| | LOS ANGELES -- Houston won a football franchise Wednesday
because it had one plan, lots of money and a legion of zealous
fans. Los Angeles didn't.
The NFL was determined to put a team in the nation's
second-largest television market, but when the final showdown came,
L.A. was hamstrung by conflicting proposals, a lack of public money,
limited city and state support and fans who didn't seem to care.
A Houston group led by businessman Bob McNair will pay a $700
million franchise fee to the NFL and $310 million for a stadium.
"Money talks, it sure talked this time," said billionaire Eli
Broad, who with real estate magnate Ed Roski led the effort to put
a team at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Another group, headed by Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz and
supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle, initially proposed a stadium in
Carson, then switched their support to the Hollywood Park racetrack
in Inglewood.
Despite talk about joining forces, the two groups never did.
Broad and Roski were front-runners until things blew up over
public money at an NFL owners meeting in July in Chicago. Ovitz
seemed to be the favorite as recently as last week.
Then came the shocking bid by McNair, clinching the bid for
Houston.
"We bid $500 million for the franchise," Broad said. "There's
just so much that makes sense. Our bid would have required a $300
to $400 million additional investment in a stadium. The entire cost
would have been close to $1 billion. Even at that amount, it was a
hardly a good investment."
Peter Levin, a spokesman for Ovitz, seconded those comments.
"We have a responsibility to our partners, our lenders,
ourselves to construct a deal that at the end of the day, garnered
a modicum of return that made sense, and at these levels, it was
far from making sense," he said. "It came down to the money, and
a responsibility to a deal that makes sense."
A disappointed Mayor Richard Riordan said he was confident LA
would have a team in the future, but he hopes it won't be the
Raiders, who have been trying to get out of their lease in Oakland.
Raiders owner Al Davis has long maintained LA is still his
territory.
"I just hope Al Davis isn't with them," Riordan said when
asked how he felt about the Raiders returning. "(If) they traded
Al Davis to Houston."
At times, it appeared fans could care less if there was a team
in L.A.
While admitting a higher percentage of fans care in Houston than
in L.A., Broad said, "If you multiply 20 percent of the people
interested in a market of 16 to 18 million people compared to, say,
40 percent in a market of 5 million, you come up with a higher
number."
L.A. has been without an NFL team since the Rams and Raiders left
after the 1994 season.
"I've seen teams come and I've seen them go," said 41-year-old
Henry Parker, who shook his head when asked if he cared about
Houston's victory over L.A. "If we got a team just to way we got a
team, that isn't enough. It's not worth it."
City councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas blamed Bill Chadwick, Gov.
Gray Davis' point man in summer negotiations.
The governor got involved because Exposition Park, where the
Coliseum is located, is on state-owned land. At the meeting in
Chicago, a state-backed proposal was rejected because the NFL
wanted public money.
Less than a week later, Chadwick resigned out of frustration.
"Things began to go sideways after that meeting,"
Ridley-Thomas said. "The point was, you don't force the issue.
(The NFL) was trying to keep the deal going forward. I think
Chadwick's handling of the deal has to be described as inept at
best."
Chadwick said he respects Ridley-Thomas, but added, "The state
wasn't going to subsidize the NFL."
County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was also critical of the
league. "You have to be an idiot not to believe that the NFL all
along wasn't using Los Angeles as a lever to drive the price of the
Houston franchise up. ... I think the NFL took Los Angeles for a
ride."
David Carter, a Los Angeles business analyst for 10 years, said
negotiations went on for so long that "most of the people in
Southern California, their eyes have glazed over trying to follow
the NFL's plan to extort money from the taxpayer."
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