Even if Peter Angelos does buy the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it may be only the first step in getting a team to Baltimore.
Before a team can play here, a tangle of legal and administrative hurdles must be addressed, beginning with league approval. Under NFL rules, three-quarters of the other team owners must approve both Angelos as an owner and the relocation of the franchise.
Legal scholars say the rules, untested in court, may or may not run afoul of antitrust laws designed to encourage competition in commerce. But it would be costly for Angelos to test them, and the process could involve years of messy litigation during which the fitness of the league, Angelos, Tampa and Baltimore would be on trial.
"If one applies the NFL criteria objectively, clearly the case is made that the team is a candidate for relocation," Angelos said.
Angelos, a Baltimore attorney and managing partner of the Orioles, is one of the leading bidders to buy the Bucs from the trustees who have operated the franchise since the death of owner Hugh Culverhouse. So far, though, Angelos has taken a nonconfrontational approach, trying to convince the league and commissioner Paul Tagliabue that returning to Baltimore would be good for football.
His case: a visiting team would take home $1 million in gate receipts from a game in Baltimore, roughly three times the level in Tampa. And Baltimore is offering to build a stadium with public funds, a commitment only one other city -- St. Louis -- has made.
And in the modern era of NFL economics, stadium revenues have displaced more traditional predictors of team success, such as population, television market size and sports heritage. When the league added two teams last year, it went to small towns offering first-class stadiums.
The Bucs' record in Tampa has not been good, either on or off the field. The team has the weakest attendance in the league this year, averaging about 43,000 fans in the 74,000-seat Tampa Stadium. The facility is old and outdated by modern standards, with neither the ambience or revenue potential of a new structure.
Tagliabue, however, has said he is not as sure as Angelos that Tampa is a bad place for the team.
"When the team has performed well, the support has been there," Tagliabue said in a recent confer ence call with reporters.
"I think many people in sports, including people in baseball perhaps other than Mr. Angelos, are looking at the St. Petersburg dome as a site for a major-league baseball team. So, I think it's hard to write off the west coast of Florida," Tagliabue said.
The NFL added Tampa as an expansion franchise in 1974 and was impressed then and now with the potential of the region.
Only one team -- the Cardinals -- has ever applied for permission to move under the guidelines set up by then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in the wake of the league's courtroom defeat when it failed to keep the Oakland Raiders from moving to Los Angeles.
"Obviously we considered whether we could move without the consent of the league. I'm not sure we ever reached a conclusion," said Thomas J. Guilfoil, secretary and general counsel for the Arizona Cardinals.
The issue eventually became moot, however, because team owner Bill Bidwill, whose family has owned the team since 1932, respected the league too much to relocate without approval, he said.
Cards get no help from league
When the Cardinals decided to relocate from St. Louis to Phoenix in 1986, Guilfoil put together a report for the NFL detailing the team's dwindling attendance and unsuccessful efforts to improve its stadium situation. He worked off the nine-point guidelines issued by Rozelle.
He turned it over to the league, where staff attorneys generated their own report of "findings," which essentially backed the Cardinals' contention. All but one team -- the Miami Dolphins -- supported the relocation resolution, making St. Louis the only city to be officially voted out of the NFL.
But that's not to say the league, especially the commissioner's office, was happy about the move, he said.
"At no time did we ever receive either help or encouragement from the league," Guilfoil said. "They remained rudely hostile to us until the vote was taken."
He said the team seriously considered moving to Baltimore and considered it a strong football market. But the allure of the growing Southwest won out.
Making comparisons
In many respects, the 1986 Cardinals resemble the 1994 Buccaneers.
Both teams have registered disappointing attendance. In the 10 years before their move, the Cardinals averaged 41,169 fans at home games, 31 percent less than the league-wide average at the time. The Bucs, playing in a much larger stadium, have averaged 47,447 during the past decade, 21 percent below the league average.
The Baltimore Colts, by contrast, were 44,734, about 13 percent off the average when they moved to Indianapolis in 1984 without formal league approval or opposition. The Raiders' attendance was 15 percent below average in their final 10 years in Oakland, and the Los Angeles Rams -- who are close to moving to St. Louis -- have been 12 percent below average for the past decade.
But Guilfoil said the chief problem for the Cardinals was the stadium. The team shared not only its name but also one of the smallest stadiums in the NFL with a baseball team. Its lease denied the NFL team any revenues from concessions and many other sources available to other teams, and efforts to build a new stadium foundered amid political bickering.
The Bucs haven't said whether they will make money this year, but they have had to increase their payroll to meet minimums required by the players association contract. This has put a squeeze on the team, threatening future profitability. Guilfoil said the Cardinals never lost money but were concerned about being able to field a competitive team with limited revenues.
Guilfoil said he doesn't know enough about the Tampa situation to speculate how NFL owners would vote on a proposed move. But he suggested the league may move with caution on restricting a relocation.
"If you start telling an owner that he can't do something with his $200 million asset, it is not improbable that that owner would find his way to a courtroom," Guilfoil said. "If I was an owner and you wanted me to vote no, you would have to make a very good case."
Angelos won't say publicly what he would do if denied the right to move the team, but his determination -- and his success as a lawyer -- suggests he would pursue vigorous legal action.
In that he may find help from the Maryland Stadium Authority. An opinion last April by the Maryland attorney general said that it would be legal for the Authority to help pay for such a fight, but only with its own money -- not other state dollars. The Authority has said it might consider such assistance a necessary part of its mission to return the NFL to Baltimore.
Raiders owner Al Davis was the last person to take on the league over relocation, and he won not only the suit, but also $42 million in damages that he split with the co-plaintiff, the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission.
Rulings in that case said that the league has a right to control franchise movement, but only for proper, business reasons. Protecting one team's turf against another is not a valid reason, and is an illegal restraint of trade, the judge ruled.
"To withstand antitrust scrutiny, restrictions on team movement should be more closely tailored to serve the needs inherent in producing the NFL 'product,' " the judge wrote.
He said sports leagues would be "well-advised" to base such decisions on objective factors such as population, economic projections, facilities, regional balance, fan loyalty and location.
Mixed signals from court
Court decisions since the Raiders case have sent mixed signals, but generally agree a league can control team movement, said Stephen Ross, a law professor at the University of Illinois and an expert on antitrust law in sports.
"The jury really has to find that the league didn't just make a mistake but was doing this for monopoly reasons," Ross said.
"In order for a Baltimore group to prevail, they would have to show some theory why the league is doing this besides 'we disagree with their business judgment,' " Ross said.
The Washington Redskins could prove an advantage to Baltimore in such a case, because Angelos could argue the league was illegally protecting the turf of a member. Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke has been careful not to publicly oppose a Baltimore team, although he has suggested the market is insufficient for two teams.
"Protecting the Redskins is a very plausible theory and a very anti-competitive one," Ross said.
Baltimore also has a potentially significant advantage in the fact that NFL owners several times voted to put the city on the short list of expansion candidates, a formal acknowledgment that the market is viable for the NFL. And to the degree that Angelos can demonstrate similarities between the Bucs and the 1986 Cardinals, his chances of winning grow, Ross said.
One potential problem for Baltimore is the Canadian Football League team here, Ross said. The NFL, despite having an interest in expanding to Toronto, could claim that it stayed out of Baltimore to avoid infringing on the rival league's turf and drawing an antitrust suit from the CFL, Ross said.
Restrictions on ownership
Angelos could face a touchy issue of strategy: If he courts the NFL and tries to win approval, it gives the league time to file its own pre-emptive lawsuit and a court order preventing a move, Ross said. This could mean the case would be heard by a Florida jury instead of a Maryland one.
The National Basketball Association did this when the Minnesota Timberwolves were sold earlier this year to a group of investors that intended to move the team to New Orleans. The league blocked the move, arguing that the financing plan was inadequate, and beat the spurned owners to court with its own lawsuit asking a judge to affirm NBA rules.
The owners have filed their own suit, using the same lawyer who represented the Raiders.
Leagues have almost unrestricted discretion in rejecting owners, and the NFL might have an easier time rejecting Angelos than Baltimore and accomplishing the same objective, Ross said.
"This is, after all, a private business and partnership and you don't have to accept people," Ross said.
The league could claim it didn't like Angelos' financing plan, how he runs his teams, or that it doesn't allow baseball team owners to own football teams.
The NFL is reassessing its rules on team owners' involvement in other sports, but, Tagliabue said, "Under our current policies, it would not be possible for an owner in another sport to purchase an NFL franchise unless there were some type of interim adjustment made."
The league allowed Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga to buy the Miami Dolphins, but only after Huizenga agreed to give up controlling interest if the league chooses to keep its rules. Tagliabue said the allowance for Huizenga was based on "special circumstances" because he previously owned a minority share of the Dolphins.
To win a challenge, Angelos probably would have to prove the league was using his acceptability as a subterfuge for antitrust motives, Ross said.
Angelos said he may be willing to let one of his other investors serve as the managing partner of the football team if his Orioles role becomes an issue. He is not, however, willing to sell the Orioles, he said.
In the end, Angelos' best hope may be that the league decides Baltimore is not so bad a place to warrant a fight or risk having to pay the treble damages that winners in antitrust suits get.
Discussing team relocation in general, Tagliabue said the league is willing to defend its rules in court.
"We're not angling for litigation or trying to stoke any litigation," Tagliabue said. "We're trying to deal with it in a businesslike and intelligent way and, if possible, to avoid any litigation."
BELOW-AVERAGE ATTENDANCE
.. .. .. .. .. ..Year . .. ..Avg. attend. .. .. .. ..% smaller
Team .. .. .. ..moved .. ..prior 10 years .. .. ..than NFL avg.
Cardinals .. .. .1986 .. .. ...41,169 .. .. .. .. .. .. .31
Raiders .. .. ...1982 .. .. ...49,291 .. .. .. .. .. ....15
Colts .. .. .. ..1984 .. .. ...44,734 .. .. .. .. .. .. .13
Buccaneers .. .. .. .. .. .. ..47,447 .. .. .. .. .. .. .21
Rams .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..53,379 .. .. .. .. .. .. .12