USOC makes the call today

At the 11th hour, it all comes down to one hour.

The long-and-winding campaign between Chicago and Los Angeles for the U.S. bid city for the 2016 Summer Games will be decided here today by the 11-member U.S. Olympic Committee board of directors following presentations by the finalists and question-and-answer sessions.

Chicago is up first, and Los Angeles is second. The presentation portion for each group is scheduled to last 40 minutes with 20 minutes allowed for questions from the panel. The bid groups are limited to a 12-member delegation, six of them presenting.

Those set to present for Los Angeles are Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, bid chairman Barry Sanders, AEG’s Tim Leiweke, bid committee vice president Rhonda Brauer and Olympians Willie Banks and Peter Vidmar. The USOC’s decision is expected to be announced about 1 p.m. This could be the defining moment of a process that started in the summer of 2005 when Sanders had his first meeting on the Olympics with the newly minted mayor of Los Angeles who has fully thrown himself into the process. Now, nearly 21 months later, there appears to be no clear-cut favorite heading into the final day of this contest.

“It’s a cross between a major jury trial and an election campaign,” Sanders said. “An election campaign, you get this interim polling data. You get it daily and you watch yourself go up and down. But we don’t get any of that. It’s more like 11 people sitting there looking at us.”

Star power will be limited, by design. For those used to seeing the celebrity quotient increased at the last minute in these high-powered contests, that won’t be happening here. No Oprah or Michael Jordan jetting in for the last minute to speak on behalf of Chicago or even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for Los Angeles. The USOC, in effect, prevented that from happening when it asked the bid groups to limit its delegations to individuals who were involved in the respective site visits by a USOC evaluation commission.

There are other differences between this process and that at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) level.

The winner at this stage moves into an international phase with the final decision on the host city made by IOC voters in October 2009.

Here, media will not be allowed to view the proceedings, either in the meeting room or via close-circuit. Also, unlike at the IOC level, the vote here will not be released. Those familiar with the reasoning behind those decisions said they were made for the sake of competitiveness at the international level.

There are 27 votes up for grabs today. Though there are 11 members -- four also served on the evaluation commission -- not all are equal. The votes are weighted: The three board members who are also IOC members count for one vote each, and the other eight count for three each.

The Chicago and L.A. bid groups held rehearsals here Friday and took the chance to get in one last public relations plug. Villaraigosa showed that the L.A. bid will have one more significant card to play.

“As you know, we were able to secure a $250-million guarantee from the state, $250-million guarantee from the city,” he told reporters at a news conference here. “And, tomorrow during our presentation ... We’ll make further announcements regarding guarantees tomorrow.

“It’s something we’ve been working on. It’s very clearly a way to demonstrate the lengths we’ll go to ensure that these will be a very successful Games that will not [have] any costs associated with them that won’t otherwise be guaranteed.”

What has helped L.A. finish strongly has been the influence of AEG. Officials at the Home Depot Center announced late last month that should L.A. get the 2016 Games, its facility in Carson would expand with a 125-acre project for an investment between $50 million and $60 million. The biggest questions facing L.A. and Chicago haven’t changed.

What level of support, internationally, will L.A. receive in its attempt to host the Olympics for a third time? And is Chicago, having faced serious questions about its stadium and Olympic village financing, merely a new model of New York, which imploded shortly before the vote to award the 2012 Games?

Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this report.

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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* For today’s latest on the USOC’s selection between

Los Angeles and Chicago for 2016 U.S. Summer Olympic bid, visit latimes.com/sports.

* For the live announcement (approx. 1 p.m. PDT) visit wcsn.com