When It Comes to Pro Football, L.A.’s Is the Place

Five years after the departure of the Rams and Raiders, the NFL is about to make official what most have long thought: The league needs Los Angeles more than the city needs pro football.

And when the NFL returns, it will do so in the Coliseum.

A few years ago, Art Modell, owner of the Baltimore Ravens, likened the Coliseum area to a bombed-out Beirut and suggested the best way to transport his team to a game was in a tank.

But Modell later apologized to Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the area, and probably will be one of the at least 24 owners who will approve the NFL’s return to a renovated Coliseum at the owners’ meetings in Phoenix on March 15.

Need more evidence?

Houston has what NFL officials call a “slam-dunk deal” and a potential owner in Robert McNair who recently sold business interests to raise $1.2 billion for whatever franchise fee the league would demand.

And still the NFL is about to tell Houston no thanks and give Los Angeles a football team, whether it wants it or not.

Houston is offering a huge wad of public money--essential, supposedly, to making any NFL deal work. Instead of getting public funds, the NFL is willing to finance the construction of a stadium in Los Angeles.

That’s how badly the NFL wants to be back in Los Angeles. But the arrogant league would still like to flex its muscles.

Tampa Bay owner Malcolm Glazier will let it be known that anybody who wants a team in L.A. will have to come up with more than $1 billion. Dallas owner Jerry Jones and Raider owner Al Davis will nod in agreement.

San Diego owner Alex Spanos, and some others, will push for Houston, angry because the citizens of Los Angeles refuse to beg for an NFL team.

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, however, will appease them all, as he has done so often, slapping a deadline on Los Angeles to meet the NFL’s needs or else the league will look toward Houston. But Tagliabue knows, just as Glazier, Jones, Davis and Spanos know, that without Los Angeles the NFL will suffer a much bigger loss in years to come.

Still, the NFL is going to make Los Angeles jump through hoops to maintain its powerhouse reputation.

For instance, the league wants a better stadium financing deal, one that puts the team’s owner at less risk, thereby averting a dangerous precedent. And so it will threaten to take back its expansion team unless city politicians and business leaders rally to sell luxury suites and personal seat licenses, and encourage the potential for more public money.

Although it is not their purpose, the NFL owners will be doing Eli Broad and Ed Roski, potential owners of the new team, a favor, as they demand football fervor under the threat of taking Houston’s offer if not satisfied. But if politicians and private business leaders rally to the Coliseum effort, as the NFL anticipates, they will do so largely because of their faith in Broad and Roski.

If marketing is so important to making football work again in Los Angeles, how can the NFL pass on Broad and Roski, who have shown good faith by stepping forward?

If the NFL’s goal is to ignite a bidding war for an expansion franchise to play in the Coliseum, it will have to risk alienating Roski, who has a two-year exclusivity arrangement with the Coliseum. Under the terms of that agreement, the NFL could bypass Roski by reimbursing him for his expenses up to $5 million, but the league would be missing the point.

No one has devoted more time, energy or resources to bringing football back to Los Angeles since its departure than Roski. Potentially, the business ramifications of such a deal are great for Roski, more a land developer than a team owner, but after dealing with all the characters in this pursuit of football for more than five years, Roski stands the tallest to date.

If he lies, he has yet to be caught. If he has secret motives for spending so much personal time on his project the last three years, they remain well hidden. When he makes mistakes--and there have been some--he has shown grace in recovering.

We have no idea if he will be a good owner of an NFL team--if it’s his influence that has driven the Kings to such mediocrity, L.A. might end up with Heath Shuler at quarterback.

But this much is known: He has successfully resurrected the Coliseum and with the help of people like Michael Ovitz, whose proposed Carson project prompted some to look again at the Coliseum, he has the NFL on the brink of doing something it said it would never do--return to the Coliseum.

He lobbied Mayor Richard Riordan for support, and failing to get it, began working on Broad, another way of getting to Riordan. When it came time to introduce Broad--the moneybags in this deal now with the political clout that extends all the way to the state’s new governor--Riordan stepped before the microphone to publicly embrace Broad’s Coliseum involvement.

Broad is telling everyone he has been a lifelong football fan, although he can’t seem to talk about any particular game other than some long-ago Michigan State win over Notre Dame. No matter, he’s a businessman who won’t blink when the NFL tries to play the heavy, exacting a higher franchise fee while implying once again it might be headed to Houston.

Broad’s NFL weakness is his Los Angeles strength: He has no driving passion to join the NFL fraternity.

He already has shown he’s a quick learner, which wasn’t the case with another billionaire, Philip Anschutz. Anschutz was supposed to play the role Broad has now, but he had no desire to communicate with the public. After being advised that a high profile was a necessity for football fans familiar with the strange, reclusive dealings of Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere, Broad not only made himself accessible, but responded to a media suggestion that he travel to Miami to schmooze NFL owners at one of their meetings.

Roski, however, is the real leader in this pursuit of football. He lacks TV charisma and needs a better speech writer, but there has been a genuine Los Angeles/USC-bred passion there for more than three years that has not dimmed.

Ridley-Thomas has shown the same fire, and will deserve the ultimate bow for keeping the Coliseum faith, but that’s his job as a representative for the area. And Ridley-Thomas has lost perspective at times when the going has gotten tough, his focus so narrow on the Coliseum that he has not always been the good listener.

Not so with Roski, who responded to each NFL criticism like a man checking off items on a shopping list. When the NFL suggested it needed more financial wallop on the New Coliseum ownership team, Roski went after Broad. And then, in one of the greatest shows of humility, he stepped back into the shadows at the news conference introducing Broad while politicians crowded the stage, fighting for the spotlight that should have been on Roski.

The NFL, although having given in on the Coliseum, is going to try to call all the shots in Los Angeles. The owners will assemble an influential panel of prominent politicians and businessmen, promising them a final civic bow as the ball sails through the air on the opening kickoff. It will be an effective form of blackmail: The NFL won’t fail, these prominent L.A. citizens will.

The NFL will court the mayor, try to bring back Peter O’Malley, maybe even team Ovitz with former Disney boss Michael Eisner on the same committee--now that would be worth the price of a luxury suite.

But ultimately the NFL will not care about people like Roski. They made that clear in Cleveland when they announced that the criterion for selecting the owner of that expansion franchise would come down to who offered the most money.

And that’s what the meeting in Atlanta was all about Tuesday, and what the meeting in Phoenix next month will be all about. That’s why the NFL is returning to Los Angeles and passing on Houston’s offer--for more money. Ultimately, the league knows it will get a better TV deal, better corporate sponsorship deals and more exposure in the second-largest media market in the country.

The NFL is even willing to pay Los Angeles to join its fraternity, offering to provide money for stadium construction--money it will eventually get back, of course.

Nothing wrong with any of that, so long as Los Angeles continues to drive home the point: The NFL needs L.A. more than L.A. needs the NFL, thereby preventing the NFL from dictating the terms of its surrender in the coming months.