L.A.’s Football Predicament: Isn’t It Rich?

The defining moment in L.A.’s bid to win a new professional football team came in Atlanta last month when an executive in the NFL dropped the model of a stadium on his foot. Somehow that said it all.

The executive was Roger Goodell. He was carrying a model depicting how the Coliseum could be revamped to accommodate a new team when it apparently assumed a life of its own and jumped from his arms onto his foot, requiring 30 stitches and a cast up to his calf.

While I’m sure it caused the poor man pain, there is still a comedic element to the whole thing, a kind of Chaplinesque summary of what everyone’s been going through in order to bring NFL Franchise No. 32 to the City of Angles.

The model was being proposed by billionaire Eli Broad to edge out multimillionaire Michael Ovitz in their conflicting bids to provide first-class accommodations for this mythical new team. The one that wins will probably end up owning the franchise and thereby become a trillionaire.

This will no doubt cost us non-billionaires a few bucks, because both men are talking about the need for several million dollars in “public money” to accommodate parking facilities demanded by the NFL.

The rich are rich because they do not risk their own money when there is our money to throw around, even though an L.A. Times poll as far back as 17 months ago showed a severe lack of interest in another football team in town.

I share that lack of interest. I don’t care too.

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This all began when the Rams left L.A. They were never a terrific team, but they were ours, the way freeway calamities and smog are ours, and we accepted them. When they left, we cried.

Then the Raiders came to town. This tough, blood-spattered team that had terrorized the NFL suddenly became no more vicious than naughty children, tottering about the field like little girls in high heels. We called them the Hollywood Raiders, and when they left, we hardly even looked up.

I say “we,” but not everyone was happy with the idea that the nation’s second-largest TV market was football-less, especially those who figured they could make money out of a new franchise. That’s the reason they’re rich and we’re just barely getting by.

Joined by a few bleary jocks, the billionaires and multimillionaires began clamoring to bring another team to L.A. When the NFL announced that Franchise No. 32 was available, they went after it like dogs at a slaughterhouse.

Former superagent Ovitz, who got a $90-million severance check three years ago just for leaving the Walt Disney Co., jumped in with a proposal to build a stadium in Carson.

Because enough people scratched and said, “Where?” he ultimately dropped the proposal. Meanwhile, Broad popped up with an idea to revamp the L.A. Coliseum, followed by Ovitz’s plan to revamp the Coliseum, followed by the NFL’s demand for a 25,000-space parking lot, followed by protests from the Bus Riders Union, which wants new buses more than it wants a new team, followed by Goodell dropping the stadium model on his foot, ka-pow!

And that’s where we are now. More or less.

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Well, actually, Gov. Gray Davis has entered the fray, because the state owns the Coliseum and its four surrounding museums and wants the matter settled before someone decides to bulldoze the museums under. Bill Clinton will no doubt soon step in, followed by NATO, the U.N. and Pope John Paul II.

Meanwhile, Ovitz is muttering about Carson again, and billionaire Marvin Davis is muttering about Hollywood Park, and Al Davis is muttering about returning to L.A. and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is saying they’d better get it all together by June 30 because that’s when he’s going on vacation.

As I understand it, the NFL has until Sept. 15 to decide where the franchise will go and who will own it, so there is still time to quarrel and call names before and after Tagliabue’s vacation.

I guess you’ve figured out by now that what this is all about isn’t what we non-billionaires might want or not want. If it were, they would pay some attention to that Times poll in which 59% of us said that getting a pro football team in town wasn’t terribly important. Two-thirds also said absolutely no to the use of public money, but who’s listening?

It’s not up to us to decide what we want, silly, it’s up to the billionaires and multimillionaires. The formula is simple. They’ll make money, the NFL will make more money and we’ll spend whatever we have to make everyone else rich. Give a little, take a lot. You don’t need a scoreboard to know the winner.

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.