L.A. Is Best Deal for NFL

Team owners of the National Football League opened their annual meeting this weekend and for Los Angeles the No. 1 item on the agenda is its quest for the last new NFL franchise for the foreseeable future.

The owners reportedly are pondering financing and building a stadium themselves and, in effect, auctioning it off to the highest bidder.

But the owners need to know some things about L.A. If they expect to pyramid their investment into the biggest show in town, they’ll have to charge a range of ticket prices affordable to everyone, even if that means a lower price for the franchise. There are countless other pleasures to pursue in Southern California and an over-the-top professional football franchise jacking ticket prices to the limit could very well lose its bid for broad-based support.

If the NFL wants to move in a sensible way, there a number of solid combines in Los Angeles prepared to do business, to strike a reasonable deal with the owners in which all sides would profit, particularly the fans. They include our preference, the New Coliseum Partners, a combine including Eli Broad and Ed Roski Jr., and a rival group including Michael Ovitz, Ron Burkle, Magic Johnson and others who propose to build a stadium in Carson.

Things are never simple with the NFL. Consider, for example, the recent behavior of Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the owner of the Carolina Panthers, Jerry Richardson.

Tagliabue says Carson is “compelling,” expresses concern about aspects of the Coliseum deal and about what kind of public investment would be made. But near the Coliseum, there is considerable investment already in streets and other infrastructure that will be needed to support new football crowds. .

Let’s be clear about a few things here. The NFL need not look for large pots of additional public money. They won’t be there. This is Los Angeles, home of some of the world’s toughest taxpayers. They don’t roll over for anyone.

Besides, the work has been done if the Coliseum Partners end up with the franchise. Figueroa Corridor, which begins at Exposition Park and its various attractions and stretches north, includes the new Staples Center, future home of Lakers basketball and Kings hockey, and a cultural stretch including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Disney Concert Hall, the site of Los Angeles’ new Roman Catholic Cathedral, and on a hilltop nearby, Dodger Stadium.

A first-rate show supported by local owners would reignite the support that professional football drew in Los Angeles in decades past, and that USC and UCLA have kept at the college level. That enthusiasm stretched across the economic classes.

With its less desirable site, the Ovitz-Burkle team nevertheless remains in the game and deserves credit. Its bid wooed the NFL back from the brink when it was weighing Houston over Los Angeles. But the group wants to build a stadium on a landfill and the whole deal hinges on Carson’s very limited public finances. In the New Coliseum Partners, anchored by Roski and Broad, the NFL has the best opportunity to make a successful return to Southern California.

This is the place. Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world, the nation’s second-largest television market. It’s everything the NFL, with its declining television ratings, needs.

The NFL moguls need to look at the books on their idea promoting an all-out bidding war in Los Angeles for their stadium. They should note the combined $800-million bid for the Washington Redskins team and their new stadium. That deal now looks shaky and will probably be restructured.

Now, it’s time for the NFL to stop playing one Los Angeles ownership group against the other, and the city of Houston against Los Angeles. The league should pick an ownership that will bring credit to the league and return Los Angeles to the fold. The NFL can’t afford to let this one slip away.