Which of course is precisely why N.F.L. owners threaten to move to Los Angeles. With Los Angeles just sitting there, un-footballed, it gives the 32 owners of N.F.L. franchises enormous leverage over the cities in which they play to extract goodies that few other capitalists would dare ask for — not just run-of-the-mill tax abatements, but egregious benefits like free rent, which of course means bigger profits for the wealthy men and women who own the teams. “The way to really make money is to privatize the revenues, and socialize the costs,” deMause says.

“The basic story is that all professional leagues try to have fewer teams than the number of locations that would like to have them,” says Roger Noll, a sports economist at Stanford University. “That is what monopolists do — contrive scarcity to drive up the price.” Los Angeles, he adds, “is perfect for this purpose, because the threat is so credible.” Indeed, during the first decade of this century, according to figures compiled by Judith Grant Long, an associate professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, states and counties spent at least $10.1 billion subsidizing sports facilities. A new football stadium with all the modern amenities costs around $1 billion.

It is easy enough to understand why N.F.L. owners would want to use the threat of moving to extract public subsidies — why pay for something yourself when you can get taxpayers to pick up the tab? Besides, $1 billion is a lot of money, even for billionaires. But why do cities go along with it? It can’t be because they expect some economic benefit to come from a new sports stadium; according to Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, “The academic literature says that there should be no expectation that a new arena will boost the local economy.”

It has much more to do with civic pride — the sense that your town is truly big-time. Plus no city wants to feel abandoned, the way Baltimore was in 1984 when the owner of the Colts, Bob Irsay, moved the team to Indianapolis in the middle of the night. This is especially true for cities like San Diego, which live in the shadows of bigger cities like Los Angeles. “It would be a shame if the Chargers left,” says my friend Herb Greenberg, a former CNBC reporter who lives in San Diego. “What would we be left with? A losing baseball team and great weather? That’s it?”

For years, the Chargers had a sweet deal with the city, which, among other things, guaranteed sellouts for 10 years — that is, if a game didn’t sell out, the city would pick up the difference. But since 2002, the Spanos family has been pressing the city to come up with a plan for a new arena.