SUPER BOWL XXVII : A Chance to Get a Taste of the League : The NFL Experience Theme Park, Opening Today, Offers an Alternative to Super Bowl

Pierre Bantan of Los Angeles gripped a football with both hands, stepped up to a white chalk line and threw with every ounce of his 10-year-old body. The ball sailed through the air and connected with a plastic bull’s-eye about 10 yards away.

He was all smiles.

Bantan, who obtained Florence Griffith Joyner’s signature on his T-shirt earlier in the day, was one of 6,000 disadvantaged Los Angeles area youngsters who attended the NFL Experience preview day Wednesday at the Rose Bowl.

The NFL Experience is a professional football theme park and interactive entertainment center set up south of the Rose Bowl, site of Sunday’s Super Bowl XXVII.

It opens today to the public, and about 100,000 are expected to attend before it closes Sunday night.

If you can’t get tickets to the game, the NFL Experience should give you a taste of its sights and sounds--and crowds.

Visitors can stand behind giant replicas of NFL players and “look like a pro,” or shake hands with NFL mascots. It is kind of the NFL’s version of Disneyland, without the big rides.

The price of admission is considerably less than the cost of tickets to the game: $10 at the gate or $7.50 in advance for adults, $5 for children 12 and under.

The NFL Experience will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. today through Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Fans can kick a field goal, throw a pass, field a punt or race against the time of the NFL’s fastest man, Alexander Wright of the Raiders, in a 40-yard dash.

There also are tent-covered exhibits, including a 70,000-square-foot card show with 200 dealers of football memorabilia. The NFL Experience was still receiving final touches Wednesday, so the card show and the 30,000-square-foot retail shoe outlet were not ready yet, but will be today.

Those who don’t expect to travel to Canton, Ohio, will be pleased with “A Century of NFL Football,” which includes about 100 items from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Among these fragments of football history is Jim Thorpe’s Carlisle Indian School football sweater. The Hall of Fame received it from a friend of the Thorpe family, who discovered it lining a dog’s basket.

Also on display are Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colt jersey, a 1991 Washington Redskin Super Bowl ring, the Pete Rozelle Trophy and the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl Trophy.

Other exhibits include the NFL Films Theater; the Play by Play, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a sports broadcast; the NFL locker room and fitness area, a replica of an NFL locker room; and Measure Up to the Pros, an interactive exhibit in which fans measure their own athletic attributes against professional athletes.

More than 70 players will make appearances at scheduled locations around the NFL Experience, signing free autographs.

Howie Long, Warren Moon and Reggie Williams were among players on hand for Wednesday’s grand opening and preview day. And Greg Townsend and Jim Everett gave an NFL fashion show for the children, wiggling and winking down the runway of the Main Stage while clad in NFL attire.

The main stage also will be the site of a Garth Brooks concert during the “Super Bowl Saturday Night” show.

The Southern California flag football championship, involving 34 division-winning teams, will be decided today, with the winners playing a game against current NFL players.

The NFL Experience is family-oriented, and proceeds will go to the NFL/Youth Education Training program in South Central Los Angeles and other NFL charities in Los Angeles.

The NFL’s role in promoting education was emphasized Wednesday.

“I didn’t get to be president of the NFL because I knew somebody,” Neil Austrian said in his opening remarks to the crowd. “I got here, Warren Moon got here and Howie Long got here for a couple of very simple reasons: We stayed in school and we stayed off drugs.

“There is only one reason, really, why we have the NFL Experience here today. And that’s basically because the National Football League believes in kids, believes in education and believes we want to give something back to Los Angeles and Pasadena for hosting this Super Bowl.”