O’Malley Backs Off on NFL

Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, while admittedly on the brink of pursuing a new football stadium once again for Los Angeles, agreed late Friday to Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas’ request for his continued support of the new Coliseum.

O’Malley, who spent more than $1 million on a feasibility study for a new football facility to be built adjacent to Dodger Stadium before being asked by Mayor Richard Riordan to step aside, is looking for results at the new Coliseum, however.

“The Coliseum site has now exclusively had 13 months, and it seems to me a timetable is appropriate,” said O’Malley. “I think a few months is fair. In my judgment, anything more than that is not necessary. If you add a few months to the process we will have gotten to a year and a half and that should be ample time to bring this project together.”

Ridley-Thomas, who proclaimed in Washington a few days ago that competition was a good thing in Los Angeles, apparently changed his mind after O’Malley considered a comeback.

“This is no change. . . . To me this shows the strength of the project and that people are willing to be supportive no matter who they are,” Ridley-Thomas said. “We’re trying to get a project done and soliciting as much support as we can in order to demonstrate there is a substantial amount of backing. We encourage that broadly and deeply, and certainly that would include somebody as important as Peter O’Malley.”

O’Malley is in the process of selling the Dodgers to Rupert Murdoch, who in a recent interview in Australia expressed a willingness to support an ownership interest in the NFL in Los Angeles if approved as owner of the baseball team. Some NFL owners have interpreted that to mean that Murdoch might be willing to build a new football stadium on the Dodger property under the direction of O’Malley, who would also become the owner of Los Angeles’ new NFL franchise.

Murdoch, because of his Fox-TV relationship with the NFL, is prohibited under NFL rules from owning a team.

For Murdoch or O’Malley to be successful in building a stadium or owning a team, they will require City Council and local political support, which is now solely directed to the new Coliseum.

When NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced earlier this week at the NFL owners meetings that the league has no wish to exclusively deal with the new Coliseum, it appeared the door might reopen for O’Malley.

For the past three days, O’Malley has been meeting with city officials, dusting off stadium plans and getting excited again about his vision for a state-of-the art football facility overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.

“It reminded us here of all the time and energy devoted to the project up until 13 months ago,” O’Malley said. “That was a very happy and exciting time for all of us, and the deeper we dug, the more excited we got about the project. Three days ago, quite frankly, after hearing what the NFL said, it got a lot of attention here at Dodger Stadium.”

But then Ridley-Thomas came calling.

Ridley-Thomas, who represents the Coliseum district, apparently maintained the support of the mayor, who declined to be interviewed. A spokesman for the mayor said “competition is a good thing,” but nothing has changed from 13 months ago despite Tagliabue’s remarks.

“Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas asked us to continue to support the Coliseum, and we agreed to do so,” O’Malley said. “Los Angeles needs and deserves an extraordinary state-of-the-art stadium, an NFL team, Super Bowls and the complete NFL experience. All that would be a darn good thing for the city.”