NFL Votes to Give New Team to L.A. but Sets Conditions

The National Football League voted Tuesday to bring football back to Los Angeles but with conditions.

The league did not pick an owner or a site, and it set so many hurdles that the league’s newest team may yet end up in Houston.

It gave the L.A. area six months, until Sept. 15, to meet its demands, which include a solid financing plan that mixes public and private funds and a strong show of support from the “Los Angeles business community.”

If the conditions aren’t met, the league will turn its attention in September toward Houston and its deal, flush with $200 million in public funding.

Left unresolved Tuesday was the key issue of where a Los Angeles team--an expansion club that would bring the league roster to 32 teams--would play. The league’s 14-member expansion committee is due in the next few weeks to tour both the Coliseum near downtown, which would be renovated under a proposal league officials indicated they prefer, and a site in the South Bay suburb of Carson. The committee is expected to decide on a site by May.

Also unsettled is ownership of the team. Will the owners be Eli Broad and Edward P. Roski Jr., the real estate heavyweights who have championed the Coliseum? Or famed super-agent Michael Ovitz, who along with grocery magnate Ron Burkle has led Carson’s bid? Or all of them together? Or someone new?

“I personally wouldn’t be surprised if other people surface,” said Jerry Richardson, owner of the Carolina Panthers and head of the NFL’s stadium committee. “It’s a mix and match that’s really not [in] our realm to solve.”

Boosters said it will all be sorted out and predicted that the league’s conditions would be met.

Broad said, “We’ll work with the NFL. As soon as they decide they want to go to the Coliseum, we obviously want the franchise, but we are prepared to open the doors to others joining us for the effort--as long as they’re from Los Angeles and support the city.”

Roski also expressed optimism: “I see no reason why we can’t get it done.”

Ovitz, whose plan includes a mall-stadium that he has dubbed the Hacienda, also was upbeat: “We could not be more pleased,” he said. “At this point it’s Los Angeles’ to lose.”

Mayor Richard Riordan welcomed news of the vote, noting that it followed Monday’s announcement that Los Angeles will host the Democratic National Convention in 2000. The dual developments this week represent significant victories in his efforts to rebuild the city’s core.

“It’s tremendous news for Los Angeles,” Riordan said.

Bringing a team to Los Angeles, Riordan said, would have some direct economic benefits but would pay off more broadly by strengthening the city’s image and attracting new jobs.

One key issue has been whether Los Angeles would contribute public money to the construction of a new stadium or the purchase of a team. Riordan has long opposed the use of existing taxpayer money, but on Tuesday said that he would support using taxes as long as that money comes from new revenues generated by the football team.

Riordan said he would support, for example, a tax on tickets or some form of bond financing that would tap money produced by the new franchise without dipping into existing city funds.

Others were more skeptical.

Robert McNair, the prospective Houston owner, said of Los Angeles, “There’s not the passion there that there is in Texas for football.”

“What’s changed?” asked Raider owner Al Davis, whose team played in the Coliseum from 1982-94 before returning to Oakland, its ancestral home, before the 1995 season. “They couldn’t get their act together in four years. Why should they be able to do it in six months?”

The vote was 29 to 2 for Los Angeles, with Oakland and Buffalo casting the no votes. Davis recently sued the NFL in Los Angeles County Superior Court, asserting that he owns “the Los Angeles market.” League officials insist that the suit will have no bearing on their expansion plans.

Lure of L.A. Strong for NFL

The greater Los Angeles area has been without professional football since both the Raiders and the Rams left. The Rams--who had played for years in Los Angeles--relocated before the 1980 season to Anaheim and later moved to St. Louis.

Last year, the NFL awarded a 31st team to Cleveland, whose Browns had moved to Baltimore and become the Ravens. In part because of the imbalance that scheduling 31 teams presents, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has pushed to add a 32nd team. He has made it clear, however, that the league is highly unlikely to expand beyond 32 teams for many years.

The league has long coveted a return to the Los Angeles area.

“You can’t deny the dynamics of the market,” Richardson said, adding that it’s the “entertainment capital of the world” and a “great venue” for Super Bowls.

League officials also are intrigued by the possibility of growing the NFL “brand” among a burgeoning Latino population.

Most important, however, is that Los Angeles is the nation’s second-largest television market, three times the size of Houston. A clause in the league’s current TV deal--$17.6 billion for eight years--allows it to renegotiate the contract after the 2002 season, after the expansion team’s first season.

Along with Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, Roski and Ovitz have tirelessly sung the praises of Los Angeles to league officials. Ovitz, in particular, has said many times that he finds it sad that his children are growing up without a local team.

Plans for both the Coliseum and the Carson sites, however, are based on a mountain of debt--and that has given the league pause.

Ovitz’s plan includes about $270 million worth of loans.

The Coliseum plan is based on about $217 million of debt.

The city of Carson has pledged to provide up to $180 million, probably through bonds. The Coliseum proposal includes only $40 million in public funds--$20 million in redevelopment money, $20 million in ticket taxes.

Both plans would make up the rest of the money they need for stadium costs--about $100 million for the Coliseum, $110 million in Carson--through the sale of personal seat licenses, naming rights and other sources.

Besides stadium costs, the NFL will levy a franchise fee. Cleveland’s fee was $476 million. That’s the floor for the L.A. franchise.

The Carson site, a 157-acre parcel at the intersection of the San Diego and Harbor freeways, used to be a municipal landfill. State officials have said it can be cleaned up for about $35 million.

Riordan’s public support for the Coliseum has been, at best, lukewarm.

The league also expressed concern Tuesday about Roski’s exclusivity arrangement at the Coliseum. He has the sole right to an expansion franchise there until October 2000.

“That is one of the things they’re going to come out and discuss,” Roski said Tuesday night.

Houston Deal ‘Appears Solid’

In the second sentence of its resolution, the league noted that the Los Angeles stadium proposals contain “significant issues requiring further study.” By comparison, the Houston deal for a state-of-the-art facility “appears solid.”

Nonetheless, because of “television contracts and similar factors,” the league’s “first priority” should be to get back to L.A., it said.

But only if the following conditions are met:

* A firm decision between Carson and the Coliseum.

* A signed “stadium development agreement,” containing “all necessary approvals” and addressing “the issues of financing, facility management and other key terms.”

* “Commitments” from Los Angeles businesspeople to “actively support” the team. Such support means buying luxury boxes and deals to provide perhaps $100 million or more through naming rights.

* A “public-private partnership” to “work toward satisfying the foregoing conditions,” the NFL’s way of saying that it hopes to procure more taxpayer money toward a team.

If the conditions aren’t met, Tagliabue said, the league will unhesitatingly head to Houston.

McNair, meantime, who in recent days sent letters to nine teams inquiring whether any were interested in moving to Houston, said he would continue to pursue an existing team.

Richardson, for one, said the league is obliged to help the Los Angeles bid succeed.

“We have an obligation to re-create and rekindle interest in the National Football League,” he said.

Late Tuesday, Ridley-Thomas took a moment to celebrate--before he once again set about working the room.

“We’ve worked very hard and I think efficiently to salute Los Angeles as the market in which [the NFL] belongs,” he said. “Now we have to finalize the deal.”

* T.J. SIMERS: NFL will go to Carson or Houston if Edward Roski holds to Coliseum agreement. D1

* BILL PLASCHKE: L.A. deserves cheers for believing the NFL needs us more than we need it. D1