NFL, Stop Playing Games

The National Football League has all that it claims to want and need in gaining a home at the Coliseum for its 32nd and last new team for the foreseeable future.

This means a return to the nation’s second-largest television market, which is vital since, in following the money and moving and adding teams, the league has left viewers behind. Teams in St. Louis, Baltimore, Charlotte, N.C., Nashville and Jacksonville, Fla., are all ranked low, from 20th to 55th, in television markets.

The league has a solid and admired core of potential ownership in Eli Broad, Ed Roski and others who have given up exclusive negotiating rights in an effort to bring professional football back to the Coliseum. There is room for an expanded group that could include Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle, among others. There’s also broad support from community, business and political leaders. And public money invested in the Coliseum, its feeder roads and other infrastructure amounts to nearly a third of a billion dollars.

So why are the NFL owners acting as though none of that matters? Why are they still playing prospective owners against each other? Why were “preliminary talks” held that might have involved an effort to bring football to Hollywood Park, after the league owners had already made a commitment to the Coliseum?

The answer, of course, is to gain the highest possible level of control and profit for the NFL. But in this process, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the NFL owners are alienating local support. Tagliabue claims to have no idea about when an ownership group will be chosen. Who’s piloting this ship?

The league makes an absurd demand for 25,000 on-site parking spaces and now says it doesn’t need that many. Tagliabue and the owners schedule another allegedly crucial meeting, then declare that it’s the next meeting that will be critical. Concessions only encourage more owner demands. In the process, troubling speculation mounts.

Officials in the city of Carson said Ovitz was still urging them to stay in the hunt for an NFL team after Ovitz said publicly that he had dropped the Carson proposal and embraced the Coliseum project. Then owners waxed excited over Ovitz’s plan for the Coliseum, despite the fact that Ovitz said he wasn’t sure how he might accomplish the plan, which also involves a deal-breaking $225-million request for additional taxpayer money.

Broad and his partners say they might seek $67.5 million in public money for a parking structure, but they at least are prepared to foot the bill for that if support is not forthcoming.

Enough. The bottom line is this: Tagliabue and the owners made a commitment to the Coliseum; there are already enough billionaires available to be owners and interested in assuming those roles. They are smart people who can work out a realistic solution to the parking challenges. The elements are in place.

Tagliabue and the owners should realize that new public money for the project is out of the question. The league bosses should pick an ownership group, set a price for the franchise and get on with it. Southern Californians love pro football, but we’re getting darned tired of having our tail yanked.