Fowler Rips Reports on Socker Sale : MSL:Team owner says no decision has been made, nor has any deal been discussed.

Socker owner Ron Fowler denied newspaper reports, which surfaced last week in Tacoma and Sunday in Baltimore, that said he would sell the Major Soccer League franchise.

“Not only have I not made a decision on this,” Fowler said. “I have not even discussed it.”

The Baltimore Sun, citing a league source, reported that Fowler would sell the team.

The Sun also quoted Baltimore Blast owner Ed Hale saying, “Ron Fowler is one of the top owners in the league, and I will personally miss him.”

Hale went on to say that Fowler wants to sell because “his business takes him to Florida a lot and to Belgium often.”

Fowler says he is considering a business opportunity with the Miller Brewing Co. in Miami, but that he has not reached the point of making an offer.

As for Belgium, Fowler said he has been there twice in the past 18 months.

Contacted on Monday before Fowler denied the reports, Hale said he understood Fowler’s decision to sell “is a done deal. It’s kind of disappointing that an owner like Ron Fowler wants to get out.”

But Hale also said he thought San Diego newspapers had reported that Fowler will sell. No such reports have surfaced here.

Fowler said he hasn’t talked to Hale for a couple months.

“The whole thing is something I can’t explain,” Fowler said.

Fowler, however, did theorize that writers in Tacoma and Baltimore saw an article in the recent Soccer Digest that repeated a report from February that said Fowler would sell if a number of conditions were present.

“That’s all I can think of,” Fowler said. “But most of the information in that article was historical. There were things in it pulled from the files 18 months ago.”

Another point of confusion, Fowler said, could have been a statement he made in July when he indicated he would sell a minority share of the club.

On Monday he said he has not carried out that plan because some of the seven potential investors are friends and he does not want to let them buy into the club until he can “look them in the eye and tell them it would be a prudent investment.”

Socker Coach Ron Newman vouched for Fowler’s continued interest in the team.

“I sat by him on the plane coming back to San Diego (on Sunday as the team returned from a game in Kansas City),” Newman said. “And he was talking about long-term goals. Long-term league goals like whether we play too many games at this time of year, or whether we should move the season to the summer. He was talking about all different scenarios.”

Fowler, however, did say he is not ruling out selling the team in the future and that he “fully intends to look at things after the first of the year.”