L.A. Letter Tries to Reassure NFL on Coliseum Deal

In a letter to the National Football League, Los Angeles officials tried Thursday to reassure the league that a disputed contract provision that troubles some team owners will not stand in the way of bringing football back to the city.

A source with the league, however, said that while the letter helped clarify some issues, it did not resolve the concerns.

At issue is an agreement between developer Ed Roski and the Coliseum Commission in which Roski was granted the right to try to seek an expansion team for Los Angeles and to build a new stadium inside the Coliseum peristyle to accommodate the franchise. Widely referred to as an “exclusivity clause,” the provision has been interpreted to mean that to bring a team to the Coliseum, the NFL would need to include Roski and his partners--New Coliseum Venture--in the deal.

The commission, in its letter to the league, disputed that.

The agreement “does not preclude the commission from engaging in substantive or definitive discussions with the NFL or other parties, nor does it preclude the commission from executing an agreement with the NFL,” the letter said. In the event that the NFL chose an owner unaffiliated with Roski, the agreement provides that the new owner would have to reimburse Roski for his investment in the Coliseum project, the letter said. Sources say Roski has spent more than $3 million in that effort.

But the NFL has long insisted that there be no strings attached to its selection of an owner for its next football team, the league’s 32nd. And league officials worry that the deal with Roski might either leave the NFL vulnerable to a lawsuit or force the league’s newest owner to buy Roski out--both of which continue to concern the football owners.

“There’s confusion,” one NFL source said. “We need clarity.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a member of the Coliseum Commission and its negotiating committee, reacted in frustration to that response, saying he was disappointed that the NFL did not speak directly to the commission in order to resolve any outstanding issues.

“I thought the issues was: ‘Could they make a deal at the Coliseum?’ The answer is yes,” Yaroslavsky said. “I don’t want to communicate with the NFL through the newspaper . . . The time has come for the NFL and the people who own the Coliseum to talk.”

Although the league and the commission continued to operate at cross-purposes, Wednesday’s comments by Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, who has campaigned for a stadium in Carson, heartened some other officials involved in the talks. Ovitz said he was withdrawing his Carson bid in favor of trying to own a team that would play at the Coliseum, a move he said he made after it became clear that the league favored the Coliseum.

Carson officials fumed at that announcement, but Los Angeles leaders said it would help clear the decks for next week’s visit by a group of NFL owners, allowing them to concentrate on the Coliseum rather than split their attention between rival sites.