San Diego Lobbying NFL to Be ’96 Super Bowl Site

The chairman of the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force said this week that the city has sent a delegation to Minneapolis to lobby National Football League owners to bring the 1996 Super Bowl to San Diego.

Bob Payne, who owns a hotel in Mission Valley, was the chairman of the Super Bowl Task Force that lost out early last year when league owners awarded the 1993 game, Super Bowl XXVII, to Los Angeles and the Pasadena Rose Bowl.

That was after Phoenix lost the ’93 game in the wake of Arizona voters rejecting a state holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Payne said the King issue in Arizona is once again central to San Diego’s bid for the Super Bowl.

If Arizona voters reject the holiday a second time--a vote is scheduled for November--San Diego’s chances are excellent, Payne said.

And if the King holiday is approved--it may be a while.

The NFL has made a conditional promise to have Phoenix play host to the ’96 Super Bowl, pending the outcome of the King referendum. The 1994 Super Bowl will be played in a new domed stadium in Atlanta, and the ’95 game has been awarded to Miami.

This year’s Super Bowl is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday in the Minneapolis Metrodome. The San Diego delegation arrived in the city Thursday afternoon.

The 1997 Super Bowl “would be a possibility, but we’d undoubtedly be vulnerable to the game going back East. It would be their turn,” Payne said, meaning an East Coast city would be the next in line for serving as host in ’97.

San Diego’s most recent bid for the Super Bowl stirred plenty of local opposition. Greg Akili, then president of the African-American Organizing Project, took a delegation to Hawaii, site of the NFL meetings last March, to protest the city’s involvement.

Akili cited what he called San Diego’s “sorry” record in regard to “a proper tribute” to King.

In 1986, the city renamed Market Street in downtown San Diego Martin Luther King Way, in honor of the slain civil rights leader, then changed the name back a year later, after area merchants succeeded in putting the issue on a referendum that 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 defeated it. The City Council then voted to name Marina Linear Park, the narrow strip of land in front of the San Diego Convention Center, after King. Some activists have deemed that gesture insignificant and inappropriate.

Akili, now running for Congress in the city’s 50th District, said he has no plans to protest the current Super Bowl bid.

“We made our stand and we were successful,” he said. “It’s time to move on.”

Nevertheless, he called it “unfortunate and hypocritical” that members of the Super Bowl Task Force had been “put in the position of rooting” for Arizona voters to re-reject a King tribute.

Akili said he hopes that in the future, minority- and women-owned businesses will benefit from the game being played in San Diego. He said newly elected City Councilman George Stevens would “help ensure such a benefit,” more so than Wes Pratt, his predecessor.

Pratt was criticized by some African-American leaders for having accompanied the Super Bowl Task Force to Hawaii.

“I think the Super Bowl and King holiday issue was one of the big reasons Wes lost to Stevens,” Akili said. “The issue had many repercussions . . . on many levels.”

San Diego’s first and only stint as Super Bowl host came four years ago, and the economic boon was calculated at $130 million. The 1996 game is thought to be worth upward of $250 million to the host city.

“Our Super Bowl chances are alive and well,” said task force chairman Payne. “We’re going to Minneapolis to make our presence known. I think our chances for (the 1996 game) are very good. Los Angeles will have had its shot at it (in 1993), and the game will have been to the East” in 1994 and 1995.

Payne will be accompanied to Minnesota by two other officers of the Super Bowl Task Force, local businessman Leon Parma and newspaper executive Herb Klein. All three were present in Hawaii last March when NFL owners awarded next year’s game to Pasadena on a 16-12 vote.

Payne said the city’s chances for winning the ’96 event--pending “the big if” of a no vote in Arizona--would probably be enhanced by Los Angeles having won the rights to the game in 1993.

But David Simon, president of the Los Angeles Sports Council, which lobbied successfully to bring Super Bowl XXVII to Pasadena, doesn’t see it that way. Simon said Los Angeles will lobby heavily for the 1996 game and any other Super Bowls available to West Coast sites.

“Our assumption, though, is that the ’96 game will go to Phoenix, and the earliest possible time we could acquire the game would be in 1998,” Simon said. “The reasoning is, Atlanta has the ’94 game, Miami the ’95 game and Phoenix--provisionally--gets the game in ’96.

“The ’97 game will be back in the East somewhere, which leaves us with ’98. Undoubtedly, that game will be played out West. That, at least, has been the league’s pattern in recent years. So we intend to bid enthusiastically for the game in ’98.”

Norman Braman, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles and chairman of the NFL’s Site Selection Committee, said after the league’s meeting in March that Los Angeles won out over San Diego for Super Bowl XXVII because its bid “left no stone unturned.”

In this case, that meant money.

Pasadena Mayor Jess Hughston, whose city contains the 101,000-seat Rose Bowl, said each of the 28 owners was offered free use of a helicopter for the week leading up to, and the day of, the game.

Hughston said the Los Angeles Sports Council also promised an $8-million refurbishment of the Rose Bowl’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 at the league’s Hawaii meeting, hours before the owners’ vote.

Los Angeles, like San Diego, offered free hotels, free transportation, free use of party sites and free use of training facilities. Pasadena also has the larger stadium. San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium has a capacity of 73,300 for a Super Bowl, which the NFL considers small.

Asked how San Diego can compete with such lavish inducements, Payne said: “I still don’t believe the owners base their decisions solely on the bottom line. I sense more of a feeling of equity, that owners feel the Super Bowl needs to be circulated, among other cities, for the good of the game.”

Payne conceded that a number of NFL owners--a minority, he hopes--want the game confined to a permanent, regional rotation of New Orleans, Miami and Los Angeles.

“But, as a general rule, most of the owners want the game spread around, and we have to hope . . . that they continue to want that,” Payne said.