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Expansion Team for Cleveland Means Ball Is in L.A.’s Hands

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The game has not only officially begun, but it is Los Angeles’ to win or lose, now that the NFL has awarded Cleveland an expansion franchise to begin play in 1999, as it did here Monday.

The NFL now has 31 teams, which presents scheduling problems and unbalanced conferences, thereby making it obvious that the league will have to expand again.

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said the NFL would discuss expansion opportunities beyond Cleveland today, but said the league will undoubtedly look toward Los Angeles, Houston, Toronto and Mexico City.

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League officials and NFL owners, however, are already insisting privately that the NFL has eyes only for the nation’s second-ranking media market and all the potential it offers in future revenues.

“How soon will we expand again?” asked a league official. “How soon does Los Angeles build a stadium?”

Tagliabue, the league’s leading cheerleader for expansion, received a five-year contract extension at the owners’ annual meetings early Monday and then, in a startling display of his power and influence, stopped a move that would have delayed the decision on Cleveland.

Supported by former Browns’ owner Art Modell, who stood and made an impassioned speech for the return of football to Cleveland, and Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney, who delivered a stirring endorsement, Tagliabue, without waiting for a vote of the owners, announced that the league would expand to Cleveland.

Tagliabue then called on Cleveland Mayor Michael White, who had forced the NFL to make the deal that resulted in expansion after the original Browns had moved to Baltimore. White stepped before a battery of cameras reporting live back to Cleveland, saying that the Dawg Pound would reopen for business next year.

The Browns will play the Dallas Cowboys in the Hall of Fame game next July to kick off the exhibition schedule, then will begin regular-season play in a new stadium being built with public funds and a $48-million loan from the NFL. More than 50,000 personal-seat licenses for the new stadium have already been sold, and the new ownership group, is expected to profit by as much as $70 million a year.

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There are four groups vying for ownership of the new Browns’ franchise, still waiting for the NFL to set a sale price. That price is expected to top $400 million, doubling the expansion fees paid by Charlotte and Jacksonville.

The Cleveland scenario, which included a series of NFL demands and a new stadium for the new team, will undoubtedly be the blueprint Los Angeles is asked to follow. The NFL has told officials in Los Angeles it wants a new stadium, and then it will determine who owns the franchise, a strategic move on the NFL’s part to increase competition and eventually the expansion fee.

In the short term, there will probably not be much movement in trying to establish a viable expansion opportunity in Los Angeles, however, while league officials go through the process of completing the Cleveland deal. Some league insiders would like to see another expansion team operating by 2001, but many owners, concerned about the further dilution of talent, specifically at quarterback, are in no hurry to add a 32nd team.

“I’m just very worried about the talent level,” said William Clay Ford Jr., vice chairman of the Detroit Lions. “Obviously L.A. is a very important market--I certainly wouldn’t tell you that I would sit here and vote against an L.A. team--and a lot will depend on whether L.A. really wants a team.”

That is a question that will dominate NFL owners’ meetings for the next few years, beginning today.

Officials from Hollywood Park, the New Coliseum and now a new project in Carson being engineered by former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz are now waiting for a specific timetable and list of NFL requirements in order to focus and increase their efforts.

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“Cleveland getting an expansion team is a little shot in the arm--not a big shot--but a boost,” said Pat Lynch, general manager of the Coliseum. “We’ve always anticipated that we would be next, after Cleveland got its team, and now it’s happened. And that’s a good sign.”

In other business, the owners:

* Formally approved the extension of their labor contract three more years--through the end of 2003.

* Approved a new policy that will allow Tagliabue to suspend players convicted of assault, spousal abuse, gun possession and other crimes.

“The object is to deter misconduct,” Tagliabue said. “We want to help the players keep out of trouble and we think this is one way to do it.”

* Doubled Tagliabue’s salary from about $2.5 million a year to $5 million.

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