L.A. NFL fans seen as staying true to favorites.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the mayors of Los Angeles and Anaheim are putting on a blitz of their own to try to bring a National Football League franchise--or two--to the Southland.

But their effort, which in the case of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa includes a $750 million facelift for the L.A. Coliseum and its neighborhood, without a groundswell of public support.

There's a reason for that, according to Colin Cowherd, a nationally syndicated radio host for ESPN Radio, carried locally on KSPN-AM (710).

"L.A. fans don't care about having a local team because they'd rather stay home and watch their real favorite teams--the ones from the town they lived in before they came to L.A.--on TV," Cowherd said.

The same theory holds--Cowherd contends to a lesser degree--for all the warm-weather cities and the transplants that populate them. It's not that fans in Phoenix, San Diego, Miami and Atlanta don't care, they just aren't emotionally attached to the local teams. They love the teams they grew up with.

"It's not like Detroit, where they need their teams to provide good news," Cowherd said. "In L.A., the economy is booming; it's 87 degrees outside; every day is a good day. When's the last time you heard any good news coming out of Detroit that wasn't about sports?"

Cowherd, who said he expects the NFL to land a team here--he predicts it will be the New Orleans Saints in two years--because it makes financial sense for the league, points to the attendance problems suffered by the Raiders and the Rams when they were based here.

"The fans love the NFL," Cowherd said, "but they'd rather stay home and watch their beloved Cleveland Browns than come out to watch some team they don't care about in person."

Of course, the area's baseball teams have a rabid fan base, but Cowherd, who's lived and worked on the West Coast, thinks it's just not the same as in other cities.

"They're great fans," he said. "They support Dodgers and Angels in record numbers. They support the NBA, auto racing, golf ... you name it. But they don't live and die by it.