Tampa Gets Silver Because L. A. Got Gold

It now develops that the Great American Derangement, known on marquees as the Super Bowl, shifts next to Tampa, where they will roll you a cigar, which is better than rolling you.

Tampa has captured the 25th offering of the Super Bowl, whose silver-anniversary game, many thought, would be tendered Los Angeles.

The Super Bowl began in Los Angeles at the Coliseum, an edifice combining, in the stirring language of its management, the glory that was Greece with the grandeur that was Rome.

The Coliseum has been inhabited by pro football teams since 1946. It reposes in an area embracing close to 14 million people. It sits in what is described as the entertainment capital of Earth.

Magic Johnson lives in the territory. You can’t get much bigger than that, unless you counter with Tom Lasorda, who is slimming down the whole republic.

The Coliseum last was awarded a Super Bowl in 1973.

In matters connected with football, Tampa is an upstart. Its population, compared to that of Los Angeles, is minor. For entertainment there, one visits Busch Gardens, from which point excitement accelerates with the sponge auction at Tarpon Springs.

Tampa was last awarded the Super Bowl as recently as 1984.

So observers of the human scene sit down and ask quizzically where has Los Angeles failed? Why was it not tossed this 25th-anniversary bone, especially considering the Coliseum seats 92,000 and Tampa Stadium 74,000?

If NFL owners all of a sudden are shunning money, do they have no respect, at least, for history?

The answer is not one-dimensional. To start, the Coliseum lifted $29 million from the owners in an antitrust action. When time came, three years back, to pick Super Bowl locations, Los Angeles was somehow bypassed.

The country has long forgiven the Axis Powers, but the NFL owners will never forget the Coliseum removed from their pants 29 million bucks.

Nor, in their deliberations, are the owners entirely sure what form of life they are encountering with the Coliseum Commission.

The commission starts out as ally of its tenant, the Raiders. Then it tries to sell out the Raiders for an expansion team. Then it becomes the friend of the Raiders, after which it becomes the enemy of the Raiders.

“Is this the Keystone Kops revisited?” NFL owners ask.

Arriving on the scene, the Kops are nailed by a pie in the face. They throw pies in the face of the culprits. And, in the end, the Kops are throwing pies in the face of each other.

If Los Angeles is searching for still another reason it blew the silver-anniversary game, when logic dictated it belonged in the city, it would be that Tampa came up with a more attractive bid.

Tampa has given the game free rent. It has arranged free hotels for the game’s principals. It will cough up all parking and concession monies, plus countless other benefits, including luxury suites at the stadium for all the owners.

It used to be the NFL took swelling pride in its rejection of largess from Super Bowl prospects.

“We don’t want to turn this thing into a bidding contest,” former commissioner Pete Rozelle announced.

But that noble philosophy is long down the tube, the owners entering into the spirit of the land, taking the vest and leaving the armholes.

Bidding for the Super Bowl has become so active and involves so many contenders that one trying to make a score had better come prepared with something more than a smile and a fund of persuasive reasons the game ought to be his.

Market dictates what’s happening in this life, as evidenced by growing costs of landing, or retaining, a franchise.

Owners have made franchises precious commodities by limiting membership to 28 in a very large land. You want a franchise--you get stuck.

The Rams stick Anaheim big. The Colts stick Indianapolis big. The Cardinals stick Phoenix big. And the Raiders are now in the batter’s box, no better, no worse than any of their league brothers with an expiring lease.

Los Angeles isn’t going to land the 1992 Super Bowl, either, because that already has been awarded to Minneapolis.

Minneapolis has something to offer that many other bidders don’t. It offers visitors ice and snow up to their collarbones.