The NFL’s field trip to London is now done, and while officials clearly enjoyed their venture to Britain, it is time to get back to the business of the NFL in America. This means getting a cable deal set up with the nation’s largest multisystems operator, Comcast, so that the NFL Network is back on the cable giant’s basic expanded tier in time for the kickoff of an eight-game package beginning on Thanksgiving. League officials are also once again kicking the tires in Los Angeles to see if LA really wants an NFL team.

The owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones — who is the lead owner on the NFL Network committee — will be dealing with the chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast, Brian Roberts, in an attempt to get Roberts to change his mind and embrace the NFL Network again. Comcast and the NFL have had a contentious relationship since January 2006, when the league announced that it was placing an eight-game late season package of Thursday and Saturday games on the NFL Network — after Comcast officials thought that they themselves had landed the package for its OLN (now Versus) channel.

Comcast was the first multisystem operator to carry the NFL Network’s programming in 2003. The company placed the network on its digital tier and never promised the NFL the opportunity to place the network on a basic expanded tier — which means that the NFL Network is just available to nine million Comcast subscribers, instead of the 24 million viewers that are available on the basic tier.

The NFL sued Comcast after Roberts’s company announced in December 2006 that it was moving the network to a sports tier on systems it had acquired from Adelphia and Time Warner. Judge Bernard Fried of the New York State Supreme Court issued a summary judgment in May, saying Comcast could move the network to a sports tier.

The NFL had hoped to have 50 million subscribers by now — but it only has 35 million. Comcast’s decision has cost NFL owners millions of dollars, and they’re not too happy with Roberts. But Roberts is not too pleased with the NFL either. The NFL package would have given credibility to the Versus network as a competitor to ESPN.

“My immediate and primary objective is to ensure broad distribution of the NFL Network to our millions of fans across the land,” Jones said recently. “Today there are more options than ever before for consumers in terms of choosing a television provider. Satellite companies like DirecTV and Dish Network, and telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T offer NFL Network on broad packages without extra costs to consumers. Those fans whose access to NFL Network is still being blocked by their cable provider will have both the opportunity and the incentive to switch providers if cable continues to deny customers the programming they want.”

In September, the NFL complained to the Federal Communications Commission that Comcast puts channels it owns, such as the Golf Channel, on its basic or digital tiers — but it makes the NFL Network only available on a tier for an additional fee.

Jones, in talking to Comcast, is taking a page out of the Big Ten Network, an entity that is also having difficulties getting its product onto Comcast systems in the Midwest. He wants NFL fans to drop their cable subscriptions and sign up with satellite provider DirecTV in an effort to pressure Comcast to do the right thing and get the NFL Network onto basic expanded cable. DirecTV offers “NFL Sunday Ticket” as an out-of-market package for subscribers, and also offers NFL Network on broad packages without extra cost.

The NFL Network’s first regular season game is scheduled for Thanksgiving night, when Indianapolis visits Atlanta. Jones’s Cowboys host Green Bay the following Thursday night. It is highly unlikely that Jones will be able to cut any sort of deal with Comcast in time, given the animosity between the two sides.

(Ironically, Jones and Comcast launched CowboysVision in 2004 on Dallas-area Comcast systems on a digital tier. In November 2005, the NFL ordered that the Cowboys channel, along with the Comcast-Atlanta Falcons channel, cease operations because they conflicted with the NFL Network.)

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NFL owners are again studying Los Angeles as the site for a team. The Los Angeles Daily News reported last week that in July, the vice president of the NFL, Neil Glat, sent a letter to Los Angeles City Council Member Bernard Parks (who is also the president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission) that the “economic risks” overweigh the cost of spending a billion dollars to renovate the coliseum.

But at last week’s NFL owners meeting in Philadelphia, the topic of what to do with Los Angeles came up again. Apparently, the NFL has some interest in possibly looking at some land in the City of Industry, located in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles county. About 13 years ago, the NFL thought about striking a partnership with Raiders owner Al Davis to build a facility at the Hollywood Park racetrack parking lot. Davis was originally offered a chance at hosting five Super Bowls in 10 years. That was reduced to three, and then to one. And then the NFL suggested he share a stadium with another team, much like the present Jets–Giants partnership in the Meadowlands. But the terms were not as generous as the Jets–Giants agreement when it came to stadium revenue distribution.

In 1987, Davis was looking to get out of the coliseum, and reached an agreement to build a stadium on a rock quarry in Irwindale, California. The deal eventually fell through.

In the late 1990s, the league all but gave an expansion team to Los Angeles, provided that a state-of-the-art stadium was available. But neither Los Angeles nor the state of California had funding to renovate the Coliseum, and the NFL was not very interested in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Plans to build a stadium on a toxic waste site in Carson, Calif., never materialized as well. In October 1999, the expansion franchise that was supposed to go to Los Angeles was instead awarded to Houston.

This year, the NFL plans to make a field trip to Los Angeles and Anaheim again, with the Dodger Stadium-area in Chavez Ravine, Calif., possibly on the itinerary. Chavez Ravine isn’t new territory for the NFL. League owners entertained a proposal by then-Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley to build a stadium in his parking lot in 1997.

A number of NFL owners, including San Diego’s Alex Spanos, Minnesota’s Zygi Wilf, New Orleans’ Tom Benson, and Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson are nearing the end of their stadium lease agreements. As Wilson attempts to regionalize his Bills franchise through North America’s second-largest untapped NFL market, Toronto, the others owners could use Los Angeles as leverage in their attempts to get stadium deals in their markets. After the London adventure, the owners are finding that it’s time to get back to the business of the NFL, cable television, and Los Angeles.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com