It's somewhat fitting that as the NFL owners arrive in Phoenix this weekend for the start of their annual March meetings, the Ostrich Festival will be taking place nearby in Chandler, Ariz.

The festival includes ostrich races, but the NFL owners would be advised to check the ostriches' form when they stick their heads in the sand.

When the subject of expansion comes up Tuesday, the owners are likely to be sticking their heads in the sand.

If a conference call held last week by Joe Browne, the league's director of communications and development, is any indication, what the owners won't do will be more significant than what they will do.

They don't appear to be going full speed toward naming two expansion teams by this fall.

This is the meeting in which the owners were supposed to cut the field to a short list. It might better be called a long list. Browne would say only that there will be a reduction of "some cities."

That could mean six to eight cities will make this "short" list. Since only eight cities put up the $100,000 application fee, that's not much of a cut-down.

The NFL is even still counting Honolulu as an applicant, even though it wasn't represented when the cities made presentations in New York in December.

That way, the league can announce it is paring Honolulu from the list. Ditto for Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Nashville, Tenn., which also didn't pay the application fee. That's three cities that can be cut easily to make it eight. Now the question is whether the NFL will cut any city that paid the application fee.

The NFL also won't put a price tag on the expansion teams. No use moving too quickly.

Then there's the larger question concerning expansion. When they passed their expansion resolution in Minneapolis last May, the owners said they could delay expansion if labor-management problems were an "impediment."

Ten months later, the management-labor situation remains unchanged. Jeff Kessler, an attorney for the players, described the talks as "moribund." He said that the players are preparing for the start of their June 15 antitrust trial against the owners on the free-agency question.

Meanwhile, the league still won't define what they consider an impediment. All Browne did on his conference call was to read the statement commissioner Paul Tagliabue made at his Super Bowl news conference in January.

The statement was classic Tagliabue legalese. He said: "We could conclude that there was no impediment even without a collective bargaining agreement. We might conclude there was an impediment. It really doesn't turn on any rigid way on the existence or not of a collective bargaining agreement. It depends on an overall assessment."

Whatever that means.

The best guess is that if the owners lose the antitrust trial, they won't be eager to go forward with expansion. If they win, they probably will.

Browne referred all questions to Tagliabue at this week's meeting, so the expansion cities can only wait to see whether he has any update.

They can only hope he doesn't simply read the statement he made in January the way Browne did. Or stick his head in the sand.

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Selling Baltimore: Herbert Belgrad, chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority, will represent the city at the meetings along with two civic leaders, Henry Butta and Matt DeVito. The leaders of the three expansion groups, Florida businessman Malcolm Glazer, clothing magnate Leonard "Boogie" Weinglass and author Tom Clancy (who has sent autographed copies of his best sellers and a video to each owner), will be on hand.

Belgrad has no illusions that he'll accomplish much at this meeting because the NFL won't let the cities open hospitality rooms. That's apparently part of the league's campaign to downplay expansion, so the Baltimore representatives will have to shake hands in the hallway.

Belgrad said, "If everybody else is attending, you feel obligated to be there." He hopes to have a dinner with the leaders of the three expansion groups to coordinate strategy for Baltimore.

The Charlotte bandwagon: The conventional wisdom is still that Charlotte, N.C., and St. Louis will get the two franchises, if any are awarded. USA Today last week predicted those cities will get the two teams.

Even though league officials like Charlotte, the city's lack of funding for a new stadium is a nagging worry. League and Charlotte officials met last week to study the feasibility of the city's borrowing money to build a stadium and buy the team.

Rankin Smith, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, last week became the first member of the expansion committee publicly to express concern about Charlotte's plans.

In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Smith said: "It's a factor, and it's something we have to look into. Any time you borrow that much money [up to $300 million], it is a concern."

Charlotte officials are confident, but the lack of stadium funding may yet hurt them.

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Patriot games: The major item on the agenda will be what to do about the financially troubled New England Patriots. If they can't reach an agreement with owner Victor Kiam, the owners may have to take over the team and subsidize it.

The league's hope of getting a new stadium in the Boston area also suffered a setback last week. After the death of Jean Yawkey, the NFL believed that the new owners of the Boston Red Sox might be willing to abandon Fenway Park and agree to share a new stadium with the Patriots.

It turns out there won't be new owners -- at least for now. Yawkey left the team to a trust that is supposed to continue the Yawkey tradition, which means playing in Fenway Park.

Meanwhile, the league can't find any buyers willing to keep the Patriots in New England, and the NFL doesn't want to abandon the sixth-largest television market. As it is, the networks want the owners to accept a reduction in their $39 million annual fee for 1993 and accept a two-year extension at a lower fee.

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Double standard: The league isn't likely to get a warm welcome Phoenix. The NFL was scheduled to play the Super Bowl at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., next January, but moved the game to Los Angeles after Arizona voters rejected a Martin Luther King holiday in 1990.

Which brings up the question of why it is holding the meetings in Phoenix if it won't play the Super Bowl there.

The league's answer is that it was "never the intent to boycott Arizona" and that it "didn't want the game to be embroiled in political controversy."

Translation: The owners don't want to inconvenience themselves because they like spending a week in March in Phoenix.

The owners have voted to play the 1996 Super Bowl in Phoenix if unspecified conditions are met. It's no secret that voters must pass the King holiday, which will be back on the ballot this November, if they want the game. The NFL refuses to say that, though, because it's trying not to alienate voters who rejected the holiday simply because they resented the NFL's getting involved in state politics.

A report on the CBS-TV pre-game show on the Sunday before the 1990 vote about the threatened pullout is widely credited with helping get the King measure rejected.

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Not-so-instant debate: The instant replay debate is back. Again, some owners are threatening to be the eighth negative vote. The vote to retain the replay usually passes by a 21-7 margin. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is complaining that the replay interrupts the pace of the game and has talked about voting no. But it'll probably survive again 21-7. As George Young, general manager of the New York Giants who always votes no, says, once the seventh negative vote is cast, the rest of the owners vote yes.

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By the numbers: Most of the numbers being discussed this week will be financial ones. But the owners also will discuss the drop in the number of points being scored. Last year, the league averaged 38.0 points, the least since 1978, when the teams averaged 36.7. The number of plays dropped from 160 in 1987 to 147. The owners will talk about cutting the time between plays, moving the kickoff back to the 30-yard line to improve returns and allowing offensive linemen and quarterbacks to wear radio helmets so they can hear the signals on the road. Maybe all they really need is the return of Joe Montana and Randall Cunningham.