Delay of NFL Game in L.A.

Seven months ago, the NFL said it hoped to decide on a Los Angeles stadium site by May 2005 and wanted to have a team there for the 2008 season.

However, in an interview last week with The Times, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said that league executives probably would need more time to narrow the stadium options, something that almost certainly would delay the 2008 starting date.

“There are some things that have to get done in the next six months that conceivably might not get done in the next six months,” Tagliabue said. “It might take more like nine to 12 months. In that event, we could be pushed back into the fall of next year. But certainly our goal is to get some decisions made in May of ’05.”

Tagliabue said he had always considered the 2008 target date “a bit aggressive,” even though he said it was important to set ambitious goals in bringing the NFL back to the nation’s second-largest market. There are four known competing stadium concepts: the Coliseum, Rose Bowl, Carson and Anaheim.

“Everyone is anxious to keep this a top priority and make it an urgent priority,” he said. “So setting out an earlier goal, I think, was the smart thing to do, the appropriate thing to do. A three-year timeline from initial decisions on the selection of a stadium site to a team on the field is a pretty tight timeline, especially in this circumstance where you’ve got the challenge of selecting a team as well as building a stadium.”

Although Tagliabue declined to detail the specific strengths and weaknesses of each stadium proposal, several sources familiar with the league’s position on the sites say the Coliseum and Anaheim are in the lead, followed by the Rose Bowl, then Carson.

“None of these sites in the Los Angeles area are easy sites, either in terms of the surrounding area, or the environmental elements, or the historic-preservation and civic-design elements,” he said. “They all have some complexities. So I think a three-year timeline [for choosing a site and building a stadium] is doable, but it’s aggressive.”

A more generous timeline could help the Rose Bowl and Carson while negating the edge held by the Coliseum and Anaheim, which already have completed the year-long process of getting environmental-impact reports certified.

But L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks said the Coliseum had a distinct advantage and could be selected as the preferred site even before NFL owners convened for their May meeting. Last spring, the league presented the Coliseum with a “term sheet,” the framework of a potential lease deal.

“The ball’s in our court,” said Parks, a member of the Coliseum Commission. “That’s why we’re working so diligently on that term sheet.”

He added: “I don’t feel that we’re too far apart.”

Parks said Coliseum officials had submitted their latest version of a lease to the NFL and expected a response in January. So far, he said, there were no “deal-killers” in the league’s proposal, which to this point has remained confidential. He said he and others on the Coliseum Commission had gotten assurances from the league that their stadium would work, provided the sides could agree on lease terms.

“If we don’t resolve the issues in the term sheet, then, yes, we could be into May and beyond,” Parks said. “But if we resolve the issues, then they’ve said clearly there’s no need to look at other sites.”

According to NFL sources, however, it’s unlikely the league would move that quickly to dismiss other options. It has a record of keeping its options open, both with competing cities and stadium sites, in order to strike the most favorable deal.

In August, the NFL announced it had approached Anaheim officials about possibly building a football-only stadium next to Angel Stadium, where the Rams played. Among the benefits of constructing a stadium there are excellent freeway access, the relative wealth of the Orange County market, and the city’s environmental-impact report approved for a 70,500-seat stadium.

Although many people argue that putting a team in Orange County is not the same as putting one in L.A. — an argument that carries weight with the NFL — Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle insists his city can better serve the needs of the region’s football fans. The city “is certainly firmly in the center of the Los Angeles market,” he said in August. “That is, I think, the bigger picture.”

When informed of Tagliabue’s comments about possibly moving back the timeline, Anaheim spokesman John Nicoletti indicated that wouldn’t be a problem for his city’s proposal.

“We will be ready to move forward when they are ready,” Nicoletti said in a written statement, “at whatever pace is necessary to ensure they build a state-of-art stadium that results in a net-positive impact to Anaheim residents and businesses.”

David Carter, a USC professor and sports economist recently hired by Anaheim as a consultant, said he was not surprised the league might push back its original deadlines.

“The NFL has to set goals,” he said. “If they didn’t set guidelines and denote sense of urgency about this, they’d never get anywhere.”

He later added, “The NFL is going to continue to strive for the best deal they can possibly strike. It’s a combination of the sites not being fully suitable to the NFL’s wants and needs at this point, but also the NFL really understands that it’s better to get it right than to get it fast. If waiting a few extra months ensures a greater chance of success in this market, then they’re much better off waiting.”

It’s unclear how much longer the league plans to pursue the concept of building a stadium on a 157-acre landfill in Carson. Developer Steve Hopkins, who controls the site, has maintained for months that he is weighing several mixed-use scenarios for the site, some with a stadium and others without. Two NFL sources said frustration with the slow pace of that proposal has the league on the verge of eliminating it from the running.

John Moag, point man for the push to put an NFL team in a renovated Rose Bowl, said his group remained in deal-term negotiations with the league and “things are moving in the right direction.”

Moag faces the difficult challenge, though, of devising a deal that appeals to the league, the people of Pasadena — particularly the ones in the upscale neighborhoods surrounding the stadium — and powerful historic preservationists who are adamantly opposed to any changes that might jeopardize the Rose Bowl’s landmark status.

Even though the Rose Bowl figures to benefit greatly from the 20-year deal it struck with UCLA in January, one that will keep the Bruins playing there until at least 2023, that development took some of the steam out of the argument that the 82-year-old stadium needs the NFL to survive.

Rose Bowl backers argue that transforming the venue into a home for pro football, too, would be a major boon to the community, because it would enable neighboring Brookside Golf Course to keep $2 million a year that currently is being used to cover Rose Bowl bond debt.

“Getting UCLA secured for 20 years stabilizes a fragile situation and improves our negotiation position,” said Darryl Dunn, the stadium’s general manager. “We’re not negotiating out of desperation. But we recognize what the Rose Bowl needs most is a major infusion of significant capital resources that the city doesn’t have.”

Although he said he was optimistic about finding a solution that’s acceptable to all sides, one that would keep the Rose Bowl in the race, Moag acknowledged that the league probably would reduce the field of competing sites in the spring.

“It ought to become apparent by May that one and maybe two of these options simply isn’t going to make it work, for any number of reasons — political, financial or technical,” he said. “I think there will be substantial clarification. But I think it would be shocking for the league to be in a position to make a final decision [by May] — not necessarily for reasons of site, but for reasons of who’s going to go there. Why would they expend money without knowing who’s going to play football there?”

The league has not specified whether a return to L.A. would involve an expansion team or relocating a franchise. Either option would require a three-quarters majority of NFL owners to agree. The league consistently has said it needs to decide on a stadium in L.A. before considering issues of team and ownership.

But clearly, it is looking at L.A. as a leverage point, either real or perceived, to get things done in other cities. A year ago, for instance, the Colts were at an impasse with Indianapolis over sagging revenues and shaky prospects for replacing the RCA Dome, the NFL’s smallest stadium. The lingering threat that the franchise might relocate to L.A. — one that only grew when Colt owner Jim Irsay joined Riviera Country Club — fueled a sense of urgency in Indianapolis.

Last Sunday, at halftime of the Colts’ nationally televised game against visiting Baltimore, Irsay and Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson stood at midfield and announced that they had struck a deal that would secure the team’s long-term future in the city and provide a 63,000-seat, retractable-roof stadium.

A day after the announcement, it was learned that the stadium project could cost nearly $190 million more than was anticipated — a new price tag of roughly $690 million — and Indiana lawmakers questioned the financing mechanism: gambling money.

“It’s not my first choice,” Peterson said at a news conference. But, “the alternative in this case is, do you want the Colts to leave?”

Before the Colts, the San Diego Chargers were the most likely candidate to relocate to L.A. But the Chargers and the city worked out a fragile truce that led to a new Qualcomm Stadium lease, one that will keep the team there at least through 2008 and leaves the door open for a new stadium proposal to be put on the ballot in November 2006.

Now, the New Orleans Saints look to be the franchise that could most easily relocate to L.A., especially in light of the strained relationship between Saint owner Tom Benson and the state over the need for a new stadium and the use of public money to bolster the team’s bottom line.

In a comment that made headlines in Louisiana, Tagliabue told The Times the Saints’ situation “doesn’t look like it’s any better today than it was a year ago. If anything, it looks worse.”

Even before the NFL selected a stadium site in L.A. or chose a team to play there, Tagliabue said, it could lay the groundwork for returning by strengthening ties with the Southern California community.

“At some point, we’ve got to get beyond the issue of a stadium, and we’ve got to delve into all of the elements of a community, business as well as not-for-profit [ventures] that are involved in supporting a team,” he said. “We’ve started to talk internally about what that might mean, and those are going to have to become priorities in the next quarter or next six months.

“It means figuring out, is it going to have a positive relationship with USC and UCLA? Is it going to have a positive relationship with leaders in the business community? Is it going to have a positive relationship with youth organizations that are involved in sports? An NFL team is going to have hundreds of positive relationships. Those have to be identified and built and structured. The advantages of having those relationships have to be identified, articulated.”

In the meantime, some less predictable bonds have formed — notably, one between former foes. Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group and among the leaders of a group of L.A. businessmen who once hoped to build an NFL stadium next to Staples Center, is now an ardent supporter of the Coliseum.

“[The NFL is] going to continue to play the roundabout here but we are the leading experts on the question of where does it work,” Leiweke said. “No one knows more about this subject than we do. We know it because no one knows Carson better than we do. No one knows downtown and building a project in downtown Los Angeles better than we do, with all due respect. And we know the Rose Bowl because of our time there with the Galaxy and that was where we were first trying to solve soccer.

“If they want it to succeed, they’ve got to be at the Coliseum. As much as we thought they had to be next door, and I still believe that would have been the best site and then we’d be playing football next year, that’s gone, the property is sold, we’re out of that game. But they’re making a huge mistake and they’re not giving this market its best shot if they don’t play at the Coliseum.”

Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable to hear Leiweke say that. But now it’s just another twist in the ongoing L.A. saga, where the priorities, allegiances — and timelines — are always subject to change.

Times staff writers Grahame L. Jones and David McKibben contributed to this report.