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AEG billionaire Philip Anschutz is committed to the idea of an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles and is willing to buy an entire team -- as opposed to just a part of one -- in order to make the deal work, his top executive said Monday. "Phil is now completely engaged in this process," said Tim Leiweke, AEG's president and chief executive. "And the only thing he won't do is get leveraged to the point of doing a stupid deal on a team. But if this is about finding a win-win for the NFL and Phil Anschutz, he is prepared to write that check now, subject to getting done with the [environmental impact report]

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has supported the construction of a 72,000-seat football stadium in downtown Los Angeles, now has raised a series of criticisms about the project's potential impact on the environment. Many of its concerns are well founded; rather than fight them in court, the project's developer, Anschutz Entertainment Group, ought to take them into account and use them to improve the proposal. In a letter to the Los Angeles City Planning Department, the NRDC warned that although AEG's voluminous environmental impact report promises a number of measures to limit the negative effects of the stadium on the environment, it lacks details about how those measures will work and how they will be enforced.

While the legislature in Minnesota continued to work on a solution to keep the Vikings, AEG on Tuesday unveiled its latest vision for an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. Two weeks remain in the public-comment period of AEG's environmental impact report on the concept, and the company hopes to have its approvals in place by late summer, with the goal of luring a football team back to L.A. next spring. AEG's is one of two competing stadium proposals, with the other in City of Industry.

An environmental group that has supported a proposed downtown Los Angeles football stadium and helped the developer secure special treatment in the courts issued a sharply worded critique Tuesday of environmental documents prepared for the project. In a 16-page letter to city officials, the Natural Resources Defense Council called on Anschutz Entertainment Group to rewrite and recirculate a recently released environmental impact report on the proposed stadium, saying it failed to fully analyze health risks created by cars that would travel to and from the 72,000-seat facility.

Few issues have drawn such one-sided response from our letter writers as the proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles. So when The Times published an editorial on Sept. 4 supporting a state bill to expedite judicial review of the project (a narrower accommodation than the broad protection from environmental lawsuits that developer AEG had asked for originally), and a follow-up editorial on Sept. 12 calling for a comprehensive review of the California Environmental Quality Act, several readers expressed incredulity over the paper's position.

Interesting that AEG will be involved in bringing sports teams to China. Kings fans have been getting shanghaied by them for years. Jamie Rocamora Los Angeles

When AEG executives signed the final documents to take over the Millennium Dome in London, giggles could be heard in the adjacent room. The 860,000-square-foot entertainment dome was regarded as something of a national joke that had soaked up $1 billion in British taxpayers' money and was mothballed before the Los Angeles-based venue operator showed up with an offer. "It was like they couldn't believe these silly Americans were dumb enough to do this," Anschutz Entertainment Group chief Tim Leiweke recalled.

Lawmakers in Sacramento have a responsibility to legislate for the public, not for donors or the politically connected; they have a duty to write laws that apply to everyone, and not to allow certain interests to benefit from carve-outs and exemptions. And yet, sometimes the state's broken legislative system forces Californians to choose between that kind of bad lawmaking and worse consequences. Such is the case with SB 292, the bill to expedite judicial review of AEG's proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles in return for AEG's commitment to exceed the state's environmental requirements for the facility.

Los Angeles-based entertainment titan AEG has found a sponsor for its new $280-million arena in Shanghai -- Mercedes-Benz. The German auto manufacturer is expected to announce today that it would lend its name to the basketball and entertainment venue under construction on the Huangpu River in one of China's most cosmopolitan cities. The facility is being developed by AEG, the National Basketball Assn. and Oriental Pearl Group, a division of Shanghai Media Entertainment Group.

Intensifying its push for an NFL stadium in downtown L.A., entertainment conglomerate Anschutz Entertainment Group launched an unusually direct and public attack on one of the most prominent critics of the proposal. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich had planned for the county board to take a position Tuesday opposing AEG's bid for special state protection against environmental lawsuits. But AEG revealed that his wife had been seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the company's affiliate in Shanghai, posing a potential conflict of interest.

While the legislature in Minnesota continued to work on a solution to keep the Vikings, AEG on Tuesday unveiled its latest vision for an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. Two weeks remain in the public-comment period of AEG's environmental impact report on the concept, and the company hopes to have its approvals in place by late summer, with the goal of luring a football team back to L.A. next spring. AEG's is one of two competing stadium proposals, with the other in City of Industry.

Ownership was "involved" in dismissing Terry Murray as the Kings' coach, but the season-saving decision to hire Darryl Sutter was made solely by General Manager Dean Lombardi, Tim Leiweke, the chief executive of parent company AEG, said Tuesday. Leiweke said Sutter is "exactly what we needed," and credited the blunt-mannered coach for transforming an underachieving team into the mature, cohesive group that upset the top-seeded Vancouver Canucks in the first round of the playoffs.

If it is built, the proposed 72,000-seat Farmers Field stadium in downtown Los Angeles will bring many benefits but also major traffic congestion. Despite an optimistic estimate that 20% of patrons will ride public transit on a weekday, and 15% on weekends, the project's environmental impact report says almost 20,000 cars will also arrive for events there. Anschutz Entertainment Group, the stadium's developer, has promised to accommodate all these cars. But AEG should also give patrons an incentive to ride public transit and leave their cars at home.

AEG billionaire Philip Anschutz is committed to the idea of an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles and is willing to buy an entire team -- as opposed to just a part of one -- in order to make the deal work, his top executive said Monday. "Phil is now completely engaged in this process," said Tim Leiweke, AEG's president and chief executive. "And the only thing he won't do is get leveraged to the point of doing a stupid deal on a team. But if this is about finding a win-win for the NFL and Phil Anschutz, he is prepared to write that check now, subject to getting done with the [environmental impact report]

There's an Internet report out there that says the Anschutz football stadium project downtown is essentially dead. True or not, I'll get to that it in a moment. There is also speculation the new Dodgers owners might do business with the NFL. AEG point man Tim Leiweke says Magic Johnson has assured him he still wants a financial stake in AEG's football project downtown. "Magic Johnson is 100% behind Farmers Field and is part of our group," Leiweke says, "and I speak on his behalf.

An NFL stadium at Chavez Ravine? You can bet the new owners of the Dodgers will at least kick the tires on that idea. In fact, a league insider said the buyers had preliminary discussions with the NFL while doing their due diligence on the investment. Peter O'Malley did more than that in the late 1990s. He was well down the road on a proposal to build a football stadium next to Dodger Stadium when the city let the air out of his balloon by supporting the Coliseum, which it partly owned.

Based on the abysmal failures that the Kings and Galaxy have become under AEG's ownership, might I suggest Mssrs. Anschutz and Leiweke try running a residential janitorial service instead. For while they have repeatedly proven that they lack the necessary acumen to be successful in the world of pro sports, cleaning house they seem to have down to a science. Andrea Warren Rolling Hills Estates

I am a current Kings season-ticket holder, and I am writing this letter in response to the recent letters regarding the Kings and AEG. Personally, I am excited for the first time in a long time now, as I have seen a strong commitment from AEG to stick to a structured plan to help build a team that is exciting and competitive to watch, both now and heading into the future. It's always exciting watching a team grow, and feeling like you are a part of that process, almost as if it is partly "your team."

AEG's proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles was the kind of job-creating development that needed to move forward, even if that meant passing special-case legislation to help it along. The legislation, which expedites the legal process for lawsuits challenging the project on environmental grounds, won our support because quick action was required and because it didn't let AEG off the hook for adhering to the California Environmental Quality Act, including an environmental impact report.

Concert giant AEG is teaming up with Ryan Seacrest, Mark Cuban and Hollywood powerhouse talent firm Creative Artists Agency to launch a pop culture and music cable channel that is expected to debut in June. Called AXS, the cable network primarily will carry live programming aimed at entertainment aficionados. It will include a heavy diet of music and concert coverage as well as lifestyle programming. Los Angeles-based AEG's downtown L.A. Live complex will serve as the network's on-air home.