Adams: California Is Home ‘of the Fruits and the Nuts’

K.S. “Bud” Adams Jr., owner of the Tennessee Titans, the NFL franchise he has owned since it was the Houston Oilers of the old American Football League, said under oath that he dismissed California as a potential locale for the team because, as he put it, “I always think of California being the home of the fruits and the nuts.”

Adams also discounted Baltimore.

“Not my cup of tea,” he said in sworn testimony read Tuesday before jurors and into the record in the Oakland Raiders’ $1-billion Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit against the league.

Adams was lavish, however, in his praise of the deal that lured the Rams from Anaheim to a new stadium in St. Louis. A 1995 Sporting News article quoted him as saying “seven or eight” NFL owners would “raise their hands” to get in on that sort of opportunity. “There would be a stampede,” he said, comparing it to the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

Asked if that was what he’d really told the Sporting News, Adams said that was the essence of it. But, he added, “I don’t even recognize the word ‘Pam- . . . Pam-poon.’ ”

Adams was not in court Tuesday. His comments were read from depositions, interviews taken under oath in 1996 and 1997 in connection with the Raider case and another court case involving the Rams’ move to Missouri.

Ever since those depositions were taken, the Raiders’ legal team has been itching to get the 81-year-old Adams on the stand. In particular, Raider lawyers have wanted to question Adams about the role he played in 1995, when he was chairman of the NFL’s finance committee.

That committee played a key role in reviewing the 1995 proposal for a $250-million stadium for the Raiders at Hollywood Park. The deal was never concluded, and the team moved shortly thereafter to Oakland. The Oilers became the Titans before the 1997 season.

In other testimony read Tuesday in court, Adams frequently said he did not recall details, correspondence and other action involving the proposed Hollywood Park deal.

Asked if there were records that would help him remember whether he attended a June 1995 meeting, Adams said he might be able to check his “airplane logs” to see if he “went to a certain city.”

Asked if he had called Raider owner Al Davis to “discuss terms,” Adams replied, “Are you kidding?”

Another of his responses went like this: “You’re asking me to answer something I don’t know if I ever heard of it.”

That answer prompted Judge Richard Hubbell to say, “I think we’ll take a recess on that note.”

Adams was one of 11 NFL owners who skipped last week’s league meetings in Palm Desert. If he had shown up in California, he’d have run the risk of being served with a subpoena demanding he testify in the Raider case.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue denied at the meeting that owners stayed away for fear of being summoned to testify. A Titan executive was quoted as saying that Adams stayed away simply because no league business was up for a vote.

In live testimony Tuesday, accountant Randy Sugarman testified that his projections of Raider earnings in Oakland did not include postseason revenue--on the grounds that, until last season, the team hadn’t made the playoffs since 1993.

The team’s damage claims figure to rest in part on Oakland revenues.