Bid to Land Team Is Just Meaningless Exhibition

The Broncos, 49ers and Chargers have opened training camp, and while the Chargers and 49ers certainly need the practice, folks in Denver, San Francisco and San Diego are talking football.

Football fans there await the exploits of Bubby Brister and Steve Young, and the pratfalls of Jim Harbaugh.

In Los Angeles we have Bill Chadwick, a lawyer making like a quarterback, and although first impressions suggest someone akin to Ryan Leaf, he will stand before NFL owners in Chicago tonight and tell them why they should put a team in the Coliseum, and also play their Super Bowls there.

In Denver, San Francisco and San Diego they call these kinds of events exhibition game--not much to get excited about while hoping that no one gets hurt or plays so poorly he gets cut.

Chadwick, appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to oversee the Coliseum deal and who modestly begins every sentence with “I,” has developed a secret game plan to spend your money and lure the NFL to Los Angeles. How arrogantly Leafish is that? He doesn’t want you to know how he’s planning to spend your cash.

He will tell it to a committee of NFL owners, though, behind closed doors tonight, and then repeat it to all of the owners in a bigger confab Wednesday. Discussions about your state funds will then dominate the meetings.

The owners will accept an Exposition Park site design, thank Chadwick for his earnest efforts to make them richer, and then start grousing about how the economics of the deal still don’t work in Los Angeles.

“I, Bill Chadwick,” will promise to work harder, the NFL will renew its threat to go to Houston in September if L.A. doesn’t increase its dowry, and then, by way of encouragement, the league will close the meetings by announcing that it is pledging up to $150 million to the L.A. project.

The NFL, of course, doesn’t give away anything. This is the league that insists on fans purchasing tickets for exhibition games at full price as part of regular-season ticket packages.

So, when talk starts about that $150-million loan, you will start hearing about the $400 million in improvements planned at Exposition Park in stadium and parking garages, and about your public investment obligation.

Said someone with NFL ties, “L.A. should be providing incentives [to the NFL], instead of discouraging the league’s return.”

Translation: The NFL wants more money.

“It’s going to come down to this for the public,” an NFL insider said. “To get this asset, there is a payback.”

For example. Exposition Park generates about $2 million in parking every year, and it’s been learned that in Chadwick’s secret term sheet, he’s asking for $2.5 million for the state in parking revenue, once the football stadium is built.

The NFL, however, says the Sports Arena is going to be torn down, anyway, which means the state will make only about $1 million on parking without the return of the NFL. So, if the NFL is responsible for another million in parking, why should the state get it?

The NFL goes one step further: It wants all that money for its new owner.

That’s what all this nonsense is about: Just how much revenue the NFL can squeeze out of a stadium lease before affixing a franchise fee to be divided by 31 teams.

And that’s what makes this particular go-round with Chadwick and the owners so inconsequential.

“Nothing has changed from four years ago,” said a Los Angeles official. “It’s all about how badly does the NFL want L.A.?”

Here’s the more interesting question: Does the NFL want to come back to Los Angeles so badly that it would accept a Staples Center II deal?

“That’s what the politicians here want: No perceived giveaways allowing billionaire developers to make billions,” said one L.A. official. “It’s like the Staples Center, where the developers got very little from the city, but did get an incredible asset that can make the revenue to support the developers’ investment.

“The only concern with the way Chadwick is doing things is that he’s trying to please everyone in L.A., asking for too much from the NFL, too many silly things, and might turn off the NFL owners and force them to go to Houston without taking time for serious negotiations.”

This is where history steps in. The developers of the Staples Center threatened to go to Inglewood if the city of Los Angeles didn’t make concessions. The city of Los Angeles didn’t make concessions and the developers, who never wanted to go to Inglewood, started building in L.A.

The NFL, meanwhile, points to St. Louis, Baltimore and Cleveland, cities that lost teams and came begging for new franchises, willing to build rent-free stadiums, and Carolina and Jacksonville, which were willing to pay substantial franchise fees.

Now it’s Houston providing Inglewood-like leverage and beseeching the NFL, and according to dispatches from there Monday, prospective team owner Bob McNair has been told by two NFL owners that his city’s chances of landing an expansion team are now better than 50-50 because L.A. can’t present an acceptable financial package.

McNair, though, is the guy who said he had nine NFL owners telling him in March that they favored the return of football to Houston. A day later, the vote favored L.A., 29-2.

Houston is offering a far more attractive package than Inglewood ever did and appears to be a real option, but it still comes back to the only question that has ever mattered in this tedious process: How badly does the NFL want to be in L.A.?

This is where group dynamics take over.

The 31 NFL owners have 31 opinions. New Orleans owner Thomas Benson favors L.A. because he might be interested in moving his team to Houston. Dallas’ Jerry Jones might favor Houston because he thinks the Raiders’ only escape from a bad deal in Oakland is Los Angeles.

Collectively, however, they agree that they need a team in Los Angeles for their long-range financial welfare. Collectively, they also can act stupidly, get peeved at L.A.’s unwillingness to play ball NFL-style and grab the Houston deal they could have taken years ago.

After countless meetings of go-nowhere rhetoric for Los Angeles, there’s no reason to think that many people really care. So much economic gobbledygook and we haven’t even come close to the issues that will eventually effect the collective interest and sports psyche of L.A., should the NFL return. Like, who will own the team? Coach it? Play quarterback?

Maybe Leaf’s firstborn at this rate. Good new--he just got engaged.

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HOUSTON BLASTS OFF: While the NFL mulls proposals for a franchise in Los Angeles, the nation’s fourth-largest city expresses indignation. A1

TALLYING THE SCORE: There is a great deal of debate about the benefit of having a football team in L.A., and the use of public funds to pay for it. B1

DRIVE STALLS: Ex-Bronco John Elway came up short in his effort to win the right to bid for ownership of the Nuggets and Avalanche. Page 2

49ERS TAKE A CHANCE: Putting their needs ahead of his history of trouble, the San Francisco 49ers signed running back Lawrence Phillips. Page 7