It's becoming an age-old question in sports: Will there ever be another NFL team in Los Angeles?

	Al Davis is interested in moving the Raiders south again.

The answer is yes, there likely will be another NFL team in Los Angeles -- whether the general population of fickle L.A. wants one or not, and despite a recent newspaper poll in L.A. that showed 60 percent of the people don't care if the city ever has another NFL club.

The reason for this answer is there are enough people in L.A. who are passionate enough about bringing the NFL back to the second-largest sports market in the country and who are smart and savvy enough to get it done.

The next question now is this: Who'll come to L.A.?

An expansion team? An existing team ready and willing to move?

Most likely the latter. With Houston having outbid the L.A. groups for the league's next upcoming expansion, there isn't likely to be further expansion for a long time. That leaves existing teams willing to move.

The most likely candidate -- whether the NFL likes it or not (or L.A. for that matter) -- is the wayward Oakland Raiders franchise. And wouldn't that be ironic?

Surely, there are other possibilities. The New Orleans Saints or Arizona Cardinals, perennial losers both on the field and at the box office, could leave -- and with good reason -- at any minute.

Other teams that hang in the balance as possibilities, according to sources around the NFL and the people in L.A. whose business it is to lure a team to the West Coast, include the Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings and San Diego Chargers.

Out of all of them, however, the Raiders, who spent from 1982 to 1994 playing in Los Angeles after departing from Oakland, are the most likely candidate to bring the NFL back to L.A.

Raiders owner Al Davis is immersed in a current legal battle with the city of Oakland over what he believes is a false-promise lease at the Oakland Coliseum. Davis, according to a number of people in the NFL, has told a lot of people his plan is to bring the Raiders back to L.A.

The first question, which cannot even begin to be answered until the current litigation is complete, is "When would they move back?" The second question is "Where will they play?" And the third question is "How will they be received?"

"Al Davis has told everyone who will listen that he'll move back to L.A.," one NFL insider said.

Make no mistake, the NFL wants badly to return to the potentially lucrative L.A. market.

Roger Goodell, an NFL executive vice president, said, "The Raiders have a lease in Oakland, as they recently stated, and continue to operate under it. On the other hand, that's a source of ongoing litigation."

The key words here are "on the other hand." It's clear Davis is unhappy about the fact that, despite being promised sellouts in Oakland upon his return, his luxury boxes are empty on game days and his stadium is only two-thirds full on Sundays.

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?

This is why people like Ed Roski and John Semcken are in business. Roski, the owner of the NHL's Kings and the new Staples Center in L.A., where the NBA's Lakers also play, is heading up the "New Coliseum Project" with his partner Semcken in an effort to bring NFL football back to L.A. in a newly revamped L.A. Coliseum that, according to Semcken, will cost about $400 million.

"We're confident any team that we get to move into the Coliseum would be the richest team in the league from stadium revenue," Semcken said. "At the Staples Center, we make so much money because this is such a big market with so many people, and we paid for it 100 percent privately."

This is where Semcken believes the Raiders' last foray into L.A. failed.

"I think it's clear that the NFL doesn't understand California," Semcken said. "They don't just have a problem in L.A. The 49ers can't get a stadium. There are problems in Oakland, and San Diego is not happy with its football stadium situation."

"California is a very unique place with regard to tax dollars," Semcken went on. "As a person who grew up in New York and lived in Chicago, Virginia, Florida and Texas, I can tell you that the tax payer protections in California are far in excess of anywhere else.

"If you tried to pass say a rental car tax, to pass that tax you have to get 66 and two-thirds percent of voters to vote it in. That's why we can't pass school bond taxes here. You can't get 66 percent of people to agree to anything. So you have to learn to do these deals without taxpayers' money. It's going to have to be something (the NFL) has to accept."

Asked why the Raiders didn't work the first time, Semcken said, "The timing wasn't right. In order for a deal like this to come through, there has to be a leader willing to take all the grief and stand up and demonstrate that it can be done. That's who Ed Roski is. When the Raiders were here, they were dealing with governmental entities. There wasn't a person like us between government and the team."

Asked about the polls that say 60 percent of the people in L.A. don't care about the NFL, Semcken offered this: "That's probably true in every city in America, 60 percent of people not caring about the NFL. But 40 percent of the people in L.A. in this market place is nearly five million people. That's 50 times the population of Green Bay.

"Everyone always focuses on the negatives because that's what sells papers."

Semcken, who openly admits his and Roski's interests and concerns are to lure an existing NFL team to L.A., puts their project in simple terms.

"We're going to create a turn-key deal that we can hand over to an owner that shows him he'll make tens of millions of dollars more at the L.A. Coliseum than he can make where he is now," Semcken said. "There likely won't be another (NFL) expansion in our business lifetime, so our focus is drawing an existing team here."

The Raiders?

"They would be received better than just about any other team in NFL, because they recently played here," said L.A.-based NFL agent Jerome Stanley, who grew up in the L.A. Coliseum neighborhood, went to games as a child and attended nearby USC. "They are going to have a stronger base here than anyone else in NFL, because they were the last NFL team to play in Los Angeles."

Asked about resentment L.A. might have over the Raiders' 1994 departure, Stanley said, "The business and political community has a clear and rightful resentment of Raider experience. I think the sports fan isn't into it that deeply. I think if the Raiders were here people would pay attention, fans would pay attention, consumers would pay attention."

"The Raiders should have stayed in the first place," Stanley continued. "They had the market to themselves once the Rams moved. They would have been better off. They're the closest team to the L.A. market, making the strongest noises about coming back."

Who's headed for Hollywood?

Here is a list of NFL teams who could relocate to Los Angeles: In New Orleans, Tom Benson's Saints play in a hulking old building and the short-term future in the wake of Mike Ditka's firing is bleak. Reportedly, Benson can escape his lease with a modest expenditure. Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills play in a small market to begin with, and when the team isn't in the process of going to the Super Bowl for four straight seasons, attendance suffers. If the aging Wilson passes on anytime soon, watch for the team to change hands and its address. The Minnesota Vikings have been unhappy with their building arrangements for years. One of these days, owner Red McCombs is going to stop crying wolf and pull the plug. Davis has been telling anyone who will listen that he's coming back to Los Angeles. Perhaps. One thing is certain: the San Francisco Bay Area cannot sustain two franchises. If he sold a minority share of the team to a local L.A. businessman, a realistic scenario, it would be a much more palatable move. Bill Bidwill has already done this once before. The Arizona Cardinals, nee St. Louis Cardinals, relocated in the desert and gouged fans with the league's highest prices. And what did they get for their money? Two playoff games, none of them at Sun Devil Stadium. If the upcoming stadium referendum fails, Bidwill could bail again. The San Francisco 49ers, a franchise in freefall, are having stadium problems. If the Raiders don't beat them to it, they could be headed South. The San Diego Chargers got some major improvements at Qualcomm Stadium and a Super Bowl, too, but they, too, have stadium issues. — Greg Garber

Can the NFL work in L.A. again?

"It's too big and lucrative a market for the NFL to forever not be here," Stanley reasoned. "I think there's a myth that the past NFL teams in L.A. were failures. They were not failures. The L.A Rams, when they played in the Coliseum, were a success and they were a success in the early years in Anaheim. The Raiders, when they moved and were winning and their focus was on winning and contributing to the comminity, were a success.

"This is a very sophisticated market. It requires a winning team and a consistent focus from the organization. It requires an operator-essential team. The operator has got to do a good job of running the team. With most other NFL franchises, the operator does not have to do a good job and they can still be successful."

Asked about the myth that the people of L.A. don't care, Stanley deemed it "not true."

"The people in L.A. would support a good NFL product here," he said. "The people in L.A. are not going to waste their time on a product that's not first-rate. They will lose interest in consistent losers. All you have to do is look at basketball, for example. They support in overwhelming numbers the Lakers, and they stay away from the Clippers. That's all you need to know about the L.A. sports market.

"Without a doubt, not just any team can move to L.A. and change their name to the L.A. whatever-the-name-is and succeed. The L.A. Cardinals, for example, would struggle, especially early on because of a lack of acceptance from the hardcore sports fans here. They wouldn't really jump in."

Semcken estimated that it would take about two years to rebuild the L.A. Coliseum and another year to get ready for a new team by building practice facilities and offices, etc. His hope is to get a team as soon as possible and put it in the Rose Bowl for a couple years while the Coliseum is rebuilt.

A general adaptation of the NFL's rule on teams moving has to do with the particular team having a legal reason to leave, such as an expired lease or buyout.

According to some industry sources in the know, the Saints have the easiest lease situation in terms of their ability to leave. Buffalo's lease expires in four years. Minnesota has a buyout option, though it's complicated. Arizona, according to sources, has no lease at all and could leave immediately.

And then there are the Raiders and Davis, who as usual, are in litigation.

It's believed that the Raiders' lease in Oakland carries them through the 2010 season. Davis is claiming fraud, saying when he moved the team back to Oakland he was promised sellouts. The case is due to go to trial sometime in the summer.

Another interesting twist here is Davis believes the terms of the court case that took place and allowed the Raiders to move to L.A. guaranteed them the rights to L.A., meaning if any relocated team there would have to pay him the rights that he said he paid.

The most compelling part about Davis is that the money isn't what drives him most. Winning does. As a long-time observer of Davis' said of him: "Business is important to Al, but only when it furthers his ability to win. That's all he cares about, whether he wins in Oakland or L.A."

Even when the Raiders went to L.A., Davis has always lived in Oakland. Those who know him say his heart is in Oakland, but he's not going to "let the financial part of it get in the way."

Back in '81, by winning in court, Davis helped create an era of "franchise free agency," moving the Raiders to Los Angeles in '82 despite league opposition in what he called "a diabolical plot."

Later, of course, other owners would follow suit and move their teams -- among them some of the very same ones who opposed his relocation in the first place.

"It was events forcing us to act -- events making men rather than men making events," Davis told the Oakland Tribune in a recent rare interview. "It's all changed now. Now they (the NFL) go in and threaten the city in a subtle way. He (commissioner Paul Tagliabue) wants to leave a legacy of new stadiums."

	“	No one wants to migrate back and forth and take families and uproot them. Within our organization right now we might have a 50-50 (split) as to who would like to stay and who would like to go. But I didn't bring them back for this turmoil. It's not fair to them. They came back. They thought it was euphoria. They thought it was going to be great. ”
		— Al Davis, Raiders owner

Author Hunter S. Thompson once wrote of Davis, "He makes Darth Vader look like a punk."

Of Davis' move back to Oakland, he said, "I didn't come back not to enjoy it, not to put my strength, my vitality into it. I came back and what I wanted to do was reap the rewards of the Raiders in victory. I came back to our home base, where we were born and where we were nurtured, and I wasn't afraid to do it.

"No one wants to migrate back and forth and take families and uproot them. Within our organization right now we might have a 50-50 (split) as to who would like to stay and who would like to go. But I didn't bring them back for this turmoil. It's not fair to them. They came back. They thought it was euphoria. They thought it was going to be great.

"Instead, what is it? It's a damn battle every day we're in court. Who sued whom first? They (Oakland) sued us. Why did they sue us? I still don't understand why they sued us."

Further making you wonder if his goal isn't to relocate to L.A., Davis said he "wouldn't have come back" to Oakland had he known the situation would be what it's been -- with few PSLs selling and gaping groups of empty seats on home-game Sundays.

"Everybody says, 'Al is such a smart guy, why didn't he get it in writing?' " Davis said. "But other people say 'Al is a smart guy, he wouldn't have come back unless he was assured it was sold out?' I trusted those people. God. They've said it on tape. We have them on tape in meetings."

At age 70, Davis clearly has been disturbed that his team has missed the playoffs six years in a row entering 2000. The failure, after such past success, has left him wondering.

"Sometimes you have to step back and say 'Is time catching up to your vision?' " Davis pondered.

Other questions he's undoubtedly pondering are these: Is it time to move back to L.A., and if the move is made again, will it help his franchise "just win baby?"

L.A. is waiting.