelesfootballstadium.com/images

BTW Jacksonville, it is on the COMMUTER RAIL LINE... uh? hello? like Skyway? Streetcar? "S" Line?

OCKLAWAHA

[copperfiend]

They might want to update the timeline on their website:

September 2008: City of Industry is expected to review the supplemental EIR.

If approved by the City, construction may begin as early as Fourth Quarter 2008.
The Stadium would take 2 years to complete and the first season in the Stadium could be 2011.

[Ocklawaha]

Certainly MetroLink is up to the challenge, what an incredible rail system in the city of "freeways!" The location is really not in Industry, it's rather between City of Industry and Covina.

If this were a new stadium in Jacksonville, we wouldn't have leaped so far out, I bet our GOB's could find another location such as along MLK, or maybe Myrtle at Moncrief?  Vanilla redevelopment you understand.

OCKLAWAHA

[mtraininjax]

Tampa has QB issues, as good ol Byron SANDwich just got benched for the backup. Buc fan or Brown fan, its ugly with some teams so far.

[David]

More press rooting for the Jags to fail in Jacksonville:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/columnists.nsf/bryanburwell/story/F162ADABCD45277B8625765300032BD5?OpenDocument

If you are a Rams fan whose NFL obsession is worrying that your football team might ultimately break your heart and return to Los Angeles, please pay attention to this, because Jacksonville's NFL blackout misery could potentially turn out to be an absolute blessing for St. Louis

Things are going so badly in Jacksonville that the Jaguars appear to be the most likely existing NFL franchise that could bolt to more prosperous places. And if you are a Rams loyalist, you hope the Jags jump to the front of the line in the race to relocate to LA...

The Jaguars say they are a victim of a downturn in the economy. But the odd thing is, the economy hasn't affected the sellouts only 70 miles south in Gainesville

I originally blamed the poor attendance on the economy, but that was due to my own seemingly never-ending job search. Now that I’m on the verge of affording the 8 dollar beers at the stadium again,   I am reluctantly realizing that…yeah we’ve got some fair weather fans. I enjoy college football like anyone else born in this town, but I just wish more people would support something that directly affects the community vs, a college town 70 miles away.

It’s more than just a game really, it puts us in an elite national club. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had friends in distant cities who are the furthest thing from a sports fan taunt me via facebook, text messages and phone calls. We’re talking art-school type people here. (my friends in Seattle  basically took pity on us after last week, sparing me thankfully) My friends in Pittsburgh cursed the Jaguars name in 2007 after their playoff defeat, and a friend’s cousin from Tennessee texted him with a message that simply read “fuck…” during the Jags rout 37-17 of the Titans last month.

It really is about civic pride, and I just wish more of our fellow Jacksonvillians would show up and support a valuable part of our community. And besides, it’s fun. We really need to learn how to deal with losing better, we’ve been a spoiled team for far too long.

[stjr]

Post at NBC Sports site:

USF outdrew the Bucs this weekend
Posted by Mike Florio on October 18, 2009 7:24 PM ET
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers officially announced that 62,422 attended Sunday's game between the Bucs and Panthers at Raymond James Stadium.

According to Stephen Holder of the St. Petersburg Times, the actual attendance was on 42,487.

42,487.  For an NFL game in a Florida city not named Jacksonville.

As Holder points out, the crowd falls well short of the 55,073 who showed up for South Florida's Thursday night game against Cincinnati at the same venue.

The development compels the NFL and/or the Buccaneers to explain how the team is managing to avoid local blackouts.  At a minimum, the folks in Jacksonville could employ the same strategy.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/10/18/usf-outdrew-the-bucs-this-weekend/

[stjr]

Jacksonville is Lagging
By Jim Thomas, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Oct. 18--It was a shocking upset 16 years ago when Jacksonville was awarded an NFL expansion team over Baltimore, Memphis, and the city widely acclaimed as the frontrunner -- St. Louis.

"As an upset, I put this right up there with the Americans beating the Russians in hockey at Lake Placid," former Major League baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn said at the time. Kuhn, who died in 2007, was a Jacksonville area resident.

"St. Louis flat out blew it," then ESPN analyst Fred Edelstein said. "They took a mortal lock and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."

Sad, but true. Because of stadium lease and ownership group issues, the would-be St. Louis Stallions never came into being. Jacksonville, which briefly dropped out of the expansion race in July '93 because of its own stadium lease issue, got its act together in time to be awarded the NFL's 30th franchise.

There were rave reviews for the northeast Florida city, and its passion for football, when the franchise was awarded in November of '93:

-- The late Lamar Hunt, then owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, called Jacksonville, "the new frontier."

-- "It's football country there," said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. "There is more growth potential there."

-- "We're talking about football fans here (in Jacksonville)," Denver's Pat Bowlen said. "We're not talking about bodies."

-- "The Southeast is a terrific area for sports and it's a terrific area for the NFL," said then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

But 16 years later, where's the growth, where's the passion ... and most importantly, where are the fans?

On Sunday, the St. Louis Rams will make their first regular-season visit to Jacksonville, and will be greeted by empty seats. Even with a tarp that covers several thousand seats in Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, reducing NFL game day capacity to 67,000, there will still be about 20,000 empty seats for Sunday's noon kickoff (St. Louis time.)

The game is blacked out on local television in the Jacksonville area. In fact, every Jaguars home game so far this season -- two exhibition games and three regular-season contests -- has been blacked out.

Before the regular-season even started, Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver said all preseason and regular-season games would be blacked out in 2009. There were just too many unsold seats to think otherwise.

In their first two regular-season games, the Jaguars sold only 46,520 tickets for their home opener against reigning NFC champion Arizona. Two weeks later, 49,014 tickets were distributed for an Oct. 4 contest against AFC South rival Tennessee. A similar-sized crowd is expected for the Rams.

Can the Jaguars remain viable in Jacksonville drawing so few fans?

"That's the $64,000 question," Weaver told the Florida Times-Union last month. "We know that we can't be a viable NFL city if we only sell 46,000 seats in a 66,000-seat (sic) stadium."

Weaver announced that the Jaguars would consider playing games in nearby Orlando (140 miles away) if the NFL expands its regular-season schedule to 17 or 18 games as planned.

"I still believe this market is a great NFL market and will be a great NFL market," Weaver told the Times-Union. "I don't see this as an opportunity to play half our games somewhere else. Absolutely not. I see it as an opportunity to play some out-of-market games and develop a market that's close by if the opportunity is right."

Weaver's remark set off concerns that the team could end up moving to Orlando full time if the Citrus Bowl undergoes massive renovation or a new stadium is built there. Some have even worried that the team might move to Los Angeles if things don't improve in Jacksonville.

Other than playing perhaps two or three games a year -- preseason and regular-season -- in Orlando, Pete Prisco doesn't think the Jags are going anywhere.

"Wayne Weaver has more money than he could ever spend in his entire life," Prisco said. "And this is his legacy. If the team moved, Wayne Weaver's legacy is, 'All right, he had an NFL team, but it's gone.' But if Wayne Weaver dies and the team stays here, he's always the man that brought the NFL here. And he's big on that."

There isn't a neutral observer in northeast Florida who knows more about the Jaguars than Prisco, who now covers the NFL for CBSSports.com. As an employee of the Florida Times-Union, Prisco covered Jacksonville's expansion bid in the early '90s, and was the team's first beat writer for the paper. Prisco still lives in Jacksonville and has a popular sports talk radio show there.

So what's happened to the fan support?

"When they first got here it was all new," Prisco said. "They sold 70,000 or whatever tickets because everybody wanted to go there and pe part of it. It was a place to be seen. You had the wine-and-cheese crowd from Ponte Vedra -- you know Muffy and Buffy -- coming to the games."

The team experienced success early. In their second season, 1996, the Jaguars advanced to the AFC championship game under coach Tom Coughlin. From '97 through '99, they won two division titles, averaged 12 victories a season, and made the playoffs all three years. In short, they were a hot ticket.

But the watershed moment came at the end of the '99 season. The Jaguars were the best team in the AFC with a 14-2 record. They wiped out Miami 62-7 in the conference semifinals but were upset by Tennessee in the AFC title game. Otherwise it would have been the Jaguars, and not the Titans, playing the Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV.

Four straight losing seasons followed, with Coughlin leaving after a 6-10 finish in 2003. Attendance dropped, and then the economy went south.

"So it's a combination of the economy, no real stars to identify with, and the fact that they're not winning," Prisco said.

Under Coughlin's successor, Jack Del Rio, the Jaguars were 11-5 as recently as 2007. But they tumbled to 5-11 last season and are 2-3 entering Sunday's game with St. Louis.

When asked if he'd like to see more fans at home games, Del Rio quipped to St. Louis reporters: "Do I want the Rams fans to come? No."

But seriously ...

"We are working on the product on the field right now," Del Rio said. "I know Mr. Weaver is very passionate about having this team be here, and be a stronger part of this community."

As for St. Louis Rams fans in Jacksonville -- probably not going to happen.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/136622331

[reednavy]

Funny, they're lashing out at us because they can't get behind their own team who hasn't won a game since last year.

[fsu813]

Pete Prisco is the man. His 930am sports radio show in the afternoons is great.

[Sportmotor]

the NFL is a business
if Wayne can make more money in LA then the Jags will go there.

[JaxBorn1962]

the NFL is a business
if Wayne can make more money in LA then the Jags will go there.

http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=A4F5E5F69832AEFF5105C2B7E826626E

[Shwaz]

I had a dream last night that a major earth quake struck California along the San Andreas fault line sending the state in to the Pacific... and my first thought was "Yay the Jags are staying put!"

I'm going to hell. 

[Wacca Pilatka]

WW wants this team to stay here if at all possible.

The last thing we need to do is to get a sense of resignation that the team is moving and stop buying tickets.  People are starting to internalize the idea that it's a done deal and it's absolutely not.

I saw this happen in Baltimore when I was growing up.  The circumstances weren't the same--in this case there was a noxious owner looking for any excuse to move--but the lack of ticket sales provided him cover.  Fear of a move generated the lack of ticket sales and the lack of ticket sales led Maryland to resist funding a new stadium.  It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Please, please, let's not let Jacksonville repeat this cycle.  Don't give the Kornheisers and Silvers who have been trashing the city for years exactly what they want.  Don't feed their pathetic, shallow desire to destroy a city.

[Ocklawaha]

I had a dream last night that a major earth quake struck California along the San Andreas fault line sending the state in to the Pacific... and my first thought was "Yay the Jags are staying put!"

I'm going to hell. 

I wouldn't be so sure where your going for this one, one thing about it, it's sure as hell going to kill a bunch of fish! Besides the big one won't hit until 2010, just remember the Palmdale bulge is not all San Andres fault. 

Oh CRAP now I'm going to hell...

OCKLAWAHA