League Awards L.A. an Expansion Franchise Contingent on Meeting Demands by Sept. 15

The NFL blinked first.

Four years after skipping town, the most powerful league in sports returned Tuesday with an apologetic smile and hat in hand.

The NFL announced it wants to play in Los Angeles again.

Please?

It will give us the expansion team we want.

It will probably house that team in the renovated Coliseum site that has become so popular.

It will make sure the ownership is local and solid.

Its biggest stipulation is that the city’s business and political leaders rally around the project in the next six months.

At that point, on a September day that could be as important as any in this town’s sports history, they will officially award us the league’s 32nd franchise.

Hmmmm.

What do you think?

We could do that.

We could play by these rules.

After all, these are not the rules often forced by the league upon those insecure cities that lavish public money on private enterprise.

These are our rules.

Cheers to you, Los Angeles, for realizing the uniqueness of this town in relation to this sport.

The NFL needs us more than we need the NFL.

Nobody has dared say this before.

We did.

We shouted it over and over, from the moment we watched the Raiders and Rams disappear across the horizon in the spring and summer of 1995.

Nobody jumped up to hand the league tax dollars for a new stadium.

Nobody opened their arms to embrace potential carpetbaggers from Phoenix or Cincinnati.

Remember the Seattle Seahawks? Remember how, a couple of years ago, they actually set up offices in Anaheim before the league and public opinion forced them back home?

One of our proudest moments, that.

Through actions of officials and inaction of citizens, we repeatedly reminded the league that while pro football was a wondrously unifying sport, it was still merely a sport.

We could take it or leave it.

With televised football ratings falling more than 30% from 1994 until this season, it became obvious that we were leaving it.

On Tuesday, the NFL finally listened.

It has a completed deal in Houston, a solid owner and public money and great new stadium plan.

Yet it put Houston on hold.

It has no deal in Los Angeles, two competing owners, two competing sites, uncertainty about everything from luxury boxes to parking lots.

Yet the team is ours to lose.

“The NFL is paying L.A. a huge compliment,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, the triumphant councilman who has been in the owners’ faces for several years. “They are saying, L.A. is immensely attractive and where we belong.

“There is now a motivation to make this happen, and happen right.”

There is motivation from both sides.

While the league has tipped its hand--”You can’t deny the dynamics of the market,” said Jerry Richardson, influential Carolina owner--now it is time for Los Angeles to open its arms.

First, there is the issue of the site.

The league will pick the Coliseum, and rightly so.

Its renovation plans make sense. Its history makes sense.

But more than anything, its location makes sense.

Now, with the chances of a Raider return diminishing to almost nothing, is the time to forget about Raider fans.

The Coliseum location has always worked for USC fans. It should work for expansion NFL fans.

And with the completion of the new Staples Center down the street energizing the area, it will work for the city.

It is time to forget old notions that are as tired as Al Davis’ act. Give the Coliseum a chance.

Second, there is the issue of ownership.

The league is worried that, because Ed Roski controls the rights to the Coliseum, it would be forced to accept him and Eli Broad as owners.

Not that the league doesn’t like them, but it hates being forced into anything.

Roski has said that if his presence keeps Los Angeles from getting a football team, he will give up those rights to another owner.

But that’s not right. Roski is the one who has pushed so long for the Coliseum, the one who brought in money man Broad; they would treat the team like the heirloom it will become.

Michael Ovitz?

He wasn’t at the owners meetings Tuesday, or I would have said this to his face.

It is time to give up his Carson act. It is a losing site. The fight is over. This is no time to keep shooting.

He needs to either join the Coliseum folks or head for the bench.

Tuesday was a time for celebrating the city’s unity, not its divisions.

The team hasn’t even been named yet, and already Los Angeles has won its first game.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.