AN UPDATE NFL-LA

The following is a public service advisory.

The NFL is in town today, but until it has finished pillaging Cleveland, it will not be able to dictate terms of surrender to those in Los Angeles working for the return of football.

The Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, although well-intentioned and raising more than $50,000 in sponsorships including $10,000 from Times Mirror, which owns The Times, has invited the NFL to promote the New-but-tired-sounding Coliseum project and educate the media in a daylong conference. Knowing some members of the media here, you would think it would take longer than that.

“We’re trying to get people excited about getting football back, and you need to have some kind of public participation to get any stadium built in Southern California,” said Kathy Schloessman, the organizer of the event. “There is a need for public input because you won’t get a publicly built stadium without public support.”

Public input? The NFL demands your money to return, but after defining its plan for Cleveland this week in a Dallas meeting, it’s clear the league will have no interest in your input.

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In Cleveland, as a prerequisite for getting football back, almost $200 million in public funds were used to build a stadium. The city also met an additional condition, selling 52,000 personal seat licenses to Brown fans, who will have no say who owns their new team.

The mayor of Cleveland, the driving force behind bringing football back there, recently endorsed local businessman Al Lerner and former San Francisco 49er president Carmen Policy in their bid to own the team. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said this week, that’s nice, but no thanks, the league will pick which millionaire directs the city’s new football team.

Potential bidders have been lining up former Cleveland players to join their efforts (comedian Bill Cosby has signed on with one). And the NFL had previously encouraged talk about potential minority ownership and the need for Cleveland roots. But who’s kidding whom? As Tampa Bay owner Malcom Glazer put it this week, the Cleveland franchise “will go to the highest bidder.”

At the very least, that’s what is in store for Los Angeles, although currently the NFL has nothing to offer in today’s conference other than Jerry Richardson’s often-told story about staying the course for years and finally winning an expansion franchise for Carolina. The league will also be able to deliver enthusiastic but unspecific sound bites for use on the sportscasters’ nightly newscasts.

Viewers should beware, however, because the day is coming when the NFL might very well have something meaningful to say, and it will not be interested in L.A.’s rebuttal.

“I’d like to drive the car rather than have the thing drive us,” said Jerry Jones, owner of the Cowboys. “I’d like to not be there [in L.A.] because somebody like Michael Ovitz or any combination of 10 people come in and all of a sudden have a push for what they want. Let’s structure the future rather than have the future structured for us.”

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Do you really want Arizona owner Bill Bidwill, Tennessee’s Bud Adams, Baltimore’s Art Modell & Co. to determine how your “public support” should be used?

The NFL failed in Los Angeles, the league acknowledges, because of poor ownership, but now the prevailing attitude is let the person with the most money assume command once again--making it no guarantee that another Georgia Frontiere or Al Davis won’t surface.

Now if it were just up to Jones, that might be more encouraging news. Jones, the showman, understands sizzle. Jones, as much an NFL visionary as a maverick, who already deserves Hall of Fame consideration after winning three Super Bowls with two head coaches and rewriting the way the NFL does business, said he cannot confine league strategy simply to benefit L.A.

Jones has met with Ovitz, who has now delivered detailed paperwork to NFL officials providing a $26-million remedy to any problems with the soil at his Carson site. Jones reviewed Ovitz’s drawings for “the Hacienda,” a mission-style stadium with bell towers at the junction of the 405 and 110 freeways and came away impressed.

Ovitz’s timetable, however, is different from that of the NFL’s. Ovitz, who has a record of staying power and big-time deal-making on his resume, has plans for a glitzy news conference in L.A. in early September to bring attention to his efforts, and he’s pressuring the NFL for a franchise commitment by the first of the year.

But Jones said he does not believe the NFL will be ready to make such a pronouncement even by March, and suggested further that Ovitz is about to receive some stiff competition from those rich men left unfulfilled after the bidding for the Cleveland franchise is concluded.

“Look out, Los Angeles,” said Jones, while discounting the significance of local ownership. “Don’t count out the ones that aren’t successful in Cleveland not wanting to take a look in Los Angeles. So it’s not just about Ovitz. We have a number of successful stories we can look at with people coming in from the outside to successfully run a franchise. Look at San Francisco. Look at Kansas City.

“It happens in almost any business; the highest bidder comes in and takes over.”

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As much as the NFL needs a team in L.A., he said, it also needs a team in Houston, and in Houston there is a window of opportunity with a mechanism already in place to provide public funds for a stadium.

“There is an urgent opportunity in Houston; I just don’t hear anybody [in L.A.] saying we need a team in Los Angeles,” Jones said.

More than that, Jones said, the future of L.A. and Houston might now be tied to Oakland, and if that doesn’t bring a gasp, there is a very real possibility in the minds of some that the NFL might have no choice but to let the Raiders return to Los Angeles.

“It should not be dismissed,” Jones said at the Cowboys’ training camp this week, delivering the chilling words in 100-degree temperatures.

And a day later, at the NFL owners’ meetings in a Dallas hotel, this echo from another NFL team owner: “Mark my words, Al’s moving back to L.A.”

Suddenly, having to listen to Los Angeles Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas drone about the New Coliseum no longer seems so intolerable.

Raider General Manager Bruce Allen will be at today’s conference, presumably before he starts house-hunting.

Does L.A. want football that badly to accept a warmed-over Raider team again?

Even if it requires substantial patience and conflict with the NFL, Los Angeles has the opportunity for a fresh start in a new stadium with a new owner. In the last 15 years, the Cardinals, Rams, Raiders, Colts, Ravens and Oilers have moved to new cities, and in that time they have posted a combined record of 198-328 with only three playoff appearances.

“I don’t call it being patient and just sitting there waiting for something to happen,” Jones said. “It’s like two buzzards sitting on a telephone line looking at each other and one says, ‘patience my butt; I’m going to kill something.’ No one person can pressure us, but if something’s put together and it makes it happen in L.A., then let’s go.”

Or get ready for the crime rate to rise in L.A. with the return of the Raiders. It has been the legal opinion of some that the Raiders, claiming they already own the rights to L.A., might have to be sitting on L.A. ground to win that contention in court.

But more significantly, there is great concern within NFL circles that Davis is headed for another legal triumph in his lawsuit against the league, which includes the charge that the NFL sabotaged his Hollywood Park deal to remain in L.A. before moving to Oakland.

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The best way to avoid costly damages, suggest some, is having Davis drop his legal action in exchange for assistance and a free return to Los Angeles. The Raiders recently filed a counterclaim against interests in Oakland, charging that promises have gone unfulfilled, which therefore should negate their stadium lease and allow them to leave.

“I don’t know anything at all,” said Jones, Davis’ closest confidant in the league, “but let me just say this, it should not be dismissed.”

It cannot be dismissed because the NFL has never felt so powerful to do as it pleases, still walking with a strut after signing a TV deal that will net an average of $73 million a year for every team in the league for the next eight years.

It cannot be dismissed because the NFL’s power to dictate has been reinforced once again with at least seven groups breathing hard in Cleveland for league favor, willing potentially to bid more than a half-a-billion dollars simply to gain entrance into the NFL before being asked then to pay staff, coach and player salaries.

It cannot be dismissed because the Oakland situation has become a mess, and losing on and off the field is not a very inviting legacy for Davis.

“The only reason why it should be looked upon as a possibility, is if you look at how this thing should finally wind up,” Jones said. “From the outset you would have never put two teams up north and not have a team in L.A. If there is any type of area that’s pretty uncomfortable right now,” it’s the Bay Area.

“I’m not suggesting this to solve Al’s problems, but look around at the numbers,” Jones said. “We will have 31 teams with Cleveland, and I believe there should be a team in L.A. and there should be a team in Houston, and [the Raiders’ moving] makes some sense out of everything. And you say why L.A.? Why the Raiders to L.A.? It’s just the natural thought process, whether it’s correct or not, you’re undoing something that was done potentially wrong to begin with.

“Nobody knows what’s going on [with Davis], but if you’re covering all the what-ifs, I can tell you he’s thought about it.”

Anyone for “public input?”