NFL Huddles With Rose Bowl Officials

Although it’s not a term the NFL would prefer, the league hedged its bets Thursday when Pasadena and Rose Bowl officials met with Neil Austrian, Jim Steeg and Dean Spanos to map out a contingency plan for Super Bowl XXXII and the San Diego Chargers’ 1997 regular-season schedule.

Austrian, the NFL’s president, and Steeg, the league’s executive director of special events, summoned Spanos, the Charger president, to the meeting to seek a solution to a problem caused by the expansion of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, which is embroiled in a lawsuit seeking to stop construction and place the matter of expansion before a public vote.

A judge is to hear the suit next Thursday, and if construction is stopped, the NFL wanted to have a place to take its game.

Essentially, the Rose Bowl and NFL were to sign a “contingency agreement,” that contingency being a work stoppage in San Diego. The decision on that might come as early as next Thursday.