NFL Accepts Bid by Irvine Broker : Football: Eberhart, one of 11 applicants the league will consider as club owners in 1994, wants expansion team in Hawaii.

A 27-year-old Irvine real estate broker, Christopher Eberhart, was one of 11 applicants the NFL accepted Tuesday for consideration as club owners in 1994.

Eberhart heads an Orange County commercial real estate firm known as the Trillion Group, in which he is in association with two other brokers.

He met the NFL’s first expansion-team deadline, which required all bidders to turn in what the league calls “community applications” this week.

His goal, Eberhart said, is to put an expansion club in Hawaii when the league adds two franchises in 1994. And at present, he said, he is looking for a majority owner. His group, which he formed three years ago, would retain a minority ownership.

“We’ll definitely meet the next deadline,” Eberhart said, referring to Oct. 1, when $100,000 application fees are due.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said that only half the fee will be refunded to losing bidders.

Honolulu’s 50,000-seat stadium can be expanded to 60,000 or more, Eberhart said.

Eberhart’s ace in the hole, he believes, is the NFL’s interest in enlarging its television market.

“You have to go outside the borders of the (contiguous 48 states) to do that,” he said. “Hawaii is both on U.S. soil and on the way to Japan--where the NFL also has a deep interest.”

Honolulu, the NFL said, was the only new ownership applicant among those accepted before the deadline Tuesday. The 10 others, which have been talking about it for years, are Sacramento, Memphis, Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte, San Antonio, Raleigh-Durham and three former NFL cities: Oakland, St. Louis and Baltimore.

The finance director in Eberhart’s working party, he said, is Dan Rivetti, who will represent Trillion in New York. There are four Trillion representatives in Hawaii: real estate broker Tom Iwado and three lawyers, Richard Frunzi, Jon Hunter and Randall Yee.

For the eventual winners, joining the NFL will be expensive. The franchise fee is expected to be at least $70 million, possibly more than $100 million.

Where will Eberhart find a buyer with that kind of money?

“A lot of people in Orange County, Los Angeles and Hawaii would like to own NFL clubs,” he said. “It won’t take them long to decide. Either you want in or you don’t. Either you can afford it or you can’t.”

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said the owners will select the two new franchises next year, with the votes of 21 clubs required for admission.

Some club sources have identified the front-runners as St. Louis and Memphis.

“We haven’t thought much about Hawaii,” a source said.

In 1994, most club owners expect the NFL to be a 30-team league with six five-team divisions geographically realigned.

Others still want to defer expansion until they have completed a new collective bargaining agreement with the players.

Still others believe that realignment, a precondition to expansion, is unlikely.

Even so, Tagliabue said, NFL planning for expansion and realignment continues.