Tom Cruise, an actor by trade, sounded so convincing.

	NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue holds an expansion committee press conference outside the L.A. Coliseum in 1999.

"I want to see football in Los Angeles again," he said about 18 months ago. "That excitement. I want my son to see it."

Cruise, aligned with a Hollywood Dream Team headed by Michael Ovitz, gatekeeper to the stars, and billionaire grocer Ron Burkle, was campaigning for a new stadium in Hollywood Park for what would become the NFL's 32nd franchise.

The NFL itself, keen to return to the nation's No. 2 television market since the Raiders and Rams both defected after the 1994 season, desperately wanted the L.A. effort to succeed.

In April of 1999, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue stood with 11 owners under the arch of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and predicted that football would soon return to Los Angeles, where two teams had already failed.

"We have stated for quite some time that we want to have an NFL franchise in Los Angeles on a successful basis," Roger Goodell, an NFL executive vice president, explained recently. "It's good for the city, the fans and the NFL. We went through a lengthy process and committed a franchise to Los Angeles on the condition they build a stadium. Unfortunately, they weren't able to do that."

Eventually, it was reduced to a two-city race for an expansion franchise to be awarded in October. On paper, the Houston vs. Los Angeles tale of the tape was no contest; it was L.A.'s to lose.

CONFIDENTIAL PLANS

The NFL may have taken over as America's No. 1 sport, but in the No. 2 media market, the league remains absent. This week, ESPN.com investigates the mystery of how the league lived and died in Los Angeles. Monday: How L.A. lost the NFL. Tuesday: Where does L.A. rate on the NFL's priority list? Wednesday: Which teams might relocate to Los Angeles? Thursday: Why doesn't L.A. care about being NFL-less? Plus, a football fantasy: The Los Angeles Rams win Super Bowl XXXIV. Friday: What is the NFL's future in Los Angeles?

While L.A. proper has some 5.5 million television homes and more than 15 million taken as a market, Houston, the No. 11 market, has 4 million television homes. Ovitz argued effectively that no television show can make it without a presence in New York, Chicago and L.A. And while the league has undeniably thrived in the absence of the Rams and Raiders, the NFL benefited from two hungry and excluded networks (first Fox, then CBS) when it scored its last two record television contracts. There is no guarantee that scenario will unfold next time.

Tagliabue and Goodell have artfully maneuvered behind the scenes (and out front, too) to get stadiums built and keep teams in their big-market cities. Between 1995 and 1997, for instance, the NFL inserted itself aggressively into seven stadium referendums and helped teams win all seven -- Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle and Tampa.

Despite an attempt to depict a level playing field in L.A. vs. Houston, the NFL did everything it could to pull together an attractive package in L.A. Ovitz was only one of the handful of big-money suitors that included real estate mogul Ed Roski, billionaire oilman Marvin Davis and billionaire Eli Broad.

They were all defeated by savvy Houston billionaire Bob McNair. McNair's offer was so compelling the NFL had little choice but to accept it. The owners' vote was 29-0. McNair came in with a record $1 billion proposal that included a $700 million bid and a promise of $195 million in taxpayer backing for a $310 million stadium with 69,500 seats and a retractable roof.

"I don't have an ounce of reservation," Tagliabue insisted afterward. "I think it's great for the league."

Nonetheless, as far as the NFL is concerned, Los Angeles remains very much the title of Cruise's current movie: Mission Impossible 2.

Market corrections
The NFL, which has been in business for 80 years, is a crucible of history. In recent years, a pattern has emerged:

Team leaves -- Baltimore (after the 1983 season), St. Louis (1987), Cleveland (1995), Houston (1996) -- city comes to its senses, realizes its catastrophic loss and makes a ridiculously generous offer for a new team. Hello there, Ravens, Rams, Browns and whatever they're going to call the new Houston franchise.

"Leadership has different priorities," Goodell said. "Sometimes they don't really understand the value of an NFL franchise until that franchise is gone."

This plan of supply-and-demand posturing and patience has worked wonderfully for the NFL. Many owners believed that after five or six years without a franchise L.A. would come back to the league on its knees with a plush stadium deal. For a variety of reasons, it hasn't happened.

The truth is, no one there really seems to care.

	“	We made it clear a year ago that we would like a team back in L.A., but we're not going to do it in a way that doesn't work. ”
		— Paul Tagliabue, NFL commissioner

The Rams, who arrived from Cleveland in 1946 and played in the Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium for 49 seasons, bolted for St. Louis after the 1994 season. The Raiders left Oakland in 1982 after owner Al Davis beat the NFL in court, but returned after the 1994 season. In their combined 62 seasons, the two teams were a snappy 270-172 (.611).

So why didn't the fans get behind them? Perhaps because they didn't suffer from the low sports self-esteem exhibited in places like Baltimore and Cleveland. Maybe, in a city where Pamela Anderson and Heather Locklear work, there are simply too many distractions. In any case, finding public money to fund a stadium is an exercise in futility. Try as they might, the NFL marketers couldn't develop any momentum in this respect. Tax money for a new stadium, all along, was a low priority for Gov. Gray Davis.

"Any time you talk about public money, there is always a feeling of other priorities in the community," Goodell said. "When you go through the analysis, we think that public money is well spent. It is not a public subsidy. It's a good investment that will lead to additional revenues."

Like a bad burrito, the subject of Los Angeles and the NFL came up again at the league meetings in West Palm Beach in late March. Tagliabue offered this carefully calculated observation:

"With 32 teams, including the team in Houston, we will cover 45 percent of the nation's population as the home territories of our teams, and 55 percent will not be," he said. "If you substituted Los Angeles for one of the other cities, that number does not change significantly. In terms of national coverage in a 32-team league, no market -- not even a market the size of L.A. -- produces a big swing."

Semantics? Of course. Tagliabue continued: "On the other hand, we made it clear a year ago that we would like a team back in L.A., but we're not going to do it in a way that doesn't work. We don't have any current plans to address the issue other than to provide good television around the country, including Los Angeles."

The next move
On Oct. 6, the day Houston won the expansion lottery, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made a prediction.

"A team needs to move to Los Angeles," he said. "We will have football in Los Angeles, and soon. What we did today will expedite that."

Since Davis moved his Raiders to Los Angeles, a total of seven teams shifted their base of operations, two of them from Los Angeles. It is inevitable that it will happen again, and soon. A few years ago, former Seattle Seahawks owner Ken Behring was prepared to move into the Rams' old facility in Orange County before inertia set in.

	“	You have to understand, it's not about a team moving there, it's about getting the right kind of facility built. That's the first thing that has to happen. ”
		— Roger Goodell, NFL executive vice president

While things have never been better for the majority of the league's teams -- there are new stadiums going up everywhere -- a number of teams are miserable in their lease situations. In financial terms, the New England Patriots have the league's worst lease, but after a fling with Hartford, the team recently unveiled plans for a new stadium behind existing Foxboro Stadium, complete with a lighthouse.

Whoever makes the commitment first will not enjoy public support. At this point, pushing for stadium dollars in L.A. amounts to political suicide. Rather, it will take someone like New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson with a private financing package similar to the one Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson pulled together in Charlotte, N.C., to make it happen. If he can get some meager infrastructure commitments from the state, so much the better.

The NFL, meanwhile, will be caught on this double-edged sword: The precedent of a privately financed stadium, from the league's perspective, is disturbing, but is it a price worth paying for a franchise in the No. 2 television market?

In recent years Goodell's day-to-day job has consisted solely of improving the venues for the league's teams. He has been remarkably successful at this and gets generally high marks from even the most cynical league observers.

"Is it inevitable that (L.A.) will get a franchise back?" Goodell asked, rhetorically. "By the process we went through last year, they recognize the importance of getting a new stadium. That will allow us to craft something to get a proposal.

"I'm not much for the crystal ball. We're hopeful we can have a franchise back in L.A."

Even if it's Al Davis?

"The Raiders have a lease in Oakland and they continue to operate under that," Goodell said. "On the other hand, that's a source of ongoing litigation.

"You have to understand, it's not about a team moving there, it's about getting the right kind of facility built. That's the first thing that has to happen."

Greg Garber is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.