Officials Still Bullish About Football in Anaheim

The city of Anaheim and Walt Disney Co. agreed more than two weeks ago that no football team would play in Anaheim Stadium next year.

That’s because the deal to renovate Anaheim Stadium, the key point in Disney’s acquisition of the Angels, will mean the baseball off-season will be spent turning the Rams’ former home into a baseball-only facility.

So where does that leave the prospects of the NFL playing again in Orange County?

In pretty good shape if you listen to Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly and Frank Bryant, who was president of the Rams’ booster club. Though they have no team and no investor on the horizon, Daly and Bryant believe there is a glimmer of hope.

“With the successful conclusion of the baseball negotiations, there are two very positive outcomes for the future of pro football in Orange County,” Daly said Friday. “There is a site of a future pro football stadium--in the parking lot of Anaheim Stadium, adjacent to the existing stadium. That site has been agreed to by the baseball team owner [Disney].

“The city can proceed immediately on that site. We have the legal go-ahead to proceed as fast as we want to. There’s also been agreement that the Sportstown development can proceed under whatever time schedule the city desires.”

The Sportstown development, scaled down from its earlier designs, still includes a 13-acre football stadium. But unless Seattle Seahawks’ owner Ken Behring wins his lawsuit with King County, brings his team to Southern California and chooses Anaheim over any other Southland site, there’s no team to play in the proposed new stadium.

Bryant still believes the Seahawks’ chances of coming to Anaheim are good, even after the team halted workouts in Anaheim to return to Washington.

“I’m just as confident that they’re going to make the move,” Bryant said. “I will actually be surprised if this goes to court. I think King County will recognize they can’t stop a business from moving.”

Behring’s trial with King County to determine if he must honor the remaining 10 years of his Kingdome lease begins May 28.

Take the Seahawks out of the picture, however, and even Bryant’s optimism dims a little.

“I don’t see it on the immediate horizon--unless the NFL allows an expansion team,” Bryant said of the county’s prospects minus the Seahawks. “They’ve promised Cleveland a team. That would probably be our best chance, to go on in with them as one of two new teams . . . if the Seahawks thing falls through.”

Said Daly: “We can move forward if we have the right partner.”