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Oh, and the business group making the proposal would only contribute a fraction of the money. Say, 20%. Maybe 10%. The rest would have to come from government and the public. But think of the jobs. To say nothing of the rebirth. And, of course, the pride. What citizen would not stand a little straighter at the prospect of a gleaming new multi-use artsplex where once there was just an old factory?

One imagines that, in this scenario, the business making the proposal would receive a swift kick in the figurative nuggets.

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San Diego has a lot going for it, is the point. And yet here is a headline from last week in a local paper: “San Diego reiterates that it is NFL-worthy.”

It has come to this. The NFL is trundling along on a rail toward having as many as three teams relocate to the Los Angeles market by next season, while Oakland, St. Louis and San Diego are left standing, like John Cusack with a boom box over their heads, begging their franchises not to leave them.

While Los Angeles going from zero to two or three teams in an instant would be remarkable on its own — the NFL has done OK for itself in the 20 years without a franchise in that market — the episode also serves as a stark example of the folly of public officials handing over taxpayer dollars to wealthy sports teams. San Diego and St. Louis each built stadiums with public money for their teams, and both cities have proposed billion-dollar new stadiums to continue hosting them, with about a third of the costs coming from public sources. And the teams still want to move, because there is more money to be made elsewhere.