The Deal Ovitz Couldn’t Make

He was gone by the time the Houston celebration began, worn out by years of scrambling to curry NFL favor and three final midnight hours of puzzlement while listening to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue explain to him why he didn’t get his team.

Did Michael Ovitz ever have a chance? Had he been misled? Had he exaggerated his chances?

It still may be days before some of those answers surface, Ovitz choosing now to be the good soldier who fought the good fight before getting knocked off in battle.

“I haven’t lost my interest in football,” he said, “but I need some time to recover from my disappointment.”

Ovitz on the rebound, however, is nothing new.

“What am I going to do next? I’ll wake up tomorrow and come up with another idea.”

If Los Angeles had any chance of securing an expansion franchise, it rested with Ovitz, who followed the NFL playbook but lacked the checkbook to keep up with Houston’s Bob McNair.

The Los Angeles deal didn’t make economic sense as long as there was a McNair and a Houston proposal supported by $200 million in public funds.

“He had a $200-million head start and with something like that it’s tough to catch up,” Ovitz said.

But still Ovitz drove on, compelling in his zeal to convince NFL owners that they would be making a grave mistake for their future well-being if they bypassed Los Angeles. To some extent, it was an amazing piece of work that he was able to take that argument as far as he did.

More than that, he believed, he was being guided by Tagliabue, who will leave office in a few years after taking the NFL to such exotic outposts as Nashville, Jacksonville and Charlotte, while Los Angeles sits empty.

Tagliabue made the biggest blunder of anyone who has been involved in this process since the Ram and Raider departures after the 1994 season. He remained convinced that the NFL could get public money from Los Angeles, banking on the state of California more than any other entity to step forward.

Ovitz placed his faith in Tagliabue, who has been effective in the past in willing his way upon the league’s membership. But this one got away from Tagliabue as soon as he allowed the league to pass a resolution establishing a deadline to get a square deal in Los Angeles or else the league would go to Houston.

The first deadline on Sept. 15 passed with only grumbles from league owners. But this one, with everyone gathered around a table piled high with McNair’s money, was beyond Tagliabue’s influence.

As late as last Friday, however, Ovitz had no doubt he would be returning to Los Angeles with an expansion franchise because that’s what he had been told. He was advised that McNair had made an expansion-fee offer of $475 million and would increase it to $600 million. He was told to push his bid close to $500 million and the league power brokers would then do the rest of the arm twisting.

Ovitz made a mistake, though, the same one he has repeatedly made in this process: He believed what he was told.

After being informed by a reporter Tuesday night that his bid had failed, Ovitz met with Tagliabue in a hotel room for more than three hours. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

The game was over, but the league wasn’t finished toying with Ovitz. It wanted him to know how well he had done, priming him to be used again in the event a team tries to move to Los Angeles.

At the same time the league let it be known how upset it was with Ed Roski and Eli Broad, and the show that had been put on to upstage Ovitz in the lobby of the hotel. The league told Ovitz that it was outraged, and that it would pay homage to him in Wednesday’s news conference to announce Houston’s selection.

But Tagliabue didn’t single out Ovitz. Instead, he grouped him with Roski and Broad, giving legitimacy to the Coliseum proposal, although behind the scenes the league directed it at the nearest trash can. But you never know whom you might need if you ever come back to Los Angeles, and so Tagliabue was not about to torch any bridges.

There has even been talk of the NFL giving the money to Ovitz to buy the 97 acres at Hollywood Park that will be sold to a housing developer if Ovitz doesn’t exercise his option Friday, but does Ovitz have the energy to keep playing the NFL game?

“I’m incredibly disappointed, but I don’t want to go into what might have happened or who was right or who was wrong,” Ovitz said. “I understand in business that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

“I haven’t made any decision about the land or what I might do next. Listen, I did everything they asked, had great support from the people working with me and it just didn’t work out. I tried to convince everyone that they needed to be in Los Angeles and make money the secondary issue. But that was unacceptable.

“Hey, I don’t like to lose, but that’s what happened. So be it. We’ve been going at it for a long time, but I think we represented Los Angeles properly and with dignity.

“Who knows, maybe there will be somebody out there willing to sell their team.”

COVERAGE

* MAIN STORY A1

* RANDY HARVEY Page 2

* TIMELINE Pages 8-9

* Q&A; Page 8

* COMING TO L.A.? Page 8

* HOUSTON REACTS Page 9

* WINNERS, LOSERS Page 9