L.A. Is Still the Place

Billionaire Marvin Davis kicked it around, but his plans to own an NFL expansion team in Los Angeles went flat Tuesday.

Davis said he had been assured by NFL officials that owners would accept his proposal, but because league rules would require him to dispose of his interests in a Missouri casino, he was withdrawing his bid for a team.

Hollywood Park immediately indicated it would honor Davis’ one-week option extension on nearly 100 acres of its land through Friday, which would allow the NFL to bid to assume that option. That land, across the street from the Forum at the corner of Prairie Avenue and 90th Street, would be the site of a new stadium.

If the NFL does assume the option, look for Michael Ovitz and Ron Burkle to continue their game of hopscotch, jumping from Carson to the Coliseum and now to Inglewood, as the NFL’s champion at Hollywood Park.

“I want to own a football team,” said Ovitz, who was told by league owners early on to stay the course and remain the last man standing. “I am interested in any venue that the league says interests the owners.”

The NFL’s bid for the Hollywood Park stadium site would be another declaration of how serious it remains in putting an expansion team in Los Angeles, contradicting sentiment around the country that Houston has already been declared the winner in this battle.

The league’s owners will meet Oct. 5-6 in Atlanta and the divergent opinions should once again prompt them to adjourn without declaring which city will get the NFL’s 32nd franchise.

For L.A., that would be a victory, given the pressure applied by the publicly funded Houston proposal and the popularity of Bob McNair, the team’s prospective owner, among NFL owners.

The league would like to consummate a deal with Hollywood Park as soon as today. And although Davis said his gaming interests drove him out of the running, Hollywood Park’s 10-year lease to manage the casino adjacent to the racetrack might work to the NFL’s advantage.

Hollywood Park has an agreement to sell the land in question to housing developers for more than $50 million, after Davis’ option expires, and is not keen on entering a new option arrangement with the league.

However, a new stadium, with an expansion team drawing big crowds, would undoubtedly be a boon to the casino, boosting profits for the Hollywood Park shareholders. That might encourage Hollywood Park officials to consider an extended option arrangement with the NFL.

NFL guidelines do not allow owners with gambling interests, but there’s nothing there to keep a stadium from being built in the neighborhood of a casino. In fact, one of the selling points for the Hollywood Park site is that the owners had already approved construction of a stadium there for the Raiders before that deal blew up.

Under Davis’ agreement with Hollywood Park, if he had written a check last Friday for $250,000, he would have been entitled to maintain the option to buy the land through March.

Many expected the billionaire to spend the $250,000, especially after he’d told Denver Bronco owner Pat Bowlen and retired quarterback John Elway that he was going to pay more than $1 billion to build a stadium and own an expansion franchise.

But Davis, like billionaire Eli Broad, began to evaluate the football proposal from a business standpoint.

Insiders say Davis looked at a potential bidding war with Houston on the league’s franchise fee, and determined the deal would ultimately be too expensive, although he insisted he would have been buying the team for his sons, Gregg and John, almost as if it were a present.

“The [NFL] told us they understood the team would be owned by the Davis Children Family Trust,” Davis said in a statement. “They said they knew that I would have no involvement in the ownership of the team and that the trust had no gaming interests, but they also knew that there were certain owners who, nevertheless, would vote against our being granted the franchise unless all gaming interests were divested.

” . . . We could not turn our backs on the people within the Davis organization who have worked so hard on our gaming investments. While we may not agree with the NFL’s position, we understand it. . . . We are sorry we couldn’t make an L.A. NFL team a reality.”