Owners to Receive L.A. Status Report

NFL owners are scheduled to get an update on the Los Angeles stadium situation from league officials at the annual May meetings beginning today.

The league, which has not had a team in the L.A. area since the end of the 1994 season, is weighing the merits of revamping the Coliseum or Rose Bowl, or building from scratch on a landfill in Carson. Progress in L.A. was to have been discussed at the annual meetings in March but was tabled until these two-day May meetings.

“This is an update,” said Joe Browne, an NFL executive vice president. “We have no new proposals to present the owners, but we will discuss activity at the Coliseum and the two other sites.”

It’s significant that league officials now mention the Coliseum by name. A year ago, when Carson and the Rose Bowl were front-runners in the process, the Coliseum was little more than an afterthought. The league recently issued a “term sheet” to Coliseum officials, which is the framework of what a deal with that venue might resemble. Coliseum Commission members said they could have a response ready by mid-June.

New England Patriot owner Robert Kraft, a member of the L.A. working group, said returning to the nation’s second-largest market was essential.

“I desperately want to see a team in L.A.” Kraft said. “I think it’s unfortunate that a decade has gone by in which young people don’t have a team they can relate to. The only way it will succeed in that market is if we have a great stadium and a great owner.”

Other issues to be discussed are stadium security, the future of the G-3 stadium loans, the Super Bowl here in February, and the specifics of the three-year contract extension offered to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who recently agreed in principle to that offer.