The California Split

I have long been proud of my hometown for having the stones to tell the NFL that its billionaires, and not L.A. taxpayers, would have to shell out the cash to bring pro football back to Southern California. Yet there's still a negative side effect on stadium welfare, as the L.A. Times illustrated yesterday -- Los Angeles has been used, repeatedly, as a threat to scare subsidies out of less confident burghers.

In cities across the nation -- Phoenix, Seattle, Indianapolis -- owners have used the absence of a Los Angeles franchise as leverage. They have extracted concessions worth hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers while threatening -- though it is rarely said explicitly, and doesn't have to be -- to move to L.A. […]

The strategy has been a critical factor in the NFL's stunning building boom; since 1995, stadiums have been newly built or renovated for 19 of the league's 32 teams, including Jacksonville, the site of next Sunday's Super Bowl.