Southern California will be a prime spot for NFL training camps this year.
With the Costa Mesa City Council unanimously approving a deal with the Las Vegas Raiders, five teams will be holding their practices within a 105-mile radius in late July and early August. There hasn’t been a cluster of teams training in such close proximity since the late 1990s, when five teams trained in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Back then it was called the Cheese League. This summer, it might as well be the Beach League with the Chargers, Rams, Raiders, New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys all in the area.
The Raiders will be at the Jack Hammett Sports Complex, which hosted the Chargers from 2017 to 2023. The complex has two full-length football fields, room for bleachers and plenty of parking for fans compared to the Chargers’ headquarters, which was 2 miles away.
It is also a location new Raiders general manager Tom Telesco knows quite well after having served as Chargers GM from 2013 to 2023.
The Bolts will hold camp at their new facility in El Segundo, which they will move into next month after the end of offseason workouts.
The Saints will practice at UC Irvine, which hosted the Rams from 2016 to 2019 and 2021 to 2023. The Saints needed a new location during construction of a new cafeteria at the team complex.
New Orleans is no stranger to preseason stints in SoCal since the Saints have participated in joint workouts with the Chargers five times in the past seven years.
That is unlikely to happen this year since the teams will meet in the regular season.
The Rams will be holding training camp in Southern California but have not made an announcement yet on the exact location. Offseason workouts are taking place at California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks, where their facility has been since 2016, but they are moving to Woodland Hills at some point this year.
Like Thousand Oaks, temporary facilities will be in place while the team finalizes plans on a permanent facility in Woodland Hills, where owner Stan Kroenke bought 100 acres last year.
With the exception of the 2020 pandemic year, the Cowboys have held a portion of their camp in Oxnard since 2012. They also trained in Oxnard six times between 2001 and 2010.
None of the five teams have announced their joint workout plans. That usually doesn’t happen until after the preseason schedule comes out. That is expected to happen next Wednesday, when the NFL also is slated to release the regular-season schedule.
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