Time for Coliseum to step aside

When is Los Angeles getting an NFL team?

The answer is simple: It isn’t -- not as long as the Coliseum fancies itself an option.

It’s as clear-cut as that. The league has no interest in moving forward with that stadium, and yet realizes that moving forward on any other project here would be too much of a political headache as long as the publicly owned Coliseum is being promoted as viable.

The cost estimates of a Coliseum renovation range from $600 million to more than $1 billion. The thought of pouring that much money into the 84-year-old venue just doesn’t appeal to NFL owners, many of whom aren’t even sold on the high cost of returning anywhere around L.A. -- especially when they won’t be getting public money to offset the bill.

In this long-running flirtation, the NFL is the serial dater with a fear of commitment, and the Coliseum is the shunned old flame who is turning into a stalker.

Already, earlier this year, the Coliseum wrote the NFL asking for a show of some commitment. And the league responded with what amounted to a Dear John letter, saying thanks but no thanks, that there were too many financial concerns for any serious relationship.

So maybe the NFL now needs a restraining order.

It can be fun chasing the NFL. For some, it means free Super Bowl tickets and trips to nice resorts to hobnob with team owners. But is it really productive? We’re no closer now to landing a team than we were after the Raiders and Rams left a dozen years ago.

League executives were in Southern California this week on their annual stadium safari, this time looking at a concept in City of Industry, the latest offering from billionaire Ed Roski.

It’s notable that Roski is a USC trustee and former top supporter of the Coliseum. Even he has given up on the site.

In the meantime, the Coliseum Commission is in negotiations with USC over a long-term loan deal, and has turned down an offer by the school to spend $100 million on improving the stadium.

The commission had a longer-than-usual meeting in closed session this week to weigh the merits of a deal with USC that would essentially hand the stadium keys over to the school.

USC wants and deserves to be the No. 1 tenant at the Coliseum, where it has played for 80 years. Besides, even if it did want to come to the stadium, the NFL would need the school’s cooperation since it controls more than half of the 19,000 parking spaces the league requires.

Some commission members shudder at the idea of handing a public entity, even a crumbling one, over to a private institution. That makes sense, except that same commission was ready to strike a similar deal with the NFL.

Exactly how the school’s latest offer is structured is unclear. Is that $100 million up front, or over several years? Either way, it’s a major investment in a place that needs new seats, restrooms, concessions, scoreboards, the works.

So why the foot dragging? It’s in the public’s best interest for the Coliseum Commission to completely abandon the NFL dream and pour its efforts into hammering out a deal with USC that replaces the school’s year-to-year lease.

For the last decade, the commission has put off any significant improvements of the stadium or long-term deals with the expectation that the NFL was coming. But that’s not happening.

David Israel is a commissioner who has always had a reasonable big-picture view. For more than a year, he has been saying the NFL isn’t coming to the Coliseum. He doesn’t think USC is the stadium’s only option, however.

He can envision the venue augmenting its six-game USC schedule with more than a dozen major soccer games, and becoming this country’s version of England’s Wembley Stadium.

But wouldn’t the Home Depot Center compete for those games? And soccer backers have said for decades that the sport is on the verge of a popularity explosion in the U.S., but, beyond the youth level, that has yet to happen.

Whatever happens, the NFL owes the Coliseum a thank-you note. The stadium has always been useful for any unhappy owner who needs to use the threat of moving to L.A. to better his deal at home.

Now that the Coliseum is not a believable option, there’s a void that the NFL needs to fill for leverage. Cue the City of Industry, another longshot to actually ever land a team.

“Given our transportation issues, our traffic issues, every effort should be made to build these mass-entertainment destinations as close as possible to mass transit,” Israel said. “If they build a stadium in the City of Industry, what are they going to call the team? The SigAlerts?”

Might as well. This whole return-to-L.A. charade has been one big traffic jam anyway.

sam.farmer@latimes.com