Phoenix Pulls Off an Upset : Pro football: NFL owners decide to put the 1993 Super Bowl in the Valley of the Sun, rather than in the Rose Bowl.

On the fifth ballot, the NFL’s club owners voted the 1993 Super Bowl to Phoenix Tuesday in an upset over the Pasadena Rose Bowl.

San Diego, which came in third, was knocked out in an early round.

The final score was withheld by the vote counter, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

“We’ll welcome you all to the Valley of the Sun,” a Phoenix organizer, Bill Shover, told a crowd of NFL executives and cheering well-wishers as well as crushed opponents, including members of the Los Angeles and San Diego delegations.

The 1991 and 1992 Super Bowls had been awarded earlier to Tampa and Minneapolis, respectively.

In a break with NFL tradition, the site committee, headed by Eagle owner Norman Braman of Philadelphia, has declined to enter a recommendation in either of the last two years.

“We live in a democracy,” Braman said. “We don’t have to tell the people how to vote.”

Thus in the Super Bowl ballot race, upsets are becoming the rule. Seattle was favored over Minneapolis a year ago for Super Bowl XXVI. And the Los Angeles area, which consolidated strongly behind a Rose Bowl bid in this year’s campaigning, was an even bigger favorite over Phoenix.

Even San Diego was favored over Phoenix.

The owners didn’t disclose their reasons for preferring Sun Devil Stadium for Super Bowl XXVII. But first speculation centered on two areas:

--Some owners said they were sending a signal to Los Angeles that they won’t vote the Super Bowl to a place that can’t hang on to an NFL team. The Raiders announced Monday that they are leaving.

--Other owners said that one of their own, Bill Bidwill, who operates the Phoenix Cardinals, needs help. And they’re glad to give it.

“Billy worked hard to get this Super Bowl,” said Braman.

More than that, Bidwill’s team regularly plays in Sun Devil Stadium. By contrast, the Rose Bowl isn’t an NFL home.

“There’s no link of any kind between the Rose Bowl and any NFL club,” said the head of the Los Angeles delegation, David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, which tries to bring major sporting events to the Los Angeles-Orange County area. “I think the key was that (Bidwill) was so prominently identified with the Phoenix bid.”

In other words, in an appeal to the NFL’s 28 owners, he said, the edge figures to belong to one of the 28.

Simon and the other leaders of the Los Angeles group--the mayors of Los Angeles and Pasadena, Tom Bradley and Bill Thomson--made an “extremely effective case (for the Rose Bowl),” Braman said.

“In fact, this was a unique year,” he added. “All three cities made very strong presentations. This (Super Bowl) wasn’t awarded on something that someone did or didn’t do.”

Alex Spanos, owner of the Chargers, said that after San Diego lost out, he voted for Phoenix, following a personal appeal from Bidwill.

Simon said it’s unlikely that Los Angeles will be among the bidders next time. The Super Bowl presentation process, which costs upward of $100,000, is too expensive, he said.