NFL Owners Set to Decide Super Bowl Site : Football: San Diego and Pasadena vie for 1993 game if decision is made to drop Phoenix.

The owners of the 28 National Football League teams began gathering Sunday in a lush tropical setting to discuss a variety of pressing issues, ranging from instant replay to expansion to whether San Diego or Los Angeles should be host of the 1993 Super Bowl.

Los Angeles figured to have an edge in convincing the NFL that it was more deserving of the game--thought to be worth $200 million to the host city’s economy--because, unlike San Diego, it comes in free of controversy concerning a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has recommended that Super Bowl XXVII, scheduled for January, 1993, in Tempe, Ariz., be removed from that city because of the failure of Arizona voters last November to adopt a state holiday in honor of the slain civil rights leader.

The NFL’s Site Selection Committee has announced that only San Diego and Los Angeles--specifically, Pasadena’s Rose Bowl--are being considered as replacement sites. In fact, league owners still have the option of overruling Tagliabue and keeping the game in Arizona, which isn’t considered likely. The NFL plans to announce its decision Tuesday.

It chose as its meeting place the opulent Hyatt Regency Waikoloa, which is surrounded by miles and miles of desolate wilderness turned black by numerous volcanic eruptions during the 19th Century.

Just to make sure their cities are well-represented, the San Diego delegation is led by Mayor Maureen O’Connor, while the Los Angeles entourage is headed by Mayor Tom Bradley.

And still, there is a third group here from Phoenix, as the NFL resumes a contest that had been won seemingly, though conditionally, by Arizona last spring.

The condition was support for an annual state holiday for Dr. King.

Unlike Arizona, San Diego, Los Angeles-- and California--observe holidays in honor of King, but rumblings of the controversy continue to echo in San Diego.

In 1986, the city re-named Market Street Martin Luther King Way, then changed the name back a year later, after area merchants succeeded in putting the issue on a referendum which voters approved. In 1989, an expected naming of the new bayfront convention center in honor of King went awry, when the San Diego Unified Port District nixed the idea.

Just recently, the City Council voted to name Marina Linear Park, the narrow strip of land in front of the Convention Center, after King. Black leaders say it is insufficient, and some in San Diego have called openly for the NFL to award Super Bowl XXVII to Pasadena on principle alone.

But that was before March 3 and the vicious beating of a black man by Los Angeles police officers, whose actions were taped by a private citizen’s home video camera and later shown on television around the world.

Civic leaders in San Diego say privately that the incident in no way helps the Los Angeles Sports Council, the group trying to bring the Super Bowl to Pasadena, and that any political edge L.A. might have had has been snuffed out by an ugly incident with national ramifications.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson joined dozens of other civil rights leaders on Thursday in calling for the resignation of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates.

“When league owners go into the meeting room in Kona (Hawaii), all will have seen the tape of the L.A. police beating, but, chances are, not a soul will know about any problems San Diego has had over a Martin Luther King memorial,” said one local official, who asked not to be quoted by name.

“I think it would be unwise of Los Angeles to mention any perceived advantage it might have in regard to the Martin Luther King issue,” said Bob Payne, chairman of the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force.

“If people start throwing rocks at San Diego, then you’ve got to take a look at the record of other cities,” said City Manager Jack McGrory, who helped put together San Diego’s Super Bowl bid.

“The situation in L.A. has had considerable impact all over this nation,” said City Councilman Wes Pratt, who is here on behalf of San Diego’s bid. “The (U.S.) Department of Justice is considering a nationwide review of police-brutality complaints, merely as a result of that incident.

“Everyone in the United States knows what happened in Los Angeles, and it’s not something that L.A. can be proud of, nor can it possibly benefit them, in its quest for the Super Bowl.”

NFL Vice President Joe Browne, commenting on the Los Angeles incident, said: “It is obviously very unfortunate, but no one can speculate as to its effect on (28) voters.”

Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and president of the American Football Conference, made a distinction between the Phoenix and Los Angeles controversies:

“(The beating) was distasteful in the extreme. But you can’t condemn the entire city for the actions of a senseless few--any more than you can condemn Dallas for the senseless assassination of President Kennedy.”

Such racial and political concerns are germane to where a 60-minute football game will be played, only because the NFL has chosen to make it that way by threatening to remove the Super Bowl from one city, over what the commissioner deems racial and political shortcomings.

Therefore, the thinking goes, the human rights and racial-equality profile of any replacement city is bound to be looked at closely.

David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, said the L.A. police beating--and the call for Gates’ resignation by a multitude of black leaders--is potentially a problem, but one that he and his colleagues can probably overcome.

Simon said that, if recent events neutralize L.A.’s pre-March 3 political advantage and force league owners to consider only the merits of each city’s bid, “I would be thrilled. I feel great about our bid.”

Several owners said the police beating has neutralized the L.A. advantage and made the process more traditional.

“We’ll vote . . . on merits,” said Chiefs owner Hunt. “Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix--all three are attractive cities.”

Mike McCaskey, president of the Chicago Bears, said: “My feeling is that (because) the Super Bowl is a unique and special event, the only real consideration will be how it did last time in L.A. and San Diego and how it (projects next) time.”

San Diego officials are quick to concede that L.A. owns the biggest possible advantage--the Rose Bowl has a capacity of 101,000, contrasted with the 73,300 of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium for a Super Bowl. That adds up to about a $4.5 million differential to the league.

As Payne, San Diego’s Super Bowl representative, said, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to multiply 30,000 extra seats at $150 a seat and figure out that advantage.”

Payne sees San Diego’s strengths as a combination of how it handled Super Bowl XXII in 1988 and the rare proximity it offers between hotels, training sites and the stadium itself--a decided advantage over the sprawling megalopolis of Los Angeles.

“San Diego is a community where the NFL can come in and dominate in a positive way,” Payne said. “It’s the type of place where the spirit of the Super Bowl can be all-encompassing. Those are factual claims and not ones that the second-largest city in the country can possibly match.”

Simon notes that Los Angeles finished second to Phoenix--San Diego was third--in bidding for the 1993 game in March of last year. He said that Pasadena last played host to a Super Bowl in 1987, San Diego a year later.

He conceded that San Diego gets high marks for its performance in 1988 but that, in terms of experience, “the Super Bowl has been played in either Los Angeles or Pasadena a total of six times.”

Each city is offering incentive packages, meaning such items as hotel rooms and in-town transportation for competing teams and various dignitaries will be provided for free. San Diego has offered free use of the Convention Center for the commissioner’s gala party, two nights before the game.

Local black leaders and other activists have been critical of what they call the “freebie” package, saying it’s nothing less than welfare for the rich. Members of San Diego’s Super Bowl task force appear to be sensitive to such criticisms and have recently lobbied the black community aggressively, hence Councilman Pratt’s involvement.

In regard to the King issue, San Diego is promising to make Super Bowl XXVII a showcase for minority-owned businesses. Pratt flew to New York last month to lobby the NFL on behalf of San Diego, noting that minority-owned businesses would receive at least 20% of construction contracts, 10% of vendor contracts and 12% of consulting fees.

Peg Nugent of the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force said that women-owned businesses would receive similar shares--7% for construction, 10% for vendors and 3% for consulting. Nugent said the city has submitted as part of its bid a multiethnic cultural “celebration” in Balboa Park the day before the game.

Greg Akili, the head of San Diego’s African-American Organizing Project, calls such efforts “tokenism” and is here planning to protest the city’s bid.

“If this is a matter of principle, and we believe it is, then the NFL should continue to live up to principle and go to Pasadena,” Akili said. “San Diego has demonstrated through its public and institutional actions that the memory and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King have not been respected.”

Asked about the L.A. police controversy, Akili said: “We are not suggesting that any city in America is less racist than any other city. We think what happened on March 3 was despicable, and that Daryl Gates ought to resign.

“But the real difference is, the L.A. community has not gotten together, raised money and put an issue on the ballot and flat-out said, ‘You cannot have this kind of recognition for Dr. King.’ This isn’t to infer that L.A. is the liberal capital of the world, but they have not institutionalized their racism through the ballot process, as San Diego has.”

Jim Jacobson of the Martin Luther King Tribute Coalition in San Diego said the city does not deserve the Super Bowl “because, like Arizona, San Diego hasn’t honored Dr. King in the way that it should. It’s as simple as that.”

Jacobson, who is not in Hawaii, said that Marina Linear Park, which now carries King’s name, “is an insult . . . It’s barely 20 feet wide, about twice as wide as a sidewalk. It’s a slap in the face. It ends on Market Street and runs right in front of the Convention Center, like an ugly afterthought.”

Pratt said that he believed San Diego had paid “a proper tribute” to the memory of Dr. King, and City Manager McGrory said that San Diego has “frankly, done a lot more” than Pasadena in honoring King.

“We now have a large community park, a recreation center, a swimming pool and a freeway named in his honor,” McGrory said. “In addition, we were one of the first cities in the state to recognize his birthday.”

McGrory said the Super Bowl bidding has become symbolic--a kind of civic Super Bowl between San Diego and Los Angeles, which has never felt competition between the two as acutely as its southern neighbor.

The city recently lost the 1992 Republican Convention to Houston, and that, as much as its rivalry with Los Angeles, local leaders say, has given it the maximum incentive to try to persuade the NFL that Super Bowl XXVII, and its $200-million windfall, is destined for San Diego.

“I think San Diegans have always felt that, in terms of the qualify of life, and the way we’ve planned our city, that we’ve done a much better job than they have,” McGrory said of Los Angeles. “That’s it--our qualify of life, our sense of community, is better, and no city could want this game more than we do. We’re giving it everything we’ve got to get it.”

Times staff writer Bob Oates contributed to this report.