Tampa Awarded Super Bowl XXV : Florida City Beats Out San Diego; L.A. Isn’t Even Close

Tampa edged San Diego in a hard fight at the National Football League owners meeting Wednesday and will be the site of Super Bowl XXV in January, 1991.

Voting went to the sixth ballot before Tampa won out, Wellington Mara, president of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, said afterward.

The two L.A. area entries, the Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium, were both eliminated on the first ballot without the sound of a discouraging word.

“Nobody said anything bad about (them or) any city,” Commissioner Pete Rozelle said. “The comments (at the meeting) were all upbeat.”

Clearly, the delegates had already made up their minds about Los Angeles, which they used to love, but no longer even like.

They had made up their minds about Tampa, too. A majority of the owners favored the Florida city going in. But on the early ballots, under NFL rules, 21 votes for Tampa were required.

Though it never had that many, it always had 15--the requirement on the sixth ballot.

Mara, who doubles as president of the National Football Conference, and Lamar Hunt, president of the American Football Conference and the Kansas City Chiefs, ran the election for Rozelle, and counted the votes.

Neither announced the result of any ballot.

“All I have to say is that we’re flattered by the interest (shown) by all the cities,” Hunt said.

Miami alone proved competitive with Tampa and San Diego, surviving through five ballots.

Few owners or club executives wished to explain why they voted against the Coliseum.

Of those who commented, the most outspoken was Tex Schramm, president of the Dallas Cowboys, who considers Omaha more suitable than Los Angeles for Super Bowl games.

Schramm said he was turned off by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and the Coliseum Commission.

“Your mayor didn’t support the (Pasadena) Super Bowl last winter,” Schramm charged. “He said a Super Bowl game in Pasadena has nothing to do with L.A. So, now, we’ll have nothing to do with him.”

Also, the Coliseum Commission angered Schramm and the rest of the NFL’s leaders when it joined the Raiders in a successful antitrust suit against the league several years ago.

A federal court has ordered the 27 other NFL owners to give the Coliseum $21 million--plus costs and continuing interest payments--for rent lost when the Big 27 conspired to keep the Raiders out of Los Angeles in the early 1980s.

The price of the league’s fight against the Coliseum--including fees for NFL lawyers--comes to just under $1 million for each club.

Several owners said that Los Angeles’ bid for Super Bowl XXV was also harmed by the lack of luxury suites at the Coliseum.

The Raiders began suite construction earlier this year but were stopped by a Coliseum cease and desist order. The Coliseum Commission wanted the Raiders to post a completion bond.

Suite construction workers have been idled ever since by the commission’s battle against the Raiders.

John McVay, general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, said the luxury suite situation was a factor in Los Angeles’ defeat.

“Of the five cities (nominally) in the running for Super Bowl XXV, Los Angeles was the only one without those (suites),” McVay said.

“For a game like this, the owners would rather sit there than in the stands--and so would the (NFL’s) most important television sponsors.”

According to Hunt, Los Angeles might have won the 25th Super Bowl if not for the controversy there.

“It would have been a lot of fun to go back to the place where it all started (in 1967),” Hunt said.

It wasn’t to be.

As the owners’ meeting opened, they listened to Rozelle’s plea for more minority hiring.

“I reminded them that we’ve made progress but that there’s more to be done,” the commissioner said.

What progress?

“There were 14 black assistant coaches on (NFL) staffs in 1980,” Rozelle said. “This year, there’ll be 40.”

When will an NFL team hire a black head coach?

“When (some) individual owner feels he has a solid candidate that will win for him,” Rozelle replied. “(As commissioner) I can’t very well say: Hire (this black man). But I’d like to see one as soon as possible.”