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Nearing a decision

NFL close to announcing location of 32nd franchise

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Posted: Wednesday October 06, 1999 02:18 AM

Paul Tagliabue listened to proposals from three groups that are vying for the 32nd NFL franchise. Ezra O. Shaw/Allsport

ATLANTA (AP) -- Houston made the NFL an offer for its 32nd team that might be too big to refuse.

Bob McNair bid $700 million for an expansion franchise Tuesday, which would be the highest price ever for a sports team in the United States.

With a $310 million stadium included, the deal would be worth more than $1 billion -- a first for the NFL.

The league's expansion committee met with McNair on Tuesday evening and also heard Michael Ovitz make another pitch for giving Los Angeles the 32nd team.

"I think there will be a recommendation tomorrow [Wednesday] by the committee," NFL spokesman Joe Browne said after that group, with 12 of its 14 members present, held a three-hour session.

There was no straw vote by the committee and no recommendation was formed, Browne said. But he added that the group was to meet again today and could be expected to make its recommendation afterward to the full ownership, which was scheduled to meet later in the day.

"What happens after that as far as the 17 other clubs, I'm not sure," Brown said, referring to the teams that aren't represented on the expansion committee. "Anything can happen right up until the meeting starts."

The committee's recommendation would have to be approved by 24 of the 31 owners.

Houston has been without a team since the Oilers moved to Tennessee after the 1996 season. Los Angeles lost the Raiders to Oakland and the Rams to St. Louis after the 1994 season.

McNair said he was cautiously optimistic and that he believed the committee's recommendation would have a major influence on the vote by the full ownership.

"I think they [the committee members] will have a lot of input," he said in the lobby outside the meeting room. "They have done the homework. When they make a decision for one city, I think it will carry a lot of weight.

"We've made an outstanding business proposal, and these are good business people who know a good proposal. From what I know about the other proposals, I don't think they compare to ours.

"I think the main issue is that Houston's ready to go."

Houston's plan is for a retractable-roof stadium, with $195 million of public funds going into the project.

McNair's $700 million franchise bid is some $50 million higher than the new franchise was expected to be worth. Ovitz, who most recently proposed building a stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., and another group seeking a team for the Los Angeles Coliseum apparently did not make an offer anywhere close to the one Houston put on the table.

Unlike McNair, Ovitz did not make himself available to answer questions after addressing the committee. An Associated Press call to Ovitz was not returned.

He and his backers hold an option on a parcel of land at Hollywood Park. But he obtained the option just last week, so any plan for that site would have to be in the very early stages.

Ed Roski, one of the Coliseum backers, also was in Atlanta but did not speak to the committee.

Roski, who came to town with a new bid, said before the expansion committee meeting that he spoke at length with NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and expected to be invited to address the committee. He did not, so the invitation apparently never came.

Roski would not disclose the amount of the offer made by his group, which includes billionaire Eli Broad. Roski did say that he believed any plan to build a stadium at Hollywood Park faced a number of challenges, including lacking easy access to freeways, that the Coliseum proposal did not face.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said in Los Angeles that the Coliseum group never received a clear idea of what the NFL wanted in LA.

The league owners voted 29-2 last March to give Los Angeles a team conditional on the NFL's receiving a suitable stadium and financing proposal by Sept. 15.

The league shortly afterward narrowed the choice down to the Coliseum, eliminating a bid by Ovitz, who proposed building a stadium in suburban Carson. But the negations with the Coliseum stalled last summer after the NFL's request requested -- and did not receive -- the promise of $150 million in public funds to go toward the Coliseum project.

"The NFL failed to place a person in Los Angeles to make this deal, a point person," Ridley-Thomas said. "They have never done that. They committed to setting a franchise fee and never did it. They said they were going to do it, they never did.

"The larger issue is, it's hard to get the league to play by one set of rules. It's hard to know what those rules are. It's like they're making up the rules as they go along. And they failed to keep their word with respect to the [Sept. 15] deadline."

 

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