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Raiders camp in Costa Mesa would make them the fifth NFL team to train in SoCal

Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times on

Published in Football

LOS ANGELES — The Rams, Chargers and Dallas Cowboys are here every summer, and now the New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders are on their way.

Southern California has become to NFL training camps what Arizona and Florida are to MLB's spring training.

The Saints plan to hold training camp at UC Irvine this summer, and the Raiders are putting the finishing touches on a deal to move their camp to Costa Mesa. Both are one-year agreements.

There is no other place in the country with such a cluster of training camps, especially notable considering the Los Angeles market went without an NFL team from 1995 through 2015.

The proximity makes it more convenient for teams to hold joint practices, increasingly common in recent years.

"It's not a surprise, given the weather, the number of players from here and the overall experience that they would want to come back and hold training camp," said Kevin Demoff, chief operating officer of the Rams. "There are not many better places to practice in the summer, or in any time of the year, than Southern California."

 

The latest round of musical sites was set in motion by the Rams and Chargers moving forward on their permanent facilities.

The Costa Mesa site became available because the Chargers are moving to their new practice facility in El Segundo, where they will hold training camp.

"Now the fields are in, they're mowing, we've got growing going," said Fred Maas, Chargers chief of staff. "Believe it or not, when we broke ground, we had opening scheduled for June 8, and we're going to get the keys on June 8.

"I think the day we open, we are going to be the standard-bearer for the NFL."

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