A longtime Jacksonville resident says Jags are headed to Los Angeles.
LA's New Pro Football Team?
Jacksonville Resident Says Los Angeles Jaguars
Jacksonville's Alltel
Stadium home of Super Bowl XXXIX, is not full for Jags.
By C.R. Richards, Jacksonville, FL
It is a given in some circles that Los Angeles will land an NFL franchise sooner rather than later. The developer of the new stadium to be built in City of Industry says L.A., could have a team playing in the Rose Bowl as early as next season until it moves into the new stadium for the 2013 season.
The only question is: Which team will the city nab from the current 32 NFL clubs?
Majestic Realty Co., the developer of the new stadium in City of Industry, CA, has identified Jacksonville and Buffalo as the two cities it will poach. And Jacksonville appears to be the favorite to move to southern California because of its inability to fill its own stadium. How does the Los Angeles Jaguars sound?
From Jax to Hollywood: Could be a big change for the Jaguars.
Most folks in Jacksonville are convinced that the Jags are goners. Practically every major sports media has predicted the team will move to Los Angeles, and it seems the majority of publicity the Jaguars received this season revolved around that possibility. Owner Wayne Weaver has repeatedly said he has no plans to move or sell the Jaguars, but with the caveat that the team can't be "viable" if only 45,000 fans show up for home games.
Several NFL insiders have suggested that former Commissioner Paul Taglibue made a mistake when he bypassed St. Louis, Baltimore and Memphis and awarded Jacksonville a franchise in 1993. The area's population hasn't grown like was expected during the last 17 years and the team's fan base has stagnated.
Jacksonville suffers a huge visibility problem. Folks outside the South don't even know where Jacksonville is located. (It's in the northeast corner of the state, by the way.) Many people who fly into the city assume it is part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach megapolis, that they can jump on I-95 and ride down to South Beach for the day. Jacksonville is actually more than 350 miles from Miami.
And Jacksonville is as Southern as Vicksburg, Miss. or Nashville, Tenn. It's a place where rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd is revered and one high school still has a nickname of "Rebels" with a Civil War Southern general for a mascot.
Why have the Jaguars suffered financially, despite a sea of TV contract money?
While Jacksonville is the largest city landwise in the country – even bigger than Los Angeles in terms of area – it is the second smallest metropolitan area in the NFL. Only Green Bay is smaller. It is also the 29th TV market of the NFL's 32 cities. With only a million people, it takes about one in every 20 people in the area to buy a ticket to produce a sellout.
That wasn't a problem, though, in the early years. An expansion team starting in 1995, the Jaguars sold out practically all of their games as they reached two AFC championship games (1996 & 1999 seasons).
However, complaints aired that the team wasn't fan friendly, that the team took its fans for granted. For some knucklehead reason, the Jaguars forced season ticket holders who bought the original three-year package to renew for another three years, a policy that cost the team needed goodwill.
After a drop off in performance in the early 2000s, the blackouts started piling up and the novelty of an NFL franchise wore off. The team covered up 10,000 seats to reduce the capacity 67,164. And when the economy tanked– coupled with a 5-11 record in 2008 – the team lost 17,000 season ticket holders in 2009 and rumors started swirling that the Jags were moving to LA, or even London.
The 2009 season had nine TV blackouts out of 10 games. The final home game, a Thursday night matchup with the Indianapolis Colts, sold out only because the city spent $150,000 to promote a party atmosphere and encouraged business leaders to buy tickets so that Jacksonville wouldn't be embarrassed on national TV. More than 51,000 non-premium tickets were sold (club seats don't count toward the blackout rule) so the stadium was mostly full.
But that one game was an aberration. Every other Jags home game lacked at least 20,000 tickets from selling out. I attended an early December game against the Houston Texans that had an announced attendance of 42,000, but the actual attendance was estimated at 36,000. There appeared to be less than 30,000 people in the house. I sat in club seats for another game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, and 75% of the surrounding seats were empty.
Most NFL cities are just that -- NFL cities. The fans live and die with their pro clubs and couldn't really care about the local college teams.
Not so in Jacksonville.
Some local sports media people will deny this, but Jacksonville is a college football town. They love their Florida Gators. Half the city packs up on fall Saturdays and drives southwest to Gainesville for UF home football games. For the football fan in northeast Florida who has to choose between the Gators and the Jaguars, most will take the Gators.
Florida's recent success – national championships in 2006 & 2008 – haven't helped the Jags' attendance issues. And for the first time ever, in 2009, a Gators football game drew a better TV audience than a Jaguars game.
Another problem: The warm climate gives people too many outdoor choices on Sunday afternoons. While fans in NFL-crazy Green Bay and Pittsburgh have nothing better to do on frigid days, folks in Jacksonville can go to the beach, boating fishing, or play golf at any of the dozens of public courses. LA fans will have the same options, but there are about 20 times more people in southern California than in northeast Florida.
Where the LA pro football roulette wheel will land is hard to say, but if you are a fan living in southern California, you might want to consider how you look in teal and black.
