You own an expansion team!

[Dave Gray]

Congrats!  You've really done well for yourself and you are now the owner of an NFL expansion team in Los Angeles. 

You need to pick a name, build a stadium, hire a coaching staff and GM, and perhaps assign responsibilities and a drafting/free agency strategy, depending on how you delegate responsibilities.

How do you market the team?  What type of stadium do you choose?  What do you name the team?  What gimmicks (if any), do you employ?

What type of management do you hire, and do you allow that management to choose other management?  In other words, do you hire a GM and let him choose the coach?  Do you hire each seperately?  And then, which jobs do you assign to each?   Do you let them pick the style of play they want to emulate (run and shoot, west coast, hardnose, etc.) or do you choose that?  If so, what style?

[Frimp]

Los Angeles Stars. (Stars are pretty much all they have there other than gangs.) and it would hopefully set a personality...plus, it would piss off the Cowboys. lol)

Marketing: Contests for season tickets, as well as 4+ season ticket discounts. Plus massive community outreach. Fan related events that are for the fans. An end zone similar to the Black Hole, Dog Pound, and Deep End. Rules: Create a costume. Come to the stadium. Enter a contest. Win. Top 50 costumes get the end zone seats. Others would be drawn in.

Open air stadium. Complete bowl.

I bring in the best coach I can find, and give him GM duties. They can do whatever their specialty is.

[MikeO]

Congrats!  You've really done well for yourself and you are now the owner of an NFL expansion team in Los Angeles. 

You need to pick a name, build a stadium, hire a coaching staff and GM, and perhaps assign responsibilities and a drafting/free agency strategy, depending on how you delegate responsibilities.

How do you market the team?  What type of stadium do you choose?  What do you name the team?  What gimmicks (if any), do you employ?

What type of management do you hire, and do you allow that management to choose other management?  In other words, do you hire a GM and let him choose the coach?  Do you hire each seperately?  And then, which jobs do you assign to each?   Do you let them pick the style of play they want to emulate (run and shoot, west coast, hardnose, etc.) or do you choose that?  If so, what style?

Stadium building approval is done and the blueprints are already completed (seriously in reality they are). Just waiting for a team to get the green light on the entire project. One worry I don't have being in LA is stadium. Word is Super Bowl 50 will be in LA, 50th anniversary and all go back to where it began. And they get moving quick because they haven't broke ground on that stadium yet. So if I am moving my team to LA I have no stadium issues

Market the team, easy we are in LA. Just give Celebs free tickets and have them show up and give them VIP treatment. It's LA marketing is a non-factor. You got the sports media and the TMZ/ET/Access Hollywood Crowd in your backyard. Getting exposure won't give me 1 gray hair.

Find a football guy who won't get caught up in the glitz and glamour of LA and the celebrity atmosphere. Let him hire a coach and run the football operations. So that means no Bill Parcells.

Team Name...who cares, hold a dopey contest where fans can submit suggestions take 3 or 4 good ones. Let the fans vote on what they like out of that group and combine that with what my staff think is good and get their input and come up with one. Not that big a deal.

[Landshark]

LA Tidal Waves, seeing as the waves are notoriously large out there.  The fans can nickname the team the 'Waves for short. 

I would hire two guys to head up the entire project.  My VP of Marketing would be a guy with strong business instincts and would be entirely focused on marketing and profits.  My VP of Football Operations would have an extensive football background and be focused entirely on the front office personnel, coaching staff, and players.  He may hire a GM or may be the GM himself, but ultimately, the final decision on personnel is entirely up to him.

Where to begin on building my fan base?  I would have team employees hanging out at USC and UCLA games to try to target those fans and go from there.  After all, the average college football fan also likes pro football.

[jtex316]

I would sell the naming rights of the stadium to Sun Life, install a nightclub, move all of my games into the 4:15 PM time slot and sell minority shares to celebrities and musicians while hiring a football czar to run the football operations by bringing in management and personnel all from the same former team to draft an offensive lineman with the 1st pick of the draft.

[BigDaddyFin]

I almost choked on my skoal when I read this. 

[Landshark]

I would sell the naming rights of the stadium to Sun Life, install a nightclub, move all of my games into the 4:15 PM time slot and sell minority shares to celebrities and musicians while hiring a football czar to run the football operations by bringing in management and personnel all from the same former team to draft an offensive lineman with the 1st pick of the draft.

Got a nice chuckle out of this, and with what's going on today, I wasn't expecting one.

[Thundergod]

I would sell the naming rights of the stadium to Sun Life, install a nightclub, move all of my games into the 4:15 PM time slot and sell minority shares to celebrities and musicians while hiring a football czar to run the football operations by bringing in management and personnel all from the same former team to draft an offensive lineman with the 1st pick of the draft.

     

[Dave Gray]

It's funny, Frimp -- I was thinking the name "Stars" when I asked this question.  I think it's a good a name as any.

1) I would sell between 25-49% of ownership to the regular people of Las Angeles.  I think that this would create immediate fans and a sense that the team wasn't going to be getting up and leaving the community.

2) MikeO says a stadium is ready.  ...but if not, I create a mid-sized capacity (not Texas-stadium style) and have as intimate an experience as possible.  Make it natural  grass, football only, with seats close to the field.  I'd prefer open air with an opening on one end, overlooking either water or the city skyline, with some kind of partial or retractable shade cloth.  I would make a super-high end club level, with the hopes of drawing in celebrities, but one that still has the game at the heart of the experience.  I'd also (if I could), create a downtown atmosphere outside the stadium, with food/drink/entertainment options, encouraging tailgating and coming out to watch the 1 PM games before going in to watch the late game.  Palm trees, on the water....etc.  Whatever you can do to capture the L.A. feel.

3) I would fill the stadium in the first year, with 75% season tickets, even if at a loss.  I'd make certain tickets very affordable, and possibly give price breaks for children's tickets.  The goal would be to bring in families that will build long-term loyalty.  I want to make sure that while a normal fan experience will still bring in money, and a high-end experience will bring in lots of money, that there's a budget option for a family of 4 to come in, eat a hotdog, and get a foam finger or whatever, and still have enough money for gas for the ride home.  I think that you can "tier" the concessions, as well.

4) I would like to run a high-scoring offense, as a first priority.  I think that the NFL rule changes favor that type of offense, and the excitement of that will bring people in.  I'd hire my GM first and we'd choose a coach together, perhaps a college coach with big ideas and that wouldn't have preconceived ideas of how they want things.  I'd be very clear that the GM would be responsible for personnel, and the coach would be responsible for his direct assistants and gameplanning.

5) I'd bring in a statistician (seriously) to help re-strategize the gameplan.  I belive, and math supports this, that the NFL punts too often, and I think that we're in for a "moneyball" type of revolution, once someone has the balls to figure it out.  I'd let it be known to the coaches that it's how I'd like the team to be run, and hire someone, with the help of that statistician, who buys into the idea.

6) I'd split the business into: Me (owner), Stat Guy, Money guy (to be in ultimate control of spending), Head of Operations (representing the fans/shareholders), GM, Head Coach, Marketing Guy -- We'd all have regular meetings together.  I'd set the direction of the franchise, and we'd work together to have the same goals, from the top down.

Go Stars!

[MikeO]

2) MikeO says a stadium is ready.  .

It is ready to be green-lit, just gotta have a team. The RUMOR now is both Jax and SD will move to LA and share the stadium and the NFL will do some shuffling and move one team to the NFC and one NFC team will go to the AFC and such.. LA will go from no teams to 2 teams. That's the latest rumor making the rounds.

[DZA]

Jax Jaguars to LA.....

[Tenshot13]

L.A. Quakes or L.A. Tremors

[Spider-Dan]

The RUMOR now is both Jax and SD will move to LA and share the stadium and the NFL will do some shuffling and move one team to the NFC and one NFC team will go to the AFC and such..

I don't know why people keep suggesting realignment.  It's not going to happen.

If the NFL cared about the geographical accuracy of its divisions, when they chose a team to move from the AFC East to the AFC South, they would have picked the southernmost team in the entire league over a team in a state on the U.S. northern border.  Even if JAX and SD both moved to LA, the league would just keep one LA team in the AFCS and one in the AFCW.

[MikeO]

I don't know why people keep suggesting realignment.  It's not going to happen.

If the NFL cared about the geographical accuracy of its divisions, when they chose a team to move from the AFC East to the AFC South, they would have picked the southernmost team in the entire league over a team in a state on the U.S. northern border.  Even if JAX and SD both moved to LA, the league would just keep one LA team in the AFCS and one in the AFCW.

I wouldn't call swapping one team for another from the AFC to NFC as realignment, but whatever.  But if 2 AFC teams move to LA (as rumored), one has to be switched to the NFC somehow....some way. That's all!

They will NOT keep two teams in the same city in the same conference. Because it hurts them financially as a league. LA is the #2 media market. Why give both LA teams to one network. Split them up so FOX gets one team and CBS gets one team, splitting the pie to get more money from the networks. If BOTH are in the same conference, they lose leverage. It's very simple.

Not to mention what game do you air when BOTH play at the same time if you have 2 teams in one city on the same network constantly. It can't work!

[Spider-Dan]

Currently, of the top ten media markets, the NFC has:

#1 (NY, split)
#3 (Chicago)
#4 (SF, split)
#5 (Dallas)
#6 (Philly)
#8 (DC)
#10 (Detroit)

So with no NFL presence currently in LA, the NFC has sole possession of 3 of the top 5 remaining media markets, and split possession of the other two (while having the senior, more successful team in both of those markets).  Seems to me that both LA teams going to the AFC would make things closer to equal.  Right now, the AFC network has a decided disadvantage.

As for what game to air when both are playing at the same time:  given that this proposal involves two teams sharing the same stadium, you can simply look to NYG and NYJ for a clue on how this will work.  Cliff notes: there is no week in 2011 where both NYG and NYJ are playing road games at the same time, and there is only one week where both of them are playing at the same time (excluding NYG vs. NYJ, of course).

The NFL is aware of such issues when creating the schedule.