The L.A. Cudgel
By The NFL says it wants a team in Los Angeles. And maybe it does. But it may well not because if it puts one there, it loses its favorite tool to beat cities over the head until they cough up money for new stadiums. If a team does go to Los Angeles, I guess teams can still threaten to move to San Antonio, but that may not have quite the same power.
Of course, opposing the stadium ripoffs is a LGM staple. But even within the world of publicly funded stadiums, NFL stadiums are a spectacularly stupid investment. A baseball stadium gets a minimum of 81 days of use a year. An NBA stadium gets at least 41. An NFL stadium gets 10. Even if it hosts the occasional outside event, no one is in this stadium the vast majority of the year.