Losing Super Bid Is No Reason to Grieve

Once again, San Diego has offered its soul to the devil and, once again, it has been turned down.

No, another Super Bowl has gone down (or up) the road.

Not that San Diego didn’t try. It offered its financial soul. It wasn’t even a matter of selling it. It was giving it away.

In its latest bid this week, America’s Finest City gave and gave and gave some more to the National Football League owners. Unimpressed, or at least not impressed enough, they awarded the 1993 game to the Rose Bowl.

This, on the heels of losing the 1992 Republican Convention to Houston, represented yet another dose of frustration.

Councilman Wes Pratt thought he might have put his finger on the situation when he said: “I guess the bottom line with both the GOP and the National Football League is money.”

No kidding.

But don’t forget the helicopters, Wes.

One major advantage San Diego had over the Los Angeles-Orange County-Pasadena coalition was geography. Virtually every place in San Diego is 20 minutes from any place else in San Diego. This would not be the case in the Los Angeles area.

Solution?

Damned if every NFL owner is not going to get the use of a helicopter leading up to and including game day. They might even get to do traffic reports.

San Diego’s representatives apparently were not given an opportunity to point out that no one needs a helicopter to get from one place to another down here.

Most of the other freebies were the same--free rent, free practice facilities, free hotel accommodations, free site for the commissioner’s party and, in San Diego’s case, free ground transportation, presumably in specially marked diamond lanes for NFL owners.

“Free” is obviously the key word. Let an NFL owner think he will have to pay for a shoe shine during Super Bowl week, and he will vote for another city.

If San Diego really wants this game, it will obviously have to sweeten the pot when next it makes a bid.

Let’s see, the next Super Bowl up for grabs will probably be 1998. They are all taken until 1997, and that one is expected to go to an eastern city. This, of course, assumes that Phoenix, tentatively the site of the 1996 game, doesn’t fumble it away again.

This will not be a time to take anything for granted. As Councilman Pratt has discerned, money is of some significance. Since Super Bowl tickets will probably be $300 each by 1998, the Rose Bowl’s 30,000-seat advantage would then be worth $9 million. Toss in all those helicopters and that will be tough to match.

Thus, San Diego will have to up the ante.

Offer anything . . . maybe everything . . . but water rights to the Sierra Nevada, Colorado River and Lake Hodges.

Understand that these owners are rich. They cannot be bought with free passes to the zoo or a day at Torrey Pines. These people own their own golf courses.

The only sensible solution seems to entail eminent domain proceedings. It would cause a stir of controversy and maybe a lawsuit or two, but San Diego could buy itself a Super Bowl--just one, mind you--if . . .

. . . it ceded La Jolla to the NFL owners to divvy as they please.

Come 2005 and Point Loma would be the sacrificial lamb and maybe Downtown in 2012 and Mission Valley in 2019 and everything north of I-8 and east of I-5 in 2025.

Soon, most of San Diego would be owned by the NFL, but wouldn’t it be great having all those Super Bowl games?

Silly, huh?

Maybe.

Maybe what’s really silly is the notion of respected civic leaders groveling at the feet of these owners with outlandish offering after outlandish offering . . . giving, giving, giving. Maureen O’Connor, San Diego’s mayor, was upbraided by an NFL aide for trying to take a cookie from a hospitality room.

Harrumph!!! No one takes from the NFL.

Is a Super Bowl in our midst worth it to the average San Diegan?

Did you, for example, see the 1988 game any place other than where you would see any other Super Bowl? Right, you sat in your living room or a neighbor’s den or maybe a nearby saloon. You certainly were not at this supposed San Diego event.

And did any of the supposed $136 million in financial impact from that game find its way into your pocket? Right, you bet the Skins and gave seven points.

The point is that, to the average San Diegan, all this panting and pandering at the knee of the NFL may well be wasted time and misspent money.

If you think I’m wrong, put one of these outrageous proposals on the ballot and let the public decide if it wants to be so blessed with another Super Bowl. Excuse me, but would it color the outcome if one of the boxes was labeled “Hell No.”