THE COLISEUM COMMISSION : Raiders Fiasco Could Pass Ball to Private Sports Management

Five summers ago, when the Oakland Raiders were about to bring professional football back to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, John Ferraro got an uneasy feeling.

No stranger to the sports world, Ferraro starred at tackle for USC in the 1940s and has since enjoyed many weekend afternoons watching football at the Coliseum. He also served a term as president of the Coliseum Commission, the oddball government creation that runs the place and that lured the Raiders here.

Ferraro, now president of the Los Angeles City Council, wanted Al Davis and his Raiders in the Coliseum. But he felt the deal was flawed, given Davis’ history.

“If (Davis) left Oakland where he had a good financial situation,” Ferraro said then, “how do we know he won’t leave Los Angeles someday?”

Someday came sooner than even Ferraro expected. Last month, Davis announced plans to leave for a new stadium he will build in Irwindale. The move may please some fans, and it could benefit the local economy. But in the hallowed athletic environs of the Coliseum, the Raiders fiasco could spell the end of a long and colorful era.

No sports authority in America has lost more major teams than the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission. This year’s champions in the National Basketball Assn., the Lakers, and three football teams--the Rams, San Diego Chargers and UCLA--have all defected from either the Coliseum or its sister facility in Exposition Park, the Sports Arena. The Los Angeles Kings wanted to play hockey at the Sports Arena 20 years ago but were locked out by the commission.

The Raiders loss has rekindled old doubts about the wisdom of running the Coliseum and Sports Arena complex by commission. Mayor Tom Bradley and some other leaders have suggested that it is time to turn the Coliseum over to private management, which is how a growing number of publicly owned arenas are run.

At least three firms have expressed interest in running and perhaps even purchasing the Coliseum complex. MCA, the owner of Universal Studios, has talked of returning the Coliseum and Sports Arena to their former glory. The Coliseum Commission itself has even talked of bidding for the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament--and there will be plenty of open dates on the schedule if they are needed.

The Raiders departure would leave the Coliseum with only one major gridiron tenant--USC. The only professional team still doing business with the Coliseum Commission, the Los Angeles Clippers, pays just $2,000 for each NBA game they play in the Sports Arena. And, at the moment, USC has a long list of complaints and no lease for its basketball team. The Clippers also made a veiled threat about their future just last week.

Born in a long-forgotten political dispute, the Coliseum Commission is a bastard child of government with no parallel in the sports world.

Many stadiums are run by cities and counties, or by some joint arrangement of both. In several cities, the arenas are publicly owned but are run by a private management firm. But the Coliseum Commission is the only one with three equal masters--the state of California, the county Board of Supervisors and City Hall.

If the Raiders depart, the commission will be left without a professional football team and with poor prospects of obtaining one.

For all its fame, the Coliseum is one of the oldest stadiums in the National Football League, with seats that place fans far from the action compared to modern stadiums. Any new team would be saddled with the stadium while trying to compete with the Rams and Raiders for customers.

The commission, meanwhile, has no money to repair its aging stadium, owes $4.5 million on the 28-year-old Sports Arena and is buffeted by personality clashes and political feuds that may have contributed to the Raiders loss.

Some blame the commission’s proud but testy president, Alexander Haagen, for losing the Raiders. Others blame Davis, described by county Supervisor Pete Schabarum as “basically and fundamentally a very greedy human being.”

Still others blame the contract struck with Davis by the previous commission majority, led by labor leader William Robertson, a friend of Bradley and the city’s other Democratic leaders.

The truth may be somewhat more complicated. Some say the Coliseum Commission, created more than 40 years ago in a political compromise, is ill-equiped to join in the big-money competition for sports franchises.

With no taxing power, the commission could not match the $115-million loan package Irwindale gave Davis.

And beyond its money problems, the commission has shown little skill over the years in dealing with maverick sports team owners like Davis.

In 1967, the commission tried to get tough with Jack Kent Cooke and lost the Lakers. In 1980, Carroll Rosenbloom took away the Rams, the Coliseum’s first-ever pro team. Now Davis, who fought side by side with the Coliseum Commission through two grueling antitrust trials against the NFL, is fleeing.

“They showed Jack Kent Cooke who was boss, they showed Carroll Rosenbloom who was boss, and now they showed Al Davis who was boss,” said state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights), a former commission member. “What do you call it when you get deja vu twice? Stupid?”

The cast of Coliseum Commission characters over the years has included luminaries like actor William Holden and Pierre Salinger, the former press secretary to Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. But mostly the commission members have been local politicians and their friends--usually those friends who value easy access to the best seats in town.

“It’s the tickets, the prestige of going up in the press box and seeing the game from up there. What politician doesn’t want to talk to the press?” said retired county Supervisor Ernest Debs, a longtime member of the Coliseum Commission.

There has often been a hint of scandal to the commission’s doings. When it came time to hire its first general manager in 1945, the newly created Coliseum Commission got a flood of applications from political hacks.

‘Political Skulduggery’

“Two of the men who are perhaps best qualified . . . have withdrawn because they just can’t stomach the political skulduggery,” a Times columnist of the day reported.

But in recent years, the strongest criticism of the commission has struck at its ability to manage a sophisticated stadium complex. After the 1984 Summer Olympics, Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who was president of the Games, let fly with some scathing comments about the commission in his book, “Made in America.”

“In fairness to the commission, part of the reason it’s such a mess is its ridiculous management structure. It is governed by three parents--the state, county and city--but it’s treated like an orphan,” Ueberroth wrote.

The Coliseum has been a civic mixed blessing from the start. Many of the city’s athletic heroes became stars there, names like Bob Waterfield, Crazy Legs Hirsch and O. J. Simpson. Knute Rockne is honored with a plaque at the Coliseum, and Jackie Robinson ran the football there for UCLA before integrating professional baseball. It also has been home to two modern Olympic Games, the only stadium that can make that claim.

But it also has provided its share of exasperation and controversy.

Exposition Park was a rowdy, randy and dusty amusement zone on the edge of town--complete with liquor, a race track and floozy hotels--at the turn of the century. A moral crusade led by Judge William M. Bowen cleaned up the area, and a group of publishers and civic dignitaries chose the site for a “Colosseum.” The Coliseum they decided on was built atop an old gravel pit for $950,000, which they raised privately. USC’s game against Pomona College dug the first divots in the field in the fall of 1923.

The stadium was expanded with another $950,000 for the 1932 Olympics. But this time, some of the money came from the city and county government. When the Games were over, disputes flared over ownership. “The Coliseum lapsed back into the old pattern of conflict, controversy and consternation,” an official history notes.

The mayor ran the Coliseum through his Playground Commission until 1936, when the first Coliseum Commission was set up. The state owned the land, but the city kept control.

Threats to Move to Rose Bowl

By 1944, the county and state were demanding an equal say, and the Coliseum’s managers faced its first threat from a major tenant. Both USC and UCLA threatened to take their games to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena if the commission opened the stadium to professional football.

Political leaders haggled for 18 months over control of the Coliseum. The smoke rose with the current arrangement in place, with City Hall losing its ability to control the Coliseum.

Finally the universities were persuaded to accept pro football, and the Cleveland Rams, the champions of the National Football League, moved into the Coliseum in 1946.

This began the exodus of pro sports teams from the East into California, and the Coliseum Commission grabbed its share. Walter O’Malley negotiated the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers in a suite at the downtown Statler Hilton, and in 1958 professional baseball’s weirdest playing field was squeezed into the stadium built for track and field. Home plate was placed in a corner of the Coliseum nearest the large tunnel, and the foul lines were stretched into a desperate approximation of a major league diamond.

Those were golden days for the Coliseum Commission. In 1959, the Dodgers won the first World Series played west of St. Louis before crowds that still are the largest in series history. Then-Vice President Richard Nixon dedicated the Sports Arena, and John Kennedy accepted the Democrats’ nomination for President in a speech from the Coliseum peristyle a year later.

In 1960 the Los Angeles Chargers took the field for the new American Football League with a young, politically motivated Californian named Jack Kemp at quarterback. A year later the Lakers moved to the Sports Arena from Minneapolis to give the city pro basketball, and a minor league hockey team, the Blades, took to the ice.

Sports was taking on the looks of big business, and the Coliseum Commission soon found that the sports game was more than schmoozing in the press box on crisp Saturday afternoons.

Demand for Rent Reduction

In 1963 the Lakers threatened to leave the Sports Arena if their rent was not reduced. It was--by $10,000 a year. The commission had already granted the Rams a rent break in 1949 and did so again in 1964 after Rams owner Dan Reeves threatened to take his team to the new Dodger Stadium. O’Malley had never shown any inclination to admit football into his baseball palace, but the bluff worked. “We know our backs are to the wall,” said then-Coliseum General Manager Bill Nicholas.

In 1965, the Lakers were sold to Cooke, a Canadian-born businessman. The Los Angeles sports scene--and the Coliseum Commission’s reputation--have never been the same.

Cooke demanded control of the Sports Arena, a more favorable rental arrangement for his Lakers, and a 10-year lease. When Cooke won a franchise in the National Hockey League, he also sought assurances that his team--the Kings--could count on use of the Sports Arena ice.

This time the politicians on the commission decided to gamble. They offered Cooke a two-year lease for his Lakers and no ice time at all for the hockey team. The commission was calling Cooke’s bluff and also protecting their investment in Reeves, the Rams’ owner. Reeves owned the Sports Arena’s minor-league hockey team, the Blades, and wanted the NHL franchise Cooke was given.

The commission lost the bet. Cooke announced plans to build the Forum in Inglewood, and when commission members predicted he would come back begging, Cooke had his construction crews work around the clock.

“They bluffed the wrong guy,” said Alan Rothenberg, president of the Los Angeles Clippers who was Cooke’s attorney then.

Cooke, who now owns the Daily News in Los Angeles, left with a swipe at the embarrassed Coliseum Commission. “I would not have a multimillion-dollar enterprise subject to the whims of these men,” Cooke said in 1966.

Outraged City Hall

City Hall was outraged by the Lakers’ loss, although the fans had little objection to a short drive west and watching games in an arena that was considerably more plush than the Sports Arena. Then-Mayor Sam Yorty blamed the “impetuous and short-sighted--if not spiteful--attitude of some members of the Coliseum Commission.” A Yorty man on the commission, Mel Pierson, resigned and called for its disbanding. “I do not feel the Coliseum Commission is serving the best interests of the city,” Pierson said.

Tom Bradley, then a city councilman with an eye on the mayor’s job, held hearings, but the move was completed. “I hope the commission will not repeat this mistake. We cannot afford to lose another major franchise,” Bradley said.

But, as Times sports columnist Jim Murray later quipped, “The Coliseum Commission vowed not to make that mistake again. It didn’t. It made other ones.”

Rosenbloom took over the Rams after Reeves died in 1971 and, when his lease expired in 1973, negotiations with the Coliseum Commission turned nasty.

Supervisor Debs, a commission member, tried to approach Rosenbloom in the Coliseum press box one Sunday, but Rosenbloom snorted, “We have nothing to talk about.” Soon the Coliseum Commission and its most prominent tenant were sniping in the press. “They chased Jack Kent Cooke out, and they’ve been losing money ever since,” Rosenbloom said.

Rumors surfaced that the Rams wanted to play elsewhere. Rosenbloom agreed to stay, but only if the Coliseum was finally converted into a football stadium. The Coliseum is one of the oldest NFL stadiums, its seats are far from the field, and they do not exactly point in the direction football fans want to look.

To keep Rosenbloom happy, the commission announced a major remodeling that would lower the field 14 feet and add 13,000 seats close to the field. Rosenbloom pledged to underwrite the $7-million face-lift and would get 75 deluxe boxes, a stadium club and VIP suites in return. The old Olympic track was slated to go.

But the work never got done. By 1978 the shaky marriage was over. Rosenbloom was wooed by Anaheim, and the commission had lost another tenant.

Nice Deal From Anaheim

Anaheim offered Rosenbloom a very nice deal to play his games at Anaheim Stadium, where the Angels played. The stadium was enlarged and substantially fixed up. The capper to the deal was a gift of 95 acres on the Anaheim Stadium parking lot for Rosenbloom to develop. It was potentially worth $25 million.

The Coliseum Commission, which has no power to tax and gets its only money from revenues, could not dream of matching the deal.

But that was not the only problem. Groups that negotiated with the Coliseum Commission said its style was unprofessional, difficult, unpredictable. Most modern stadiums give a general manager or professional negotiator the power to make contracts. Coliseum Commission members prefer to handle the negotiations personally.

“They don’t even use the same attorneys from year to year,” said Harry Usher, general manager of the 1984 Olympics and former commissioner of the now-defunct United States Football League. “You just go through the continuing revolving door of people.”

Ueberroth decided to scare the commission into cooperating with the 1984 Olympics by invoking the nightmare of Jack Kent Cooke. He took the Game’s lucrative basketball matches to the Forum, which by then had been sold to Jerry Buss.

“I thought if we took basketball to the Forum . . . it would send a clear signal to (the commission) that we weren’t going to stand still for its nonsense,” Ueberroth wrote in “Made in America.”

The slap worked. The commission was happy to sign a deal to hold boxing matches at the Sports Arena, as well as base the track and field events and the opening and closing of the Games in the Coliseum. But there were still snags.

“Disagreements over terms continued virtually up until the morning of the opening ceremonies,” Ueberroth wrote. “Some commission members didn’t know the word integrity .”

After a Coliseum Commission meeting last week, Haagen interrupted a chat with his grandson to explain how it feels to be called by some “the villain” who lost the Raiders.

“It isn’t pleasant,” said Haagen, the president of the Coliseum Commission since February.

It also was not true, in Haagen’s eyes. Haagen is not a sports fanatic like so many past commissioners. But he does recall growing up in a neighborhood not far from the Coliseum and playing All-City football there for Los Angeles High School. He is now the only developer willing to build major shopping centers in the minority neighborhoods around the Coliseum and even farther south into the ghettos. He has more feeling for the Coliseum area than many commission members, although he lives on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and keeps his office at the beach.

“Why would I want to chase out professional football?” Haagen asked, implying the answer is that he would not.

But, he said, negotiating with Davis was more perilous than he knew. “I didn’t think he would run. But I didn’t know Al Davis.”

Robertson, who negotiated the original deal with Davis in 1980, did know Davis well. He tried to warn last March that Davis was being pushed to his limit by the Coliseum Commission, which had undergone a change.

Mandate to Find Team

When Robertson was president, the commission was dominated by Democrats appointed by Bradley and Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. The commission desperately wanted a new NFL team, and Robertson was given a mandate to find one.

Now the commission was in the hands of Republicans. Three were appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to the Museum of Science and Industry Board, which then sends delegates to the commission, and three came from the conservative majority on the county Board of Supervisors.

The new commission majority included Supervisor Schabarum, who resigned from the commission in 1984 to protest the original deal with Davis.

It was clear last spring that the commission majority had little patience for Davis and his defiant manner, as much a part of the Davis image as black shirts and white ties.

The Raiders years had brought glory back to the Coliseum. The Raiders were the most successful team in the National Football League, and they played to nothing but packed houses in Oakland. They made the playoffs their first two seasons in the Coliseum and won the 1984 Super Bowl.

Davis had also joined with the Coliseum Commission in an antitrust suit against the National Football League that provided the city with an entertaining sideshow during the Coliseum’s period without pro football. For 55 days testimony droned on “like reading from the Long Beach telephone directory,” one report said, but as theater the trial was a smash.

Davis sat front-row center every day. His archenemy, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, sat front-row right, often with his wife. Georgia Frontiere, the Rams owner since Rosenbloom died, watched from the back row and created a scene when she denied taking hand signals from husband Dominic during her testimony. San Diego Chargers owner Eugene V. Klein suffered a mild heart attack after he testified.

Trial Ends in Hung Jury

After 12 days of deliberations, the trial ended in a hung jury. It was not for another year, until 1982, that the commission and the Raiders finally prevailed, winning a second trial after only eight hours of jury deliberations.

Last spring, the camaraderie was long forgotten. The new commission under Haagen became locked in a heated battle with Davis. Officially, the dispute was whether the commission would renovate the Coliseum to reduce the seating and move the fans closer to the football field.

In the background, however, was the original deal Davis cut with the Robertson-led commission. The deal included a 10-year lease and a $6.75-million “loan” to Davis. It would be paid back only if luxury VIP suites were later built atop the Coliseum--and then only if the suites made sufficient income. Davis received $4 million of the loan in a lump sum payment. The rest came in the form of a credit arrangement that allowed Davis to pay virtually no Coliseum rent his first four seasons.

After the Raiders began playing in the Coliseum, Robertson acknowledged that the money was really a gift. “In our mind, it’s a small price to pay to get a professional football team for Los Angeles,” Robertson said then. It was structured as a loan “really for tax purposes” for Davis.

Critics of the deal included the chief financial officers for the Board of Supervisors and City of Los Angeles. The commission eventually delivered a $4-million lump sum over the objections of its own attorneys. When some officials wondered if Davis might take the money and run, Robertson quieted them, saying, “I think that’s very remote.”

No one was more upset with the Raiders deal than the Coliseum’s two longtime tenants, USC and UCLA. Both objected to losing good, between-the-goal-line seats to Davis’ luxury suites. USC attorney Gerald Kelly told the commission that the Trojans would leave the following year if Davis was given free rule on the boxes. UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, visibly angry as he left a 1982 commission meeting, vowed, “If it’s possible to play any place other than the Coliseum next year, I will be playing someplace else.”

UCLA Goes to Rose Bowl

Young made good on his threat and took UCLA to the Rose Bowl later that year.

Davis passed up several chances to build the luxury boxes, which would have added considerably to the Raiders income. But they would also lock his future to the Coliseum.

Then, last Feb. 1, Davis finally began work on the boxes. Work stopped three weeks later, leaving a gaping hole in the north rim of the Coliseum. There would be no more work, Davis said, until the Coliseum Commission lived up to its promise to make the Coliseum a more attractive football stadium. The promise was never written, but Robertson, Bradley and state Sen. Campbell all agreed that it had been made to Davis in the original negotiations.

Haagen did not see it that way. “Bill Robertson and Bill Campbell say they made a promise. I can’t find anyone else who agrees,” he said.

Haagen finally consented to Coliseum renovation. But not on any schedule set by Davis. It soon became clear that Haagen did not like Davis very much: “(Davis) has called all over town, called corporate leaders, trying to find out how to get to me. His attitudes have been abusive.”

Anyway, Haagen said, the Coliseum Commission did not have the $8 million to $15 million needed for renovations. He sounded confident that Davis would not leave--”I think it is a bluff.”

Some who watched the dispute unfold said Haagen relished the toe-to-toe battle with Davis. Like many sports owners, Haagen made his fortune the hard way. Like Davis, he values toughness and sometimes flashes a quick temper. “You don’t question America, motherhood, applie pie or Al Davis, I suppose,” Haagen said when negotiations became heated in March. “But I have the temerity to go on with this.”

One former Olympic official, who asked not to be identified, recalled last week that Haagen, as a member of the state board that runs Exposition Park, was an unpleasant person to negotiate with.

‘The Worst Choice’

“He’s a bully . . . the worst choice to be dealing with Al Davis,” the former Olympic official said.

In the middle of the dispute with Davis, the commission hired a new general manager to run the Coliseum and Sports Arena. The new man, Joel Ralph, came well regarded from Philadelphia, where he had run Veterans’ Stadium for 17 years and weathered a serious threat to leave by the NFL Eagles.

Ralph was aghast at the state of relations between the commission and Davis, their biggest client.

“I was amazed at how personal it became,” Ralph said. “If I knew it was this bitter, would I have come? Probably not. I had a good job in Philadelphia.”

By then, the word was out that Davis was in the market for a place to play football. Two Raiders officials let it be known they visited the Rose Bowl to ask about playing dates. The City of Carson was talking to the Raiders; people in Sacramento and New York were interested. Irwindale came forward.

Once the bidding began, the Coliseum Commission did not stand a chance. Their relationship with Davis was shot, and they could not possibly match the financial inducements other cities were offering.

The Coliseum and Sports Arena have been running in red ink most years, Ralph said, and the major repair work completed before the 1984 Olympics has not removed the years of wear.

Later this year, the commission expects to receive $18 million in damages from the NFL for winning the antitrust lawsuit. The commission wants to use it to refurbish the old facilities and if possible entice Davis back or another NFL team to move here.

But just in case, the commission has already begun to book more rock concerts in the Coliseum. The circus and ice shows are more welcome than ever at the Sports Arena.

“The joke is it’s going to become like the Colosseum in Rome,” Campbell said. “They’ll give guided tours.”

Times research librarian Doug Conner assisted in preparation of this story.

THE COMMISSION’S CLIENTS Teams that have played in the Coliseum or the Sports Arena: COLLEGE TEAMS IN THE COLISEUM UCLA left for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1982. USC played the first football game at the Coliseum in 1923 and has played there ever since. PROFESSIONAL TEAMS IN THE COLISEUM Rams (National Football League) 1946-79 moved to Anaheim. Dons (All-American Football Conference) 1946-49 league folded. Dodgers (baseball) 1958-1961 moved to Dodger Stadium. Chargers (American Football League) 1960 moved to San Diego. Express (U.S. Football League) 1983-85 team folded. Raiders (NFL) 1982-present. PROFESSIONAL TEAMS IN THE SPORTS ARENA Lakers (National Basketball Assn.) 1960-67 moved to Forum. Blades (Western Hockey Assn.) 1961-67 team folded. Stars (American Basketball Assn.) 1969-71 moved to Salt Lake City. Sharks (World Hockey Assn.) 1972-74 team folded. Clippers (NBA) 1984-present. VIEWS ON THE COLISEUM COMMISSION Al Davis and his Raiders are only the latest ones to do battle with the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission. Here are some reflections from veterans of the Coliseum wars: CURRENT AND FORMER COMMISSION MEMBERS Alexander Haagen, commission president: “I didn’t think he would run, but I didn’t know Al Davis. He’s a hard man to read.” William Robertson, who resigned from commission after Davis announced plans to move: “Sadly, I must say, the present Coliseum Commission has laid waste to the stadium’s future. . . . A new governing body is essential . . . I don’t think anybody would be crazy enough to go in and deal with the Coliseum Commission with their track record . . . . “ Sen. William Campbell, former commission member: “They showed Jack Kent Cooke who was boss, they showed Carroll Rosenbloom who was boss, and now they showed Al Davis who was boss . . . What do you call it when you get deja-vu twice? Stupid?” CURRENT AND FORMER TENANTS Alan Rothenberg, the commission’s last professional sports tenant as Clippers president: “The cast of characters changes, so that the people you negotiate a deal with one day are gone the next. I think it’s ridiculous. I can promise you, what happened with the Raiders is not what the professional managers wanted.” Jack Kent Cooke, former Lakers owner who left the Sports Arena in 1966: “I would not have a multimillion dollar enterprise subject to the whims of these men.” THE OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE Peter Ueberroth, former Olympics president, in his book on the 1984 Games: “(They) waffled and refused to get down to brass tacks. . . . Disagreements over terms continued virtually up until the morning of the opening ceremonies. Some commission members didn’t know the word integrity. “