Pasadena, San Diego ’93 Super Bowl Picks : NFL: Tagliabue tells two cities to make presentations to owners in March. The winner probably will replace Phoenix as site for the game.

Barring a last-minute rejection by NFL owners, the 1993 Super Bowl will be moved from Phoenix to Pasadena or San Diego, a spokesman for Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Monday.

Officials in Pasadena and San Diego have been notified to prepare presentations for the annual meeting of NFL owners, scheduled for Hawaii during the week of March 18, Joe Browne, an NFL vice president, said from his New York office.

Browne said it was Tagliabue’s wish “to allow Arizona to continue its long-time political debate over a Martin Luther King holiday without the Super Bowl as a factor.”

Tagliabue stunned Phoenix officials and much of the sporting world when he announced in November, after Arizona’s rejection of a paid state holiday in honor of the slain civil rights leader, that his preference would be to move Super Bowl XXVII to a new site.

Pasadena and San Diego were runners-up to Phoenix in bidding for the game. The Rose Bowl has played host to four Super Bowls, and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium was the site of Super Bowl XXII in 1988.

David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, which is trying to bring the game to the Rose Bowl, was “very optimistic” about Pasadena winning the competition.

Simon listed his group’s assets as:

--Having the collective backing of officials representing the Rose Bowl, the Los Angeles Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium, each of which had bid separately in prior years to serve as Super Bowl host.

“We now present a unified front,” Simon said.

--Pasadena finished second and San Diego third in the voting that awarded the game to Phoenix.

--San Diego last served as Super Bowl host in 1988, Pasadena in 1987.

--San Diego has served as Super Bowl host only once, but Pasadena and Los Angeles “have had six between them,” Simon said.

Jack McGrory, the assistant city manager of San Diego, said: “We’ll emphasize our experience in having been host to the ’88 game, which the league itself said was the most successful Super Bowl it’s ever had. In terms of competing with other cities, we don’t have as large a stadium”--73,300 seats for a Super Bowl, compared to the Rose Bowl’s 101,000--”but we offer a minimum of distance between the stadium, the hotels and other sites important to the week.

“The fact that we’ve done it before and done it well is a big point in our favor.”

But a major drawback may be San Diego’s own Martin Luther King controversy. The city renamed a major thoroughfare, Market Street, in honor of King, then changed the name back after local merchants complained. And an anticipated naming of the city’s new convention center in honor of King went awry when the San Diego Unified Port District opposed the idea.