EDITORIAL NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME NFL WILL NOT RETURN TO L.A.

ARE you ready for some football?

If by "you" is meant the city of Los Angeles, the answer is clearly no. This town is nowhere near ready for the return of an NFL team.

Even though two NFL teams fled the Coliseum and L.A. -- and the league has repeatedly made clear it is not interested in the Coliseum -- city leaders keep on pushing the venue.

The league has not shut the door on the possibility of returning to the nation's second-largest media market. But city leaders need a new strategy. That much was made clear in a three-month-old letter -- revealed in Sunday's Daily News -- from the NFL to local officials.

In a league that boasts many new, state-of-the-art facilities complete with big-bucks luxury suites, the Coliseum is an 84-year-old clunker. Fixing it up, while preserving its historic character, would cost as much as $1 billion. And there's not even adequate parking.

Complicating matters more, the state is run by the Coliseum Commission -- a collection of local and state leaders, who all bring their own baggage and agendas. It's a group that corporate-savvy league officials -- like the owners of the Rams and Raiders previously -- don't want to do business with.

Still, the politicians are obsessed with finding a way to make the venue relevant and get it restored. That's why they scuttled plans to build a stadium elsewhere in L.A., such as Chavez Ravine or by the Staples Center.

So we're at an impasse. The politicians say, "The Coliseum or nowhere." To which the league replies, "Nowhere it is."

Ultimately, if the NFL returns to the L.A. market, it may have to be beyond city limits, in Anaheim or Pasadena or Carson.

The league may just end up following the lead of many other big businesses that wanted the L.A. market but not L.A. politics -- by heading for the suburbs.