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The town that won't take yes for an answer is back on the NFL's agenda. When the league's 32 owners gather Tuesday in Philadelphia for the annual spring meetings, they will be doing more than voting down Bob Kraft's proposal to expand the playoff lineup and tidying up loose ends left undone at the meetings in Phoenix last March. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue added a new but familiar item to the agenda at the last moment: For the umpteenth time, the owners will discuss the logistics of returning a franchise to a Los Angeles market that seems quite content without one.
Tagliabue's surprise move comes on the heels of four events: a meeting last week between the Rose Bowl Operating Committee and the Pasadena City Council to discuss ways of financing a $500 million renovation of the stadium while also authorizing investment banker John Moag to negotiate a nonbinding agreement with the NFL to bring a team to Pasadena; a Los Angeles City Council announcement that it still believes the best location for pro football is at the Coliseum, a stadium the league has found wanting, though LA politicians are now willing to sublease it to a team; a Michael Ovitz-fueled revisiting of a 157-acre plot in Carson, Calif., which the NFL could buy to develop a new stadium; and a less-than-veiled threat by Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs that he does not believe he could be prevented from relocating to LA by a lease in Minneapolis that runs until 2011....
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Tagliabue's surprise move comes on the heels of four events: a meeting last week between the Rose Bowl Operating Committee and the Pasadena City Council to discuss ways of financing a $500 million renovation of the stadium while also authorizing investment banker John Moag to negotiate a nonbinding agreement with the NFL to bring a team to Pasadena; a Los Angeles City Council announcement that it still believes the best location for pro football is at the Coliseum, a stadium the league has found wanting, though LA politicians are now willing to sublease it to a team; a Michael Ovitz-fueled revisiting of a 157-acre plot in Carson, Calif., which the NFL could buy to develop a new stadium; and a less-than-veiled threat by Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs that he does not believe he could be prevented from relocating to LA by a lease in Minneapolis that runs until 2011....
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