San Diego Gets a Shot at 1993 Super Bowl : NFL: League has asked San Diego and Pasadena to make presentations for game that was taken from Phoenix.

Barring a last-minute rejection by National Football League owners, the 1993 Super Bowl will be moved from Phoenix to one of two cities--San Diego or Pasadena--a spokesman for Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Monday.

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

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

Asked to assess the chances of league owners overruling Tagliabue, Browne said, “I’d be speculating . . . so I won’t answer.”

But Bob Payne, chairman of the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force, said that was highly unlikely. Payne put his city’s chances at getting the game at 50-50.

Payne said the size of the city’s stadiums would be a factor--101,000 for Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, 73,700 for San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium during a Super Bowl--but that his city benefits from the short drive between major hotels, training sites and the stadium.

“When the Super Bowl is played in L.A., the teams practice in Orange County, the game is in the Rose Bowl, and the affluent people stay in Beverly Hills,” Payne said. “We don’t have the disadvantage of the sprawling megalopolis that is Los Angeles.”

But David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, which is lobbying the NFL 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 during 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.

Since removing the game from Phoenix has become a racial issue, because of the failure of Arizona voters to honor the memory of the slain civil rights leader, Los Angeles will undoubtedly benefit from the backing of Mayor Tom Bradley, sources said.

At the same time, San Diego may be hurt by its own Martin Luther King controversy. The city re-named a major thoroughfare, Market Street, in honor of King in 1986, then changed the name back after a 1987 election prompted by the complaints of area merchants.

An expected naming of the city’s new convention center in honor of King then went awry, when the San Diego Unified Port District nixed the idea. City officials observe the Martin Luther King holiday, but so far, no major building or structure has been named for King.

The Los Angeles area has had no such controversy, Simon said.

“We’ve already stated that, if Phoenix doesn’t deserve the Super Bowl because of this issue, well, certainly, San Diego doesn’t,” said Barbara Gartner, a spokeswoman for the Martin Luther King Tribute Coalition, which claims to have the backing of more than 50 civic and business groups in San Diego.

Gartner said her coalition had notified Tagliabue of “San Diego’s shortcomings” surrounding the King issue, which she described as “an insult to Dr. King’s memory. The city has taken no action to remedy the insult.”

NFL spokesman Browne refused to comment on San Diego’s controversy, or whether it would aid Pasadena, but said, “That’s something that will probably be discussed at the March meeting.”

Commissioner Tagliabue stunned Phoenix officials and much of the sporting world when he announced in November, after Arizona’s rejection of a state holiday in King’s memory, that his preference would be to move Super Bowl XXVII to a new site, free of political complications.

Since then, the NFL has been criticized for putting the Super Bowl and even the league itself at the forefront of a political brouhaha. Browne disputed those arguments Monday night.

“Actually, the reason the commissioner wants to move the game out of Phoenix is to free the NFL from the political controversy that was brewing long before the Arizonans sought to have the game played there,” he said.

Browne said the field of replacements has been narrowed to two only because San Diego and Pasadena were runners-up to Phoenix in bidding for the game, which is scheduled for January, 1993.

Jack McGrory, the assistant city manager of San Diego, said Monday he was optimistic about his city emerging as host of an event believed to represent a net-revenue boost of $200 million to the city in which it’s played.

San Diego has been named as host of the 1992 Baseball All-Star Game, and during the months leading up to Super Bowl XXVII, will play host to the America’s Cup sailing regatta. Just last week, the city suffered a setback when a Republican committee picked Houston--over San Diego--as probable host of the 1992 GOP Convention.

“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,” McGrory said. “The fact that we’ve done it before and done it well is a big point in our favor. I think our chances look good.”