NFL Prepared to Move Super Bowl

If San Diego falters in its drive to expand its stadium, the NFL is ready to shift the 1998 Super Bowl to the Rose Bowl, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told civic boosters here Monday.

“We are talking to the Rose Bowl on a contingency basis as we speak,” Tagliabue said at a luncheon meeting of business and political leaders. “I hope this stays a contingency plan. We want to play the game here. [But] we do not want to play the game in a construction site, which is what it would be if construction stops.”

Tagliabue said the National Football League could have a signed contingency agreement by week’s end with Rose Bowl officials.

The venerable stadium has been host to five Super Bowls, and officials from Pasadena and the Los Angeles Sports Council say they are ready and eager to make it six should the NFL need a new site for the 1998 game.

Rick Welch, chairman of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, said a Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl would be “a good way to showcase the unique assets of Los Angeles,” and would include involvement by the entertainment industry and the Convention Center. Los Angeles also offers “great sites for parties and events,” he said.

Tagliabue said a decision on shifting Super Bowl XXXII to the Rose Bowl could hinge on what a San Diego judge rules Feb. 20 on a lawsuit filed by opponents of a City Council-approved $78-million expansion plan for municipally owned San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

The judge is being asked to halt construction until the public votes on the project in a May referendum.

If such a halt is ordered, Tagliabue said, the league will have no choice but to move the Super Bowl because of the months of preparation needed for the game and the weeklong hoopla surrounding it.

San Diego City Atty. Casey Gwinn expressed confidence that Superior Court Judge Anthony Joseph will rule in the city’s favor and allow construction, which began Dec. 31, to continue. If the judge rules against the city, the City Council will immediately appeal to the court that last year ruled in favor of the funding method being used for the expansion project.

Tagliabue’s comments--his soft-spoken tones notwithstanding--are a sharp indication that what might have been dismissed as an unrealistic civic nightmare only a few weeks ago is now a distinct possibility: loss of the Super Bowl and the Chargers football team.

“They’re like sharks circling in the water, smelling blood--Pasadena and Los Angeles,” Brian Christie, anchor at KUSI-TV in San Diego, told his viewers. “It’s very frustrating for us sports fans.”

Like a team shifting into a goal-line defense, the San Diego City Council met in emergency session Monday morning to fashion a game plan to keep the Chargers and Super Bowl XXXII.

One key part of the council’s strategy was a unanimous vote Monday revoking the Dec. 10 action that added $18 million to the original $60-million stadium project. That addition provoked the successful signature-gathering campaign to force a public vote.

Opponents say that by adding the $18 million, the council created a new project that should be fair game for a referendum.

By revoking the Dec. 10 action, the council hopes to avoid a public vote on the referendum, although it may fashion its own initiative for the public ballot.

To replace the $18 million, city and Chargers officials are scrambling to put together a package combining expected profits from the 1998 Super Bowl and a possible loan secured by the Chargers from a private lender.

Officials such as Mayor Susan Golding are also stepping up their criticism of expansion opponents.

“If the judge makes the decision they are asking for, they alone are responsible if the Chargers, the Super Bowl and the Padres leave San Diego, make no mistake about it,” Golding said after the council held a closed-door session with its attorneys.

Former Councilman Bruce Henderson, a leader in the referendum drive, said that by revoking the Dec. 10 action, the council is admitting that the construction underway at the stadium is illegal--a contention that council members disputed.

The Chargers have said that they may need to find somewhere else to play some of their 1997 games if construction halts and the project to add 10,000 seats, new scoreboards, more skyboxes and other amenities is not completed by the opening game. The two most likely spots for the Chargers to play would be the Rose Bowl and the Los Angeles Coliseum.

“In 1961, San Diego was able to lure the Chargers from L.A.,” said Ky Snyder, executive director of the San Diego Sports Council. “We don’t want them going back.”

The expansion would be paid for by increased rent from the Chargers, Padres and other stadium users--not from the city budget. Opponents argue that the city should have negotiated a better deal with the Chargers and gotten greater guarantees that the team will stay in San Diego.

Construction was delayed for 18 months while opponents fought a losing court battle on the theory that lease-revenue bonds require a public vote. Of the $18 million added by the Dec. 10 action, nearly half was attributed to increases in the cost of materials and the need to pay premium rates so that the construction firms finish by Sept. 1.

Politics, like football, is a game of momentum, and there are indications that the momentum in this dispute is beginning to shift toward expansion boosters.

Golding and other council members--after being largely silent for several weeks as the referendum movement picked up speed--have now hit the hustings in a vigorous campaign to build public support for the expansion project and the related contract between the Chargers and the city.

* A MATTER OF DIGNITY

Columnist Bill Plaschke urges San Diego to reject spending public money in its effort to host Super Bowl XXXII. C1