When the NFL was scouting out potential football venues for a then-theoretical team to use while a new stadium was being built, the Rose Bowl Operating Company didn't even respond to inquiries from the league. Now, it seems like Rose Bowl officials might be on the verge of eliminating the possibility of the venue ever hosting an NFL game.

Pasadena Now reports that the Rose Bowl officials recommended to Pasadena's City Council that a section of city code that would have permitted as many as 13 NFL games in a year to be held at the stadium "be completed deleted at the conclusion of next year’s first Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival."

The Rose Bowl has been going back and forth about hosting games since professional football left LA in 1995. Most recently, Rose Bowl officials seemed miffed that they'd been just one of several venues that were considered to temporarily host a Los Angeles NFL team while a new stadium was under construction. "[I]f the NFL was serious, they would not be asking the city of Pasadena — a city of our stature — to send a proposal, they would be negotiating with the Rose Bowl directly," a councilmember said at the time.

Residents of the ritzy neighborhood surrounding the Rose Bowl seem elated that NFL could be off the table for good. They never wanted to deal with the traffic and other side effects of massive football games in their neighborhood; in 2013, some neighbors even sued to keep the Rose Bowl from leasing to the NFL. (They didn't win.)

Arroyo Seco residents are focusing now on bracing for the upcoming Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival, a multi-day festival that will begin in the summer of 2017 and that's been a few years in the making.