McKay on Hollywood Park’s Team

The McKay name is back in the Los Angeles football spotlight, and if the magic remains, Hollywood Park will be the site for the return of the NFL.

John McKay, 44, son of the former USC coach and J.K. to fans of the Trojans who remember him earning 1975 Rose Bowl co-MVP honors with Pat Haden, has agreed to be the point man

in Hollywood Park’s renewed efforts to build a football stadium for an NFL expansion team in time to play in 2001.

McKay, hired by Hollywood Park chief executive R.D. Hubbard, after meeting with NFL officials in Los Angeles earlier this week and receiving encouragement, intends to deliver a draft of a finance plan for a new stadium in Inglewood to NFL owners before their annual meetings in March.

“I talked with the NFL this week and they were very, very encouraging and gave me the feeling this is a viable option, and maybe the only viable option in getting football back at least sometime in the next five years,” said McKay, who played four years for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before returning to Los Angeles in 1986 to work in a downtown law firm as a real estate litigator.

“I just want to help make it happen if I can,” said McKay, who can call on the stadium expertise of his brother Rich, the general manager of the Buccaneers, who put together a deal for a new facility in Tampa Bay. “I would also like to see the community quit fighting and unite behind one site. I think this is the one; otherwise it could be 2005 and still no team here.”

Just the other day, player agent Leigh Steinberg said he was close to presenting an ownership group for an expansion team at Hollywood Park to the NFL. Presumably, there will be other groups as well for the NFL, and McKay, to look at.

McKay gives Hollywood Park a spokesman with immediate access to NFL owners because of his name. He also has a sense of history and an intimate knowledge of present-day circumstances to make him more effective locally.

Baltimore used a similar strategy, employing local attorney John Moag as its spokesman and deal-maker with the NFL, and St. Louis followed the lead of former Sen. Thomas Eagleton.

There has been an obvious shift in NFL momentum in recent weeks as it relates to Los Angeles. With the likelihood growing that the league will award an expansion franchise to Cleveland sometime next year to begin play in 1999, there is now a strong feeling in the NFL front office that it is time to prepare Los Angeles as the logical choice for a second expansion team.

The new Coliseum effort, led by Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, has had the NFL’s exclusive attention for more than a year, and although he has made four presentations to the owners, he has made almost no headway. In addition, a call for state funding to help build a new Coliseum has received a cool reception.

“I took a harder look at Hollywood Park when I became convinced it was not going to happen at the Coliseum,” McKay said. “I grew up at the Coliseum, was on the sidelines in 1960, played there and love it. It’s a great stadium for USC, a wonderful historic landmark that should be maintained, but it’s not an NFL stadium. And trying to make it an NFL stadium is probably not the right thing--it would lose its character.

“I will talk to those people directly and let them know why I’m doing what I am. Obviously they feel differently about the viability of their project, but if I thought that was going to happen, I wouldn’t get involved in Hollywood Park. I personally don’t think it will happen at the Coliseum, and personally don’t like the idea. I like the old building, and don’t think it should be made into something that it is not.

“This effort should not be a competition between Hollywood Park and the Coliseum. But there is a window of opportunity here and somebody in Southern California needs to step forward and take advantage of it.”

Ridley-Thomas, who successfully put the clamps on Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, who expressed interest in working again to bring football to Los Angeles, has no such clout in Inglewood. Ridley-Thomas could stop O’Malley because O’Malley will require citywide political support to make his football plans work.

NFL officials met with O’Malley this week and have talked with the Fox company, which with Rupert Murdoch will be buying the Dodgers, about an interest in football in Los Angeles. Advised that such interest is real, the NFL is still concerned that O’Malley and Fox will not be able to react in time to meet the window of opportunity that will exist if Cleveland gets its expansion franchise.

As for the new Coliseum, it has strayed from the path the NFL would prefer Los Angeles take. In addition to still being concerned about the commitment of King co-owner Philip Anschutz, who has yet to express his resolve in Los Angeles, the NFL considers a recent effort to try to buy the Minnesota Vikings and move them to Los Angeles a futile exercise.

Edward Roski, co-owner of the Kings with Anschutz, has been talking with three ownership interests of the Vikings, who own 30% of the team, about buying the team. NFL officials, however, are not sure the Vikings can win a release from their lease, which extends through 2009, and NFL bylaws prohibit a team being moved with a valid lease in place.

There is also some question among NFL officials about how Los Angeles fans might embrace a warmed-over team like the Vikings, believing only an expansion team has a chance of winning fan approval here.

Hollywood Park is probably the only site in the Los Angeles area that can take advantage of the NFL’s window of opportunity, as it relates to Cleveland.

McKay has assembled a list of potential owners and parties who might be interested in building a stadium, and will begin meeting with them shortly. The NFL would like Hollywood Park to present a viable stadium plan and several ownership groups for consideration, the NFL then making the final determination on who owns the expansion team in Los Angeles.

Hubbard has advised the NFL that he will be willing to sell almost 30 acres of land surrounding the race track for the site of a new stadium, and will also be willing to assume an ownership interest in a new stadium, if it will help close a deal.

“We have the ground, we have the permits and we’re going to make it available to the NFL,” Hubbard said. “Our total interest is in bringing the NFL back to Los Angeles. We’re totally flexible and will play whatever part they want us to play. We feel we have the only site fitting into the window of opportunity here, and if it doesn’t happen now, then you can forget about it for a long while.”

McKay, who grew up watching the Rams, said it might be difficult to rally fans’ interest, but he insists an expansion franchise playing in a new football stadium in Los Angeles would be a huge plus for the community and its youngsters.

“I sense a lot of people in Southern California don’t care if we have a team and are happy because there are more games on TV because of the blackout rules,” McKay said. “But their kids are growing up without a local team and I think those kids are missing something special.

“I remember the passion I had for football, growing up here as a youngster, and I would like to share that and have the chance once again to be a part of all that in Los Angeles.”

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Grounding the Ball

Rushing averages of NFL’s leading passers: (Career leaders in passing yards through 1996 season):

1. DAN MARINO: 0.4 yards

2. FRAN TARKENTON: 5.4

3. JOHN ELWAY: 4.5

4. WARREN MOON: 3.3

5. DAN FOUTS: 2.1

6. JOE MONTANA: 3.7

7. JOHNNY UNITAS: 3.9