No team in the country’s second-largest television market? It’s almost unfathomable.

But, unlike most pundits offering gloom-and-doom forecasts of NFL franchise movement, I’d like to suggest an entirely different slant on the events that have wrested two teams from one city in the past four months.

I suggest that history will view this as one of the most constructive events the league could have imagined.

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Of course, that’s little solace to the devoted Rams and Raiders fans still upset over Georgia Frontiere’s selling out to the highest bidders in St. Louis and Al Davis’ bolting back to his old digs in Oakland. But with the departures of these two teams, fans and politicians in cities facing similar situations will do what it takes to make sure it doesn’t happen to them.

In fact, the Los Angeles travesty has already worked wonders in two other NFL locales. Late last week, the city councils in Cincinnati and Cleveland took steps to ensure the Bengals and Browns would stay right where they are. Yes, even Bengals fans suffering through the dismal spate of losing seasons would miss Sunday afternoons at the stadium.

In Cincinnati, council members approved funding for a new stadium, part of a $540 million complex that would be shared with the Reds, by 2000. The vote came minutes before a deadline imposed by team Owner Mike Brown, who said he would head to Baltimore if he didn’t receive assurances of a new stadium.

How close was Brown to leaving?

It was a real deadline, he says. We had prepared a two-line statement saying, ‘Thank you for what you did. Goodbye.’ We were up against the wall.

You think the Los Angeles situation wasn’t a factor? Hey, Brown is no Davis or Frontiere, but this guy clearly was ready to emulate his Los Angeles counterpartseven though his roots are firmly embedded in Cincy.

On the same day, Cleveland took a major step in making sure the Dawg Pound remains an NFL end-zone fixture. The City Council approved a $154 million renovation for decrepit Cleveland Stadium, something team owner Art Modell has been adamant about in deciding the team’s long-term future.

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You think the Los Angeles factor wasn’t at work there? Get real.

Still, there is no guarantee some other owner won’t pull up stakes and start over somewhere else. Just ask the people of Baltimore, a deserving group of football fans that still has not recaptured a team after Bob Irsay slithered out of town in the dark 11 years ago.

In the meantime, let Los Angeles serve as an example to cities that are foolhardy enough to believe that an

see NFL, page 11