Will Elway Come Home Again?

Sixteen years to the very day he arrived in this city full of promise with a boyish floppy head of hair, John Elway will officially complete the triumphant journey today with the announcement he is retiring from the NFL.

Winning more regular season games than anyone else to play the game after being traded by Baltimore to Denver, playing in five Super Bowls, winning two and closing his career as Super Bowl XXXIII most valuable player, life now begins anew for the energized 38-year-old father of four with an economics degree from Stanford who still wants more.

There have already been talks about him entering the “Monday Night Football” booth, but the criticism that Boomer Esiason took as a rookie broadcaster does not make the assignment all that inviting. A year ago Elway had a TV offer of gigantic proportions and he had no interest.

A local congressman, joking but not smiling, said, “Let’s hope he doesn’t go into politics.” Elway has thought about it, and thought about it seriously, but in the past year has cooled to the idea, not wanting to expose his family more than he already has as the most identifiable person in Denver.

There is private business to consider, Elway having already distinguished himself as an automobile franchise dealer, selling his car lots for more than $80 million to Miami Dolphin owner Wayne Huizenga a little more than a year ago. But Elway has already done that, and there has to be something more.

He gave thought to playing on the celebrity golf tour, the competitor in him thinking he could still find the joy of trying to win every weekend, but stopped himself with the realization he would not be home to see his son play football, his daughters play basketball.

Bronco owner Pat Bowlen, who has become one of Elway’s closest friends, has said he’s willing to sell Elway a piece of his team, while also showing interest in becoming his mentor in the business of front office football. But Bowlen also knows that Elway has no desire to simply hang around as decoration and acknowledges the Broncos might not be able to satisfy Elway’s cravings for something more day to day.

So where does that leave Elway as he begins Chapter 2 in his life?

In Los Angeles.

It makes so much sense--the kid from Granada Hills coming home all grown up to provide credibility and enthusiasm to a sagging football campaign and an apparent apathetic football community about to get an expansion franchise whether it likes it or not.

What if John Elway was part of the ownership team of the Los Angeles expansion team? What if John Elway’s next assignment in life was to direct the football operations of the Los Angeles Stars? What if John Elway threw in with someone like Peter O’Malley, whose only interest in the past has been to build a one-of-a-kind football stadium, leaving someone else to run the day-to-day operation?

What if John Elway threw in with Casey Wasserman--grandson to Lew Wasserman and all his money--although only in his mid-20s, polished and motivated enough to bring an Arena Football League team to the city? What if John Elway threw in with the Los Angeles entertainment industry and all the money and pizazz it can deliver?

What kind of excitement would John Elway bring to Los Angeles? Could he do for football what Jerry West did for basketball? Could he excite Los Angeles fans left unmoved to date by Ed Roski, Philip Anschutz, Eli Broad and Michael Ovitz?

Could he be the catalyst to put O’Malley back on the job? How excited would the NFL be at having the team of O’Malley and Elway, the former Yankee minor league baseball player, backed by the big money that such a pairing might invite, to lead the Los Angeles charge for an expansion team?

O’Malley has a number of opportunities that he is investigating, football being only one of them, and Elway has a retirement announcement to make formal before detailing the rest of his life. They have never met, but they should.

There is no life presently to the Los Angeles football effort, despite the best efforts of many moving forward to make it happen. Broad and Roski have Los Angeles’ political backing, but haven’t done much to excite the NFL, which has asked them to provide another new design for a stadium.

Ovitz’s song and dance routine has dazzled several NFL owners, but this is a guy who thought a football stadium on a dump site in Carson would work, and now blowing with the wind he has adopted the Coliseum as his home.

Right now it’s only a suggestion, maybe even a Hollywood outlandish proposition. But 16 years ago before a late-night news conference announcing the trade, the people in Denver never dreamed John Elway would live and play among them, providing them memories now they can’t imagine ever forgetting.

What if such a news conference was looming in Los Angeles’ future?