In today's NFL, football would come first. The rest of LA sports get divided amongst the city (Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers), but a single football team would unite everybody. The Raiders were always Oakland's team, and the Rams played out in Anaheim in the years before they left town. A team in downtown LA would be ridiculously successful.
Hm, I disagree. Of course at this point, without the actual NFL team, it's a matter of conjecture either way, but the Lakers are really the end all-be all of Los Angeles athletic culture. They are the "team of the people". The Angels and the Clippers, though they have prominent fanbases, are a lot more marginal in L.A. proper than one would think. Also, as far as a football "uniting" Los Angeles... I don't really know. If the Rams were to return, I think the city would be ecstatic undoubtedly. But if the team sucks, whoever it is, this city would quickly turn their back on them and just focus on basketball again. Not to mention that L.A. is full of transplants who have come here with their own NFL allegiances (me and the Texans, for example). A lot of the people around here, and I mean a lot (definitely more than I would've ever guessed) don't even care about the NFL one bit. They claim it's because L.A. doesn't have a team, but I find it hard to believe that these people would just start caring one day because there's a stadium downtown (which, as a resident of the city, I fully hope comes to fruition as it would be a gigantic boon to the Downtown economy and future development of the area). It seems like a lot of people care more about USC/UCLA than the NFL. To think that the Lakers are going to have Kobe for a few more years and Dwight indefinitely... I think it would be difficult for a football team to outperform the Lakers in L.A. for the top-spot in attention. Despite what I've said, I do believe that the NFL would be largely successful, though, and L.A. really does need an NFL team. It's absurd that the second largest market in the country doesn't have a football team of all sports...
<iframe src='http://mlb.mlb.com/shared/video/embed/embed.html?content_id=24720873&width=400&height=224&property=mlb' width='400' height='224' frameborder='0'>Your browser does not support iframes.</iframe> If not, here's the link. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Mickey Storey left with contusions to the right jaw and right hand after comebacker. Sounds like it could have been worse.</p>— Zachary Levine (@zacharylevine) <a href="https://twitter.com/zacharylevine/status/246083059592613888" data-datetime="2012-09-13T03:09:08+00:00">September 13, 2012</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Mickey Storey has a contusion to right hand and right side of his jaw. Was hit by a line drive. <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Astros">#Astros</a></p>— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/status/246082937370603520" data-datetime="2012-09-13T03:08:38+00:00">September 13, 2012</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
