WHO NEEDS IT? L.A.'S DOING FINE WITHOUT NFL TEAM.

Byline: Joseph Honig Local View

WELL, sports fans, it's been about seven years since Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis packed up his gridiron behemoths and decamped from the Los Angeles Coliseum.

And you know what? We're all still here and in relatively decent repair.

For while throngs of Southern Californians celebrate Super Bowl Sunday, the nation's second-biggest city proves that lives can be lived without a National Football League franchise.

Good lives. Fulfilling lives. Enriched, amused and energetic ones, too.

So much for the notion that cities are just bush-league bus stops without hulking battalions of millionaires in cleats.

So much for fearful suspicions Los Angeles would cease being a going concern after losing both the Rams and Raiders.

Maybe somebody forgot to tell the economists, because they're blaming our current recession on stock market dives, global business climates and terrorism. Last time anyone checked, manufacturing, aerospace and high-tech layoffs were unrelated to season ticket scarcities.

And while we're on the subject, you'd be hard-pressed to find increases in truancy, domestic unrest, substance abuse or depression linked to an absence of professional football.

None of us marched or demonstrated or jammed hearing rooms saying we'd drop dead without our own Sunday samurai. L.A. looked at the NFL the way starlets consider serious novels: probably something there, but who wants to make the commitment?

Let suckers in Nashville, Charlotte and Jacksonville derive civic identities from football games most locals will never witness in the flesh. Let them feel grand and wonderful because savvy businessmen put their towns' names on $20 hats.

Meanwhile, we have television. Pay the cable bill and forget the parking lot. If you're a big shot eager to massage clients, take the Gulfstream to San Diego. We're all out of skyboxes here. Didn't need them to begin with.

Rising up as a lover too often betrayed, Southern California just said no to swaggering, would-be sports barons and their plans for new NFL teams.

No rebuilding the Coliseum and soaking taxpayers for millions. No bond issues or tax maneuvers to subsidize plutocrats and their seven-figure hirelings. Wealthy fathers and sons can lounge on 50-yard lines anywhere but here.

We're doing just fine, thanks.

No one left town or got the vapors when the NFL chose Houston over Los Angeles for its latest team. Matter of fact, there may be a lot of empty luxury suites in Texas next season. They're the ones with the chairs marked Enron.

You see, in major league sports, cities are always the patsys. Owners arrive with big dreams and bigger payrolls. Next thing you know, they're shaking down mayors and councils for stadia and garages and practice fields. The begging and pleading never ends, punctuated by cries of how much money some sports kingpins claim they're losing every year.

That is, of course, until they sell their ``struggling'' franchises - or take some other desperate burg's cash to move the livestock. Lose maybe $10 million or $20 million a year in a bad situation, make $200 million or so after a sale.

The reason there is no professional football today in Southern California is that the men and women in charge didn't desire to tell taxpayers about tumbledown classrooms or failing hospitals while subsidizing athletes in gold chains and Range Rovers.

We didn't need it, didn't overwhelmingly want it and don't feel inferior without it.

And Al Davis remains 400 miles away from L.A. fans and their wallets.

Who says life is unfair?

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) The Los Angeles Coliseum, once home to the Los Angeles Raiders, now sits idle Sundays during the NFL season.