Owners Try Gauging L.A. Fan Interest

Before Los Angeles builds a great football stadium, NFL owners and executives need an answer to the great unknown: Does the city really want a team?

The NFL says its games draw robust TV ratings in L.A., but otherwise the league has little hard evidence of a fan base strong enough to guarantee a packed house every week.

“At a certain point in life you don’t need any evidence that there’s a sun and a moon; it’s there,” NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Wednesday during his news conference that ended the annual league meetings here. “We know the interest is there. There has been, over the years, outstanding college football in Southern California. There has been outstanding high school football, youth football. There has been great interest in the NFL.

“We have every reason to think that if and when we can get a team there, and the fans have their own home team to root for, that the interest will be there.”

Some NFL owners aren’t so sure. They were turned off by what they saw as nonchalance from L.A. in 1999, when Houston billionaire Robert McNair paid $700 million for the 32nd franchise, topping L.A.’s best offer by more than $100 million.

Where was L.A.’s passion?

“I haven’t seen it,” Baltimore Raven owner Art Modell said. “There’s so much to do out there 12 months a year, it’s got to be a captivating element to capture people and sit them down for three to four hours. I haven’t seen it from people in L.A., let’s be honest about it.”

Carolina Panther owner Jerry Richardson, chairman of the stadium committee, said he spent countless hours into bringing the NFL back to L.A. He came away frustrated and exasperated.

“The reality is Los Angeles had their chance,” he said. “They had an opportunity. It went to Houston. That’s it. Thirty-two teams. There aren’t going to be more than 32 teams in my lifetime. So I don’t know. The train rolled by and they didn’t get on. The train keeps moving.

“The NFL’s not going out of business. I don’t worry about the L.A. situation. It’s over. The ball’s in their court.”

Richardson said the only two people he believes have the passion and know-how to bring football back to L.A. are Michael Ovitz, who launched a failed bid to land the expansion team three years ago, and former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley.

Neither Ovitz nor O’Malley is involved in the coalition that is looking into building a privately financed stadium in downtown L.A., a proposal spearheaded by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns Staples Center. That high-powered group includes Ron Burkle, Ed Roski and Casey Wasserman.

Wasserman, who owns arena football’s L.A. Avengers, attended the meetings and met with several NFL owners, although his immediate concern was convincing the league to exercise its option to acquire a percentage of the Arena Football League, which the owners decided not to do.

L.A. Mayor James K. Hahn has praised the efforts of the Anschutz group, although he has stopped short of endorsing it. Hahn said he supports anyone who wants to bring the NFL back to L.A., provided the push does not involve public funds.

The Anschutz group, sensitive about driving up the price of the land it needs, will not divulge its proposed location for a stadium. Many downtown business leaders and real estate specialists said they were unaware of the proposal or of any effort to acquire all or part of the necessary 10 city blocks to build the project.

“They haven’t approached us about that,” said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn., downtown’s leading business advocacy group. “They are playing it close to the vest.”

Oakland Raider executive Bruce Allen is convinced the public will get behind the project, spiritually if not financially. Allen, who recently sold his home in Redondo Beach, said anyone who thinks people in L.A. are dispassionate about getting an NFL team is missing the point. If people in L.A. shrug at the thought of professional sports, he says, why was a Laker flag fluttering seemingly on every other car during last year’s championship run?

“L.A. is completely different than it’s been portrayed,” he said. “It’s everything. It’s blue-collar, it’s white-collar, it’s suits, it’s flip-flops. You can’t make a blanket statement about L.A.”

Clearly, the NFL would benefit greatly from having a team in L.A., particularly when it comes to negotiating a new TV contract. It is, after all, the nation’s No. 2 TV market.

“Nobody can tell me that L.A. is not an imperative in the lineup of major-league cities for a sports league,” Modell said. “They’d be insane. There’s nothing like it. But the diversity of activities there is harmful. I guarantee that if you’re in Green Bay in the fall, there’s not much else to do.”

Philadelphia Eagle owner Jeffrey Lurie, who lived in L.A. for a decade while working in the film industry, said the argument the city cannot support a team because there are too many things to do simply doesn’t make sense.

“It’s a huge market,” he said. “It’s OK that a certain percentage of people will go to the movies and do other things. That’s OK. It’s just so huge. It all depends on whether they can get a stadium built, and it’s not anything else.”

Under the proposal, not only would L.A. get a stadium and a new team, but almost surely the opportunity to host several Super Bowls. And according to the NFL, a Super Bowl pumps between $300 million and $400 million into the host city’s economy.

“If business and political leaders in Los Angeles do not see the value of having rotating Super Bowls, that’s amazing,” Richardson said. “Why is it that New York City or Washington or Detroit or Atlanta see such great value in a Super Bowl, when apparently the business community [in L.A.] doesn’t see that? The numbers are not a mystery.”

Ralph Wilson, owner of the Buffalo Bills, can sum up the L.A. opportunity in one word--yawn.

“There was so much apathy the last time,” he said. “It was like, ‘Hey, NFL, you ought to feel very, very lucky we let you in here.’ That was the message.”

Despite their vastly different opinions on the interest of fans in Southern California, everyone in the NFL--and the rest of the football world--can relate to the response of Denver Bronco owner Pat Bowlen when asked about the prospects of a stadium in downtown L.A.:

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

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Times Staff Writer Jesus Sanchez contributed to this report.