NFL not ready to choose LA-Area Football stadium yet I always thought???

[jksmith269]

I always thought you should have a team owner before choosing a site for them to play in or is the NFL planning on owning their own team, or are they wanting to move an existing team to La, but even then I would think the team owner would want to choose his\her own stadium?


NFL not ready to choose L.A.-area football stadium

From Register news services

NFL owners are expected to cut at least one site but are unlikely to select the winner of the Los Angeles-area stadium derby at their spring meeting in Washington next week.

"We're probably not going to narrow it down to one," Neil Glat, the league's point man on the L.A. negotiations, said by phone Friday. "We conceivably could, but given where we are with broader league issues, we think it's unlikely the league membership will go to one final site at this meeting."

The league had hoped to pick a site by the end of this month but first needs to deal with revenue sharing, the collective-bargaining agreement and the stadium financing program, Glat said. The next scheduled league meeting wouldn't be until fall, but Glat said a special session could be called if a decision were imminent.

The four competing sites are Anaheim, Los Angeles, Pasadena and Carson. Carson is the most likely site to be cut when owners meet Tuesday and Wednesday, in part because it is the furthest behind in the negotiating process. The L.A. Memorial Coliseum remains the favorite, and a delay wouldn't affect the Coliseum as much as a site such as Anaheim, which is considering alternative uses.

Glat said each site's term sheet has "one, two or three major issues" to be finalized.

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had hoped to return the NFL to the L.A. area by 2008, but Glat said that timetable appears "aggressive" at this point.

"More likely, you are looking at something past 2008," Glat said. "And that's unrelated to whether a decision is made this spring, summer or fall."