Sports Super-Agent Joins Fight to Keep Rams in O.C.

A nationally prominent Orange County sports agent who spearheaded San Francisco’s successful drive to prevent the Giants baseball franchise from moving in 1992 is primed to lead the fight to keep the Rams in Anaheim.

Leigh Steinberg, county businessman, homeowner and sports fan, says he wants to protect his turf, and that includes the Rams.

“The challenge is there,” said Steinberg, whose sizable group of National Football League clients includes star quarterbacks Joe Montana, Troy Aikman and Warren Moon. “This is a fight that needs to be made for the economic vitality of Orange County and for fans who enjoy professional football.

“The Rams belong here, and we don’t intend to let them leave. I live here, I have two boys, and I want the most positive business climate and most exciting sports scene possible. Now it’s our obligation to show Mrs. Frontiere (Rams owner Georgia) that they can stay here. We can save this team.”

The Steinberg plan:

* It’s not the city of Anaheim’s fight; it will require the involvement of the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

* County businesses will have to buy blocks of season tickets or assist in marketing and promotional campaigns.

* A task force of prominent local business leaders recently formed to look at the Rams’ situation must be expanded. Steinberg says he intends to join forces with the group.

* Private investors must be recruited to study the possibility of building a new stadium.

* The team’s radio and local TV deals must be re-evaluated with an eye on improving revenue opportunities.

* The team needs to be renamed the California or Orange County Rams.

* Football fans will have to set aside their feelings about recent poor results and disregard for team management and buy tickets.

“To have any chance under any scenario of keeping the Rams here, they have to be assured of a sellout,” Steinberg said. “From Georgia Frontiere’s perspective, she sits and looks at a half-empty stadium while there are cities elsewhere with losing teams where it’s impossible to buy a ticket.

“When games aren’t sold out, they are not shown on local TV, and so the major marketing tool for a football team can’t be used. If the Rams were on TV, they would be more popular.”

The Rams have yet to consummate a deal to move, but conventional wisdom has them playing in Baltimore in 1995. They executed an escape clause in their Anaheim Stadium lease on May 3 and provided 15 months’ notice. Team officials have talked with St. Louis, Hartford, Conn., Toronto, Memphis, Tenn., San Antonio and Baltimore about moving.

The majority reaction locally: Good riddance.

Season-ticket sales this season have plunged more than 30% from a year ago, and radio rights that earned the team $2.5 million in 1993 recently sold for $500,000.

A poll of Orange County voters commissioned by The Times found 68% saying it is personally unimportant to keep the Rams. Anaheim city officials, saying there is little they can do to improve the team’s financial situation, sound resigned to its departure.

“I found myself recently in the same mode as everyone else until I realized how stupid that is,” Steinberg said. “There’s been this constant refrain that the Rams are history, that they are gone.

“But none of that is true. The Rams are here in Orange County, getting ready to play another season.”

And are the Rams still open to the prospect of staying?

“Absolutely,” said John Shaw, Ram executive vice president. “We’d entertain any deal from Orange County that’s competitive with deals being offered by other cities.”

Putting together such a package would not be easy. But Steinberg said it must be done.

“Orange County cannot afford to lose the Rams,” he said. “It is a team with the dateline of Anaheim connected to it, and along with Disneyland, the Angels and Mighty Ducks, it’s the most publicly identifiable business here.

“There is tremendous competition from other states to take our primary industries. It sends a chilling message to businesses across the country to have one of the most publicly identifiable businesses in this area leave.

“For those who are deeply concerned about a business like Taco Bell leaving Irvine and locating in some other area, the Rams have a much stronger national impact. It’s a move that will be seen on Wall Street and in corporate board rooms across the country. . . . When the Raiders left Oakland, it triggered an acceleration of a downward economic cycle.”

Steinberg was instrumental in organizing the drive to keep the baseball Giants in San Francisco two years ago and now is a special adviser to a task force working to keep the A’s rooted in Oakland.

“When we started in San Francisco there was already a signed purchase agreement from Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., to buy the Giants,” Steinberg said. “The Giants were determined to go, the public had turned down several bond issues to build a new stadium, and National League owners were convinced the Bay Area couldn’t support two baseball teams.”

San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan solicited Steinberg’s help after area newspapers printed headlines declaring the Giants were lost.

“The fans had acquiesced, and the initial reaction to trying to save the team was one of great skepticism. But eventually it worked, the team is still there, and last year Giant attendance increased more than 1 million.”

Steinberg says it is now the responsibility of sports fans here to rally to the Rams’ aid.

“A good sports town doesn’t mean 100% of the people have to be sports fans. For those people who don’t care about sports at all, this entire issue is of no interest. . . . But for those of us who consider sports a treasure, something to be handed from father to son, this fight needs to be made.”

Steinberg says the NFL has given the county its one chance at pro football.

“The average sports fan needs to understand it’s not a matter of the Ram team leaving and someone else filling the spot,” Steinberg said. “NFL owners will never bring football back here.

“We’re sitting at a critical juncture here in Orange County. Are we content in Orange County to never have a regional, cultural and geographical identity? The business community here needs to embrace that question.”

But what about the attractive deals being offered by other cities, promises of spending taxpayer money to build state-of-the-art stadiums and lucrative financial packages?

“I’d be the last one to take money from the homeless or unemployed, but it might make good business sense to build a new stadium--with private investors. That’s what we worked on in San Francisco, and private investors believe there is a profit in such a thing.

“The Rams aren’t saying they need that new stadium tomorrow. It doesn’t exist in some of the places they are talking about. But they need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. The modern sports environment insists on a state-of-the-art stadium and tremendous community support.

“Municipalities all across the country are putting public and private funds together and crawling on their hands and knees and begging for professional sports franchises because they recognize the unique public and private benefits a franchise brings to a geographical area.”

Steinberg added: “Orange County needs to be much more accommodating now and much more aggressive in speaking to the Rams’ needs. The capacity exists to do that. . . . A first-class facility (the Pond of Anaheim) was put together to lure hockey and the Mighty Ducks here.”

But public sentiment suggests local fans might be unwilling to make the commitment necessary to prevent a move. Empty seats and banners demanding the Rams’ departure overwhelmingly outnumbered rallies urging the team to stay.

“Sure, people have held up banners exhorting the owner to sell the team or move, but all they are really doing is expressing frustration. That shouldn’t be seen as a serious expression or desire to have the team leave Orange County. A truly universal attraction of sports is the ability of fans to complain and be frustrated with a team’s lack of success.

“I have known the owner of the Rams for many years, and she is a very positive woman who has been misunderstood in this area.

“I guess my argument here is that a divorce is not in order, but maybe some counseling is needed.”

Steinberg says the relationship is salvageable and that on-the-field success would help.

“For those fans who are discontented with the Rams’ losing record or who have antipathy toward present ownership, better days will come. Teams go through winning and losing cycles.

“The Rams are on the verge of having a much better team. They are lacking a major identifiable star, but it’s not because they haven’t tried. If (longtime quarterback) Jim Everett had been successful he would have been that star. (Everett was traded to New Orleans after last season.) Fans are more star-oriented here.

“Now (running back) Jerome Bettis has the makings to be that star, and I know (recently acquired) quarterback Chris Miller, and he can be a very popular figure in this area. They have the makings to be a much more marketable and interesting team.

“I believe people will come to watch the Rams. There is no question they could fill the stadium. Hey, this is not as daunting as baseball. We’re talking about 10 home football games, 65,000 people a game, and so this is not really that an enormous of an undertaking.

“I know people talk about the wide range of entertainment possibilities in Southern California, but that’s also true in New York and Chicago.”

Most solutions to the Rams’ plight that have been suggested previously involve the team being sold to local investors. But Frontiere has said repeatedly that she has no interest in selling control of the team.

Steinberg, who put together the local investor group that ultimately bought the Giants, said he does not want to unseat Frontiere.

“If the Rams were offered for public sale the line of purchasers would go from here to the Pacific Ocean,” Steinberg said. “But the preference here is to have Mrs. Frontiere keep the team. This is Georgia Frontiere’s team, and it’s up to us to take our head out of the sand and show her support.

“It’s a countywide issue, and it needs to be squarely addressed by the Board of Supervisors, and it needs countywide funding.”

County Supervisor William G. Steiner, whose district includes Anaheim, said Steinberg’s sports connections will bring needed “stature” to a difficult effort. Steiner characterized past overtures to the Rams made by government and business as one-sided.

“It’s hard for us to pick up the phone here when there is no one on the other line,” the supervisor said. “There hasn’t been any two-way communication.

“I’ve met repeatedly with (Anaheim Mayor) Tom Daly to see what we could do. I’ve presented resolutions to the Board of Supervisors offering our support. But the Rams seem not to have a commitment to Orange County.”

Should the Rams leave, Steiner was more optimistic than Steinberg about the chances of attracting another NFL franchise.

“My common sense tells me that we’re a great sports market. You only need to look at what happened with the Mighty Ducks to see that.

“I’d hate to think that the Rams would be our last chance for professional football.”

But Steinberg said county residents still need a wake-up call.

“Unless we act, we’re pushing the Rams out of Orange County. It’s put up or shut up time for Orange County, and if we don’t make this fight people will feel the consequences.”

Times staff writer Kevin Johnson contributed to this story.

* TICKET SALES SLIDE: Rams report that season-ticket sales are off 30%. A22