THE LOS ANGELES ANGLE

The NFL’s spring meeting ended on Wednesday with Los Angeles suddenly on the fast track to getting not one but two teams in 2016.

This would be the Los Angeles that lost the Rams to St. Louis and Raiders to Oakland in 1995 and has been without a pro football team ever since. This would be the Los Angeles that has not built a stadium to lure these teams, as other cities do.

This would be the Los Angeles that the NFL covets because of its market size, glitz, history and potential for Super Bowl games.
 
A league official told reporters that the NFL could be taking relocation applications before the end of the 2015 season. Here are your three candidates: The St. Louis Rams (yep, the ones that fled Los Angeles and Anaheim and Cleveland before that); the Oakland Raiders, who left the Bay Area for L.A. and then returned; and the San Diego Chargers, originally the Los Angeles Chargers when the American Football League began.
 
There are two stadium projects moving along in L.A. – one in Inglewood, one in Carson that could house both the Raiders and Chargers. All of these teams are still in various stages of negotiation with their current cities about a new facility. San Diego has dithered endlessly. Oakland has way too many problems to commit massive funds to a stadium. St. Louis (which lost the Cardinals to Arizona) is trying to cut a deal with Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who is also the driving force behind the $1.8 million building in Inglewood.

Confused? Well, why not? The NFL wants to go where it has failed repeatedly and where the populace does not lack for entertainment options.

A lot of people are going to be unhappy in the near future. Some will be in cities that lose their teams. Others will be in L.A., where (did we mention this) the NFL has failed over and over again.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .