Tagliabue Talks L.A. Super Bowl

If all goes according to the NFL’s plan and Los Angeles has a franchise by the 2008 season, a Super Bowl might not be far behind.

Up for grabs is the Super Bowl after the 2009 season, and L.A. could be a candidate to play host to that game, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Wednesday.

“That’s one of the things we’re going to discuss with our advisory committee this fall,” Tagliabue said at the conclusion of the league’s two-day meetings. “We had discussed that about 15 months ago. In fact, at one point we reported to the membership that L.A. needed to be part of our Super Bowl plan, whether or not we had a team there. I’m sure the subject will be taken up with the committee.”

The last time around, Tagliabue said L.A. was a candidate for the 2008 game, provided it had a suitable stadium. That game was eventually awarded to the Arizona Cardinals, who are beginning construction on their new stadium. The next three Super Bowls will be played in Jacksonville, Fla., Detroit and Miami.

On Tuesday, the NFL said it intended to select an L.A. stadium site within a year -- either the Coliseum, Carson or the Rose Bowl -- in hopes of putting a team in place by 2008. Tagliabue said, however, that the league is not motivated to get something done in L.A. because the network television contracts expire after the 2005 season.

“I don’t think that has any direct impact,” he said. “Obviously, it would be positive to have a team or teams in that market. Local fans would have a direct rooting interest in their own team. But we’ve been doing quite well in television ratings in Los Angeles ... and in a larger context of the country, we have about 25 million people watching NFL football on a given weekend.”

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Even though Tagliabue and others have talked about the possibility of putting an expansion team in L.A., there are at least five teams with older stadiums that, under the terms of their current leases, could potentially be free agents by 2008 -- San Francisco, New Orleans, Indianapolis, San Diego and Buffalo. Five other teams are also angling for new stadiums or sweeter stadium deals -- Minnesota, Kansas City, Dallas, Oakland and the New York Jets.

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For the first time, the league has attached a theme to the Super Bowl. It’s “Building Bridges,” a concept that is not only supposed to reflect Jacksonville’s many bridges but also the figurative act of bringing communities together.

Accordingly, the season will begin with something of a bridge -- simultaneous kickoff parties in the home cities of the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and in Jacksonville. The events will be televised by ABC in an hourlong program before the Thursday night season opener between Indianapolis and New England. The league hopes to make it a tradition that whichever team is coming off a Super Bowl victory plays host to the kickoff party the following season.

“What we’re doing this season will carry forward into future years,” Tagliabue said.

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In a move believed to be in response to the recent flirtation between Tampa Bay Buccaneer owner Malcolm Glazer and the Dodgers, NFL owners voted in favor of expanding their cross-ownership rules. Now, it’s not just principal owners who can’t own sports franchises in other cities; neither can minority owners who are “on the path” to becoming principal owners. An owner’s family members, too, are now precluded from owning sports franchises in other NFL cities, or potential NFL cities.

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The league and the Arizona Cardinals have been in discussions with the family of Pat Tillman over ways to honor the fallen soldier, as well as members of the entire U.S. military, next season. Tillman, who abandoned his NFL career to become an Army Ranger after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was killed in April while serving in Afghanistan. The league is considering the option of having all teams display a helmet decal with Tillman’s No. 40.