For anyone running a professional sports league, this sure sounds like a good reason to take way longer than necessary to help the nation’s second biggest market reclaim a team (or two).

The observation comes courtesy of brand new Forbes contributors Henry DeVries and Tom Searcy. DeVries is assistant dean of continuing education at UCSD ; Searcy, a sales strategy expert based in Indianapolis. Together, they have also co-authored the upcoming book How to Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett: Lessons from the World’s Greatest Dealmaker. They write:

Since the NFL made an end run out of Southern California, 28 of the league’s 32 franchises have built new stadiums or renovated old ones at a total cost of $10 billion. Taxpayers covered $6 billion of that total… The threat of moving a franchise has gotten taxpayers to pay 60 percent of the tab for new and renovated stadiums in the last 18 years.

It’s the ultimate game of chicken, with Roger Goodell maybe figuring he can now finally live with the idea of four non-taxpayer renovated stadiums. Or perhaps he is planning to make sure that the team moved to LA is from one of those remaining four, lesser arenas. Read the full blog item here.