Free agent franchises.

• Author: Boulard, Garry
• Position: States versus sports team owners - Includes related article on baseball stadiums

EMULATING PLAYERS, TEAM OWNERS ARE SHOPPING ALL AROUND FOR THE BEST MONEY-MAKING PACKAGE THEY CAN FIND. AND WHILE FOLKS ARE AS EAGER AS EVER TO HAVE A SPORTS FRANCHISE IN TOWN, THEY MAY NOT BE QUITE SO WILLING TO PUT UP MILLIONS TO GET IT AS THEY ONCE WERE.

In a more perfect world, there would be more deals like this year's Texas-to-Tennessee move by the Houston Oilers. It was, after all, a move nearly devoid of the political maelstrom that has sometimes swept up state lawmakers and other public officials when a major team threatens to leave. In those instances, legislators feel trapped between governors and mayors who are convinced a franchise team or new stadium means economic salvation, and the team owners who frequently demand extravagant stadium and benefit packages partly drawn from state funds.

But when the Oilers - complaining about everything from the quality of the Astrodome's artificial turf to how much they paid in rent and how little they got back in stadium revenues - threatened to leave, no one stepped in to stop them. Texas officials, all the way from Houston Mayor Bob Lanier to a bipartisan majority of the state's House Appropriations Committee seemed only too happy to bid them goodbye, adroitly refusing to put up the $245 million for a new Oilers stadium.

At the same time, Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist and most members of the state legislature were happy to build a new $290 million stadium in downtown Nashville in hopes that the Oilers would play and prosper there.

When Tennessee's General Assembly voted final approval for the Oilers-to-Nashville journey, the seemingly unobstructed efficacy of it all bore hints of Jackie Mason's description of a mugging as a perfect commercial transaction: "It's simple. You had the money and he didn't; he took it, and now you don't have it."

In reality, the big move was hardly as simple as that. There were no local efforts to keep the Oilers in Houston. But Mayor Lanier suggested to the National Football League that unless it guaranteed him a team to replace the Oilers, he might be forced to demand that they fulfill their contract to play in the Astrodome until the end of the 1997 season.

Meanwhile, Tennessee lawmakers were wary of offering the family dowry only to see the out-of-towners disappear into the night without the bond of a marriage. "We wanted to make sure that we didn't get burned," says Senator Douglas Henry Jr. of Nashville, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "So we made sure that their franchise pledged enough money to the state to retire the bonds for the stadium just in case something goes wrong. And that alone is worth more than $200 million."

Legislative approval in Tennessee also came after an intensive lobbying effort by the Oilers and Nashville Mayor Phil Dredesen, who sees the football team in his town as a fourfold benefit: "We are building a new stadium on the east bank of town, upgrading an eyesore," explains Tam Gordon, Dredesen's press secretary. "We will get tremendous national publicity, a $55 million payroll in terms of the people who will build the stadium and an enhanced quality of life for Nashville."

Continues Gordon: "Those were reasons enough for us to put so much work into getting the Oilers to come to Tennessee."

But in Texas, lawmakers felt compelled only to wave the Oilers a cheery good-bye. "Let 'em go," says Texas Representative Robert Junell. "I don't think hardly any of us felt a need to offer all sorts of expensive financial incentives to keep the Oilers here."

Texas confidence, a powerful commodity, was made bolder by the knowledge that Houston is no Podunk. It is the fourth largest city in the country, still growing and an important media market for the NFL. "Eventually the league is going to have to go back there," contends Mark Rosentraub, director of the center for urban policy at Indiana University. Rosentraub is a staunch critic of the idea that states and cities must always accommodate the dreams and desires of major league teams. "Mayor Lanier was arguing from a position of absolute power, power that other public officials around the country should realize they have - if only they'd stop to think about it."

LEGAL AND POLITICAL BATTLES

For state lawmakers and other public officials, however, the Oilers' story is not typical. Far more common are the dangerous infernos arising out of incendiary legal and political battles when the hometown team either demands a new stadium under threat of leaving, or leaves anyway - despite contractual commitments - for a new location where officials are willing to build the requested, and usually expensive, stadium in question.

"It has become a national phenomenon," says sports industry consultant Thomas Chema. He helped put together the deal that resulted in the 1994 construction of the $173 million Jacobs Field ballpark in Cleveland, among other projects. "But it is also something that has become bad news for states and cities who end up bidding against one another."

Chema, a proponent of public and privately funded stadium partnerships, contends that the bidding era of the 1990s virtually ensures who the winner will be even before the battle begins. "The team," he contends, "will always win as long as the states and cities up each other's price, paying more for something - in some cases a lot more - than the financial return will justify."

Bidding wars today seem to explode almost monthly, creating titanic and messy struggles. Inevitably one state gets a new team after pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to build a fancy stadium, while the state losing the team complains of the hundreds of millions it will lose in ticket revenues and the unpaid bonds on the stadium it built for the same team so many years ago.

LAWMAKERS' CHOICES

For lawmakers the choices are sometimes overwhelming, contends Robert Baade...