SAN FRANCISCO — He traded salary-cap entanglements for the twining of grapevines; squishing Cowboys for squashing Cabernets; the popping of champagne corks for the corking of his own bottles.
But now, less than a year after leaving football to tend a sprawling vineyard north of Napa, Carmen Policy is hoping to return to the NFL in an effort to put a team in Los Angeles. Policy helped build the San Francisco 49er dynasty before launching the expansion Cleveland Browns.
"Once you've been part of the NFL it's hard to find something else to take its place," Policy, 62, said in a recent interview. "So if there's something I can do that works, that's meaningful, that's appreciated and that fits for everybody, that's what I'd like to do."
Policy said neither the league nor anyone in the Los Angeles political structure has approached him. But he thinks his experiences in San Francisco and Cleveland give him a unique perspective on the decade-long estrangement between the nation's No. 1 sports league and its second-largest market.
"The NFL and Los Angeles have to abandon the way they've been dealing with each other up to now," he said. "It's got to be a marriage involving two highly talented, highly educated, highly motivated people.... You're not talking about the farm girl meeting the big-city executive. You're talking about equals learning to identify at eye level with each other and falling in love and somehow, some way making it better for both sides."
Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown thinks Policy would be a fit with Los Angeles.
"Los Angeles has lived for years with its identification with celebrities. Carmen would be a natural," Brown said. "He would be smart enough to have prominent season tickets to the major teams, he would be on the red carpet for the Academy Awards ... he would be at the opening of the symphony. How do they say in Iraq with the reporters? He would become embedded in the community."
The L.A. situation is somewhat comparable to Cleveland, where stadium construction began before a team owner was selected. Banking billionaire Al Lerner bought the franchise and hired Policy to build it.
The ride wasn't smooth. With little time to get the franchise up and running -- Policy was refused an extra year to prepare -- the Browns kicked off in 1999 and were 2-14, followed by seasons with records of 3-13, 7-9, 9-7 and 5-11. They are now searching for their fourth coach, counting Terry Robiskie, who took over the team this season on an interim basis after Butch Davis resigned.
