Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed West Side stadium got an unexpected boost yesterday from the National Football League, which said team owners would vote next week to make a potential Manhattan stadium the host of the 2010 Super Bowl.

The vote on the 2010 Super Bowl site was moved up from June at the request of the Jets, who hope that a league commitment to a New York Super Bowl will give them the momentum they need to win support for a $1.4 billion development project – including a stadium for their team – on Manhattan’s far West Side.

At the same time, the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, who is running for mayor, launched a new Web site arguing that the money for the stadium would be better spent on the city’s schools.

NFL officials could not be immediately reached for comment, but they posted an article on their Web site saying the vote would take place during a meeting in Hawaii.

This is not the first time that New York has been proposed as host of the Super Bowl. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the NFL commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, held out the possibility of holding the big game in the New York.

The NFL announcement comes at a crucial time, just days before a deadline set by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to bid on the right to develop the Hudson Rail Yards.

For more than a year, the MTA has been negotiating with the New York Jets over the price for the air rights over the site. Earlier this year, public pressure forced the authority to open the bidding and it has now said the right to develop the West Side will go to the most attractive offer.

The Jets’s original bid of $100 million was eclipsed by the $600 million offer floated by Cablevision, the owners of Madison Square Garden, though it is unclear how to compare the bids given the Cablevision development plan would use twice as much land as the Jets proposal.

Analysts expect the plans will be adjusted by the March 21 deadline so that they can be easily compared.

For Mayor Bloomberg, the NFL announcement could not have come at a better time. He has been under fire by Democrats hoping to unseat him in the upcoming mayoral election for what they have labeled a backroom deal between two New York elites, the owner of the Jets and the billionaire mayor. Mr. Bloomberg has argued the development of the West Side would be a boon to the city’s convention business, will create jobs, and will transform an otherwise blighted neighborhood in the city. Now he can add the prospect of a Super Bowl to his argument.

“Unless we build the Sports and Convention Center, New York won’t get the Super Bowl and will lose out on hundreds of jobs, more than $200 million in economic activity and nearly $30 million in tax revenue,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a written statement from Israel, where he is leading an American delegation to celebrate the opening of a new Holocaust museum.

If Mr. Bloomberg emerges victorious, the project would include a 75,000-seat domed stadium for the Jets, an extension of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, tens of thousands of square feet of new office space, new housing, parks, and potentially a museum. The stadium is also the cornerstone of the city’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.

The prospect of a Super Bowl hasn’t blunted attacks from stadium opponents, who argue that new zoning changes for Manhattan’s West Side will spur development without the stadium. Just hours after the NFL announcement was reported, the Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance said the Jets were simply trying to boost an unpopular project with “more exciting proposals like the Super Bowl and other special events.”

“Super Bowl or no Super Bowl, the proposed West Side stadium would be an outrageous misuse of more than $1 billion of taxpayer money,” a spokesman for the Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance, John Raskin, said in a statement.

“The Super Bowl might bring revenue to the City, but it’s foolish to spend more than $1 billion to make just a fraction of that in return,” he said. ” We should invest our money in schools, housing and other things New Yorkers really need.”

The speaker of the City Council, Mr. Miller, fired his own salvo yesterday, announcing a new anti-stadium Web site and petition drive that criticizes the mayor for putting the stadium ahead of school construction projects.

“At the same time that our children are being asked to do without, the mayor continues to move forth with his public bankrolling of the stadium plan,” said Mr. Miller, one four Democrats hoping to unseat Mr. Bloomberg.

“In my opinion, this is a blatant misuse of public funds and what makes it even worse is that it is being done without the least bit of public oversight or approval,” Mr. Miller said.

Several council members who support Mr. Bloomberg’s stadium proposal groused about Mr. Miller’s decision to spend council money to pay for an anti-stadium campaign when the 51-member body has not taken an official position on the issue.

“How can the council pay for something that the entire body hasn’t voted on?” said Council Member Tony Avella, adding that Mr. Miller was using council money to derail “something that I believe in.”

Council Member Madeline Provenzano, who backs both the stadium and Mayor Bloomberg’s re-election, accused Mr. Miller of playing politics. “It’s part of his campaign for mayor,” Ms. Provenzano said. “He is doing this for himself not for the council.”

An official at the New York Public Interest Group, which is opposed to the stadium, expressed similar concerns. When asked whether he had a problem with the use of central fund, Neil Rosenstein, said he had not seen any of the postcard petitions or the Web site. But, he said, it didn’t seem appropriate.

“On its face, I would say that the council shouldn’t be spending central funds on an issue that the body itself hasn’t taken a position on,” Mr. Rosenstein said during a phone interview.

The senior attorney with NYPIRG’s Straphanger’s Campaign, Gene Russianoff, said he did not see a problem with council-funded petitions because they do not feature Mr. Miller’s name or promote a candidate for public office. He did, however, take issue with Mr. Miller posting his photograph on the Web site. The speaker told reporters yesterday that the Web site – www.schoolsnotwestsidestadium.org – and petitions, which are addressed to Mr. Bloomberg, would cost the council only a “nominal” amount. His spokesman, Stephen Sigmund, later said that the cost totaled less than $2,000.

A spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, said the speaker was “using taxpayer money to fund his mayoral ambitions.”

Mr. Sigmund said the Web site would give the public a voice against the stadium project. He also argued that the mayor’s administration had spent untold public resources promoting” the stadium.