SAN FRANCISCO

After four decades of failed efforts to bring the NFL to Toronto, you couldn’t blame anyone for thinking it’ll never, ever happen.

And it might not.

But there is a pathway few talk about, which doesn’t involve Canadian businessmen spending literally billions to obtain and relocate a team to north of Lake Ontario.

And if the NFL were to dangle a certain carrot at the end of that path, it might actually make sense for most parties. Even our country’s notoriously pro-sports-funding averse governments.

The carrot? A Super Bowl in Toronto.

As it is, Toronto is not on the NFL’s short-range radar. Too many vital Los Angeles dominoes must fall by 2019. After that, who knows.

In part based on interviews with various principals, owners and insiders alike on both sides of the border, there’s a little-discussed pathway that does not require one of Canada’s few billionaires to liquidate far too much of his family’s fortune in (a) buying an NFL team for upwards of $1.5 billion, (b) paying the league hundreds of millions in a relocation fee and (c) building a new stadium somewhere in the Toronto area for closer to $2 billion than $1 billion.

Who could afford all that? Or want to?

Indeed, that’s no longer a viable lens through which to view all this.

First, understand that expansion is not an option. No NFL owner for years has expressed a desire to expand their billionaires’ club beyond 32. Eight divisions of four teams seems right to everybody.

The NFL’s only sensible pathway to Toronto -- in my opinion (which no one connected even at arm’s length to the NFL has endorsed or even suggested, I should make clear) -- is the following.

A multi-billionaire owner of a current NFL team in a small market -- tired of squeezing out dimes -- envisions a steady flow of dollars in Toronto. Even if those dollars are discounted Loonies, they’re better than dimes.

The Rogers Centre (nee SkyDome) is not a worthy NFL stadium for the long-term, so a new one would have to be built.

That’s where the local moneymen come into the picture. A Toronto billionaire or two could help pay for the stadium in exchange for a chunk of minority ownership.

That’s essentially the deal Edward Rogers and his family, plus MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum, had with rocker Jon Bon Jovi in their failed bid two years ago to buy the Buffalo Bills.

Both Canadians could comfortably afford to both buy a slice of the relocating billionaire’s team, and help pay for the privately financed stadium.

Third-party NFL stadium construction and ownership, by the way, is disallowed. Only governments or owners may build stadiums. Rogers and Tanenbaum thus would have to buy into the team to get a cut from the stadium.

This alternate Toronto scenario begs many questions.

Is Toronto even worthy?

Now that LA has at least one team after a 21-season absence, “T.O.” is now by far the largest market in either the U.S. or Canada without a club, with a greater-area population of six million and millions more on the periphery. North of Mexico, only LA and the Big Apple boast larger metropolitan markets.

And if it ever comes down to Toronto vs. London, as is often speculated, know that logistical and common-sense hurdles might never make feasible the romantic idea of relocating an NFL team some day to England, whereas Toronto is a shorter flight from New York City than 24 NFL cities.

Everyone knows there are significant hurdles to clear in order to move an NFL team north of the border. Logistical, political and financial. All are formidable.

But in the above pathway, none may be insurmountable. See Kroenke, Stan. And Angeles, Los.

Kroenke (whose St. Louis Rams three weeks ago became the Los Angeles Rams) is not the NFL’s only cash-flush multi-billionaire. There are several. By next decade the number might grow.

Maybe the biggest hurdle for Toronto is the NFL would want governments to at least be non-antagonistic. If left-leaning parties should remain in power federally, provincially and municipally into next decade, would any lift a finger to entice NFL immigration, or contribute anything to the cause?

Don’t hold your breath, you’re probably thinking.

Indeed, if the Toronto Argos of the CFL could not tug so much as $10 million from the Harper Conservatives a couple of years ago, just to expand bare-bones BMO Field and its bum-numbing bleachers to accommodate a mere 10,000 more sore bums, why should anyone expect Liberals either federally or provincially to do anything for an NFL team?

That’s a legit concern.

One thing, however, might allay it -- and change the whole perceived evil-empire-to-Toronto dynamic: the prospect of a Toronto Super Bowl.

With this season’s golden-anniversary game now less than a week away -- at Levi’s Stadium, 70 km south of here in Santa Clara -- the idea of a Super Bowl being staged north of the border could be the key catalyst in swaying public opinion, and thus enabling at least modest government endorsement.

A Super Bowl in Toronto would be the city’s greatest ever tourism advertisement.

The NFL now rewards teams in large enough markets that build glittery new stadiums with a future Super Bowl -- or two. No matter how snowy their winters get. See Detroit. See New York. See Minneapolis.

As long as you’ve got 30,000 available hotel rooms -- and Toronto easily does -- you’re mostly good to go. Sources don’t know of any reason Toronto would not qualify for a Super Bowl, once it had a team and new stadium commensurate with its market size.

Build it, and you’ve got to think a Super Bowl would come.

But even if private money -- beyond the league’s usual $200-million loan -- would entirely finance a new NFL stadium in Toronto, is there enough public desire in Toronto to support an NFL team afterward, Super Bowl or no Super Bowl?

Of course there is.

Many in Canada continue to point to the abject failure of the Bills-in-Toronto series (2008-13) as proof Toronto is not an NFL city. Wrong. All that proved is (1) Western New Yorkers boycotted the series en masse, for fear of underwriting the franchise’s eventual relocation to T.O., and (2) Toronto is not a Buffalo Bills city, especially when the Bills suck.

What Toronto is, is an NFL city. Just as Canada is an NFL country. From Victoria to St. John’s, you could sit at any sports bar, or stand outside any arena dressing room or on any kids soccer sideline, and hear more intelligent opinions on whether Peyton Manning’s arm is shot, than on whether the Blue Jays should have done more to re-sign David Price, or on whether Steph can eclipse Kobe, LeBron or even Michael.

Want hard facts? Try these.

Recent TV ratings suggest the NFL might be at least as popular in Canada as it is in the States, on a per-capita basis. Last year’s Super Bowl was viewed by 55% of all Canadians (19.3 million unique viewers, according to CTV, in a country of 35.1 million), whereas 51% of all Americans (161.3 million unique viewers, of 316.1 million) watched the game on NBC, according to statistics released by the NFL.

Those are staggering north-of-the-border numbers. And they’re rising. CTV two weeks ago reported record domestic TV audiences for the NFL’s divisional-round playoff games; 42% of Canadians watched at least part of one game.

And don’t discount this. Toronto aches to be a big-time player on the world’s sporting stage. Can’t get an Olympics? Then we’ll rock the Pan-Ams like no host country ever has.

Remember when SkyDome opened in 1989? The capped cavern is a punch-line now, but for a few years it was regarded as one of the wonders of the sporting world. Monstrous. Glamorous. And an enormous source of civic pride for a brief time.

Only after those Blue Jays World Series wins did it go from cool to toxic faster than Hanna Montana-themed prizes at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

SkyDome’s original buzzworthiness is worth mentioning, too, because that’s exactly what it would take to woo the NFL -- another in-your-face, ostentatious stadium worthy of Toronto’s size, ego, ambition and -- probably most important in the league’s eyes -- revenue-generating potential.

It doesn’t have to be like Kroenke’s latest Taj Mahal of sports stadiums. It’s clear now that NFL owners last month felt a grandiose stadium vision for LA was commensurate with that market. Much more modest stadiums are being built in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Atlanta.

It’s reasonable to presume the NFL would want a stadium vision for Toronto closer to St. Kroenke’s than St. Paul’s.

How could governments contribute?

Perhaps by donating land for the stadium, or selling it on the cheap -- with the quid pro quo that the team’s new cross-border franchise ownership would, say, commit funding to low-cost housing somewhere nearby -- a Canadian development tradition.

All of this would make perfect sense on the massive fed-owned tract of land located smack-dab in the centre of Toronto, Downsview Park. Nearly half a million Torontonians jammed a small portion of it in 2003 to watch the Stones and AC/DC headline an unforgettable outdoor show. The place cleared quickly thanks to the confluence of highway (401, Allen Expressway) and transit (buses and subways) options.

Finally, does the NFL even want to come to Toronto?

I spoke to several of the league’s most powerful owners at last year’s annual league meeting. Each said yes.

Bills co-owner Terry Pegula told Postmedia he not only would have no issue if Toronto got its own NFL franchise some day, he said the league specifically sought such approval before they cleared him to buy the Buffalo club.

Commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed as much to Postmedia last March: “Terry is exactly right … Toronto is an important market, but all of Canada is.”

I subsequently interviewed three of the NFL’s most prominent owners, and all said it’s not whether the league would like to have a team in Toronto. Rather, it’s how.

“I know everybody is interested in that market,” said Houston Texans owner Bob McNair, chair of the NFL’s finance committee.

On background, multiple sources in 2014 said a handful of NFL owners -- no matter what polite things they might have said publicly about the Bills staying put -- wished to see the team relocate to Toronto, so all could get a slice of Toronto’s greater perceived revenues.

That jibes with what New York Giants owner John Mara admitted in May 2014 -- that “most,” not all, owners preferred the Bills remained in Buffalo.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is probably the league’s foremost lover of big markets and gaudy stadiums. He is said to be one owner who wants Toronto to get a team sooner than later.

Bottom line, should the day come when the NFL wants to relocate a struggling club owned by a super-rich owner to Toronto, it could go a long way toward making it happen by following the pathway above -- and dangling that Super carrot.