Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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A few months ago, Take Two's A Martinez and I refused to jump on the bandwagon and act like the NFL was going to bring a team to Los Angeles, so we said, "We'll believe it when we see it."
After all, as The Los Angeles Downtown News' Jon Regardie pointed out in an Off-Ramp commentary, we'd been fooled before.
As a public service, here is the list of local sites that have been trotted out as potential homes for the NFL: the Dodger Stadium parking lot, the Coliseum in Exposition Park (twice), the City of Industry, the city of Carson, Hollywood Park, the Rose Bowl, Anaheim, and AEG’s South Park.
And here are the teams that have been confirmed, mentioned or rumored as candidates to move to L.A.: the Rams, Raiders, Chargers, Buffalo Bills, Jaguars, Vikings, Saints, Seahawks and Colts. That’s more than one-quarter of the NFL teams.
On the NFL’s side, it’s been a brilliant business tactic, as every secondary market scared of losing a team has coughed up the cash for a new stadium. And what happened to TV revenue without an L.A. team? It grew fatter than the Farmers Field blimp.
Well, the Rams are coming to Los Angeles after all, and A Martinez - sporting his new beard - joined me in the Off-Ramp studio to talk about it.
