In Super Bowl Bid, Money Still Name of the Game : Football: Civil rights appears to have taken a back seat to the allure of helicopters and ‘the Gipper’ during site selection.

Three cities sent representatives here this week, to the lava-encrusted shores of a lavish resort, to try to persuade 27 wealthy, powerful men and one woman that the Super Bowl, and the money it generates, belonged in their communities.

Two cities left the winter meetings of the National Football League with commitments from the 28 owners to stage the Super Bowl in their cities. The winners were Los Angeles in 1993, Phoenix in 1996.

The only loser was San Diego.

The city’s Super Bowl Task Force offered free hotel rooms and transportation to league owners, as well as free use of the San Diego Convention Center for the gala NFL party held two nights before the game.

Spurred partly by San Diego, the Los Angeles group also offered a generous package of free “incentives,” and, in the end, its offer turned the most heads.

Pasadena Mayor Jess Hughston, whose city contains the 101,000-seat Rose Bowl, where the ’93 game will be played, said each of the owners was offered free use of a helicopter for the week leading up to, and the day of, the game.

That was presented to the owners for the first time Tuesday night, as a last-second surprise and one much to their liking.

Hughston said the Los Angeles Sports Council, which won the bidding for Pasadena, also promised an $8-million refurbishment of the stadium’s luxury sky boxes, which, of course, the owners will use free.

Other L.A. “freebies” included “free game-day expenses of up to $225,000,” according to the brochure released by the Los Angeles Sports Council on Wednesday. Just like San Diego, L.A. offered free hotels, free transportation, free use of a party site and free use of training facilities.

In the end, said Norman Braman, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles and chairman of the Site Selection Committee, it was a case of “L.A. having it all together, of leaving no stone unturned.”

“They brought together all of these groups in their collective bid--Los Angeles, Pasadena, Orange County--and had the backing of major figures from the business and political worlds. It was a devastating package, and would have been tough competition for anybody.”

Another NFL owner, who asked not to be quoted by name, said the L.A. bid was “overwhelming.”

One owner said the appearance of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley made no difference.

“They would have gotten it,” the man said, “even if Bradley hadn’t shown up.”

The Los Angeles group presented an 8 1/2-minute video, narrated by the Shakespearean voice of actor Sidney Poitier and capped off with former President Reagan staring into the camera and saying:

“Los Angeles is the obvious choice for Super Bowl XXVII. So go out there and win one for the Gipper!”

The 28 owners, who include some of the wealthiest people in the United States, were apparently more than happy to do just that.

The San Diego video, by contrast, was six minutes, 45 seconds long and narrated by NBC sportscaster Charlie Jones, who lives in La Jolla. Except for Mayor Maureen O’Connor and City Councilman Wes Pratt, most of the other members of San Diego’s six-person contingent wore Hawaiian shirts, sport coats, no ties and, in a couple of cases, white shoes.

David Simon, the head of the Los Angeles Sports Council, said he required each of his 15-member delegation to wear dark business suits with conservative ties and dress shoes.

As one owner, who asked not to be quoted by name, put it, “The L.A. group looked serious, professional--like they wanted it more than anything. The San Diego group looked casual, laid-back . . . even though we all like San Diego.”

San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos said Wednesday that he was “bitterly disappointed” with the vote, which Spano said was 16 to 12 in favor of Los Angeles.

Spanos said San Diego will not be eligible for another Super Bowl until 1997, nine years after the city’s only other experience with pro football’s mega-event, Super Bowl XXII in 1988.

Braman, the Eagles’ owner, said “almost everyone” within the league regards the ’88 Super Bowl in San Diego as the best ever. He said San Diego had “consistently displayed a continuity of community” and was “enviable for the compactness of the area.”

But, he noted that Los Angeles “appeared to have taken a clue from its neighbor,” and, by merging forces with various L.A. and Orange County interests, had created “perhaps the best bid ever.”

For the San Diego delegation, it appeared to be a devastating disappointment and a surprise. Councilman Pratt, who said he honestly believed that the league cared about civil rights--in taking the 1993 game away from Phoenix after Arizona voters rejected a holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.--said, in the end, the decision appeared to be “all about money.”

Pratt said it looked as though San Diego had once again been used by a powerful group to extract a better deal from another city. After courting San Diego and winning generous promises, the Republican Party moved its 1992 convention to Houston--which, in the face of stiff competition, gave the GOP a much better deal financially.

After allowing local officials to believe the Super Bowl would be a nice consolation prize, the NFL then gave that carrot--thought to be worth $200 million to the host city’s economy--to Los Angeles.

“I guess the bottom line with both the GOP and the National Football League is money,” Pratt said.

Pratt said he told the owners about the boon Super Bowl XXVII would represent to minority- and women-owned businesses in San Diego.

He said that, despite the city changing the name of Martin Luther King Jr. Way back to its original Market Street in 1987, and despite the failure to name the new bayfront Convention Center after King, the city had done a lot to honor the memory of the slain civil rights leader.

The owners listened, Pratt said, but didn’t really respond. Mayor Bradley of Los Angeles said, in regard to the recent beating of a black man by L.A. police, that he “hit the issue head-on,” bringing it up first. But, Bradley said, “not a single question was asked” about the beating, or for that matter, anything of a racial nature.

Pratt acknowledged that, indeed, the San Diego group may have misread the owners, in light of the racial and political overtones surrounding the Phoenix controversy.

After saying he wanted more than anything to remove the NFL from Arizona’s “ongoing political controversy,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the 28 owners will now live with the problem until 1992, when Arizona has yet another vote scheduled on a King holiday.

Tagliabue said that Phoenix was “preliminarily” awarded Super Bowl XXX, scheduled for January, 1996.

Even with the specter of a vicious police beating shadowing these meetings at the plush Hyatt Regency Waikoloa, in the end, neither Martin Luther King nor any other racial factor seemed to matter in the competition between Los Angeles and San Diego.

Aside from Bradley’s initial “head-on” reference to the beating, he said what the owners wanted to know about more was the essence of the city’s bid--in other words, what could Los Angeles give them.

One owner, who asked not to be identified, said the only reason the Martin Luther King Jr. issue ever became a controversy in regard to Phoenix having the ’93 game, was that “major advertisers” had approached Tagliabue and “urged him to pull the Super Bowl.”

While San Diego was pushing its tributes to King, and the wonderful opportunities the Super Bowl would bring to minority businesses, Los Angeles was pushing helicopters and the numerous financial advantages to the league. And, of course, the Gipper didn’t hurt.

“It seems the (owners’ selection) criteria should be all that the local community would get from the Super Bowl, and what we would do for the local community,” Pratt said. But, in the end, he said, that wasn’t the basis of the owners’ decision.

What it came down to was the Rose Bowl’s size advantage over the 73,300 seats of San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.

“We thought we had a good proposal, but with 30,000 more seats, at $150 a pop (at the Rose Bowl), you’re talking about $4 million.

“That’s what they were interested in. That was the bottom line.”