San Diego’s greatest hope remains in uncertainty.

Fact is, less than three months from an anticipated day of reckoning, the NFL doesn’t know precisely what it wants to do or what is possible in Los Angeles, and there is far from a consensus among the 32 team owners about which one of the two L.A. stadium proposals they should support or when the league should return to the nation’s second-largest market. The NFL also is willing to negotiate with San Diego in lieu of the Chargers , though the team would have to approve the terms of a deal.

It is a faint glimmer of a ray of hope, but it is not the total darkness of an impending move.

It still doesn’t look good for San Diego.

The Chargers remain opposed to San Diego officials’ plans to build a stadium, and there are several NFL owners reluctant to disagree with one of their own on that assessment.

At this point, the NFL expects the Chargers, St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders to file for relocation in January.

“I think there will be a vote,” Steelers chairman Art Rooney II, a member of the influential Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities, said after the 32 owners met Wednesday inside a Park Avenue hotel.

It was a sentiment with which NFL commissioner Roger Goodell agreed.

That doesn’t guarantee a vote, which would require three-quarters approval by owners for a team to move, will happen. And it certainly doesn’t mean a team – let alone two – will be approved for relocation.

The NFL told owners in their gathering here, in fact, that it isn’t sure whether L.A. is a two-team market. Owners were also told the league might not be ready for a vote in January.

One owner said he was “frustrated” by the lack of progress. Others also clearly felt the process should be moving along more quickly. However, NFL relocation point man Eric Grubman said he felt each step is a necessary part of the process and there is time for all issues to be resolved.

“I think there was an honest exchange of viewpoints,” Grubman said of Wednesday afternoon’s session, which included just the 32 owners in a room. “… I think it’s (necessary) they begin to understand where one another might be.”

The league shared with owners that it is confident there will be a temporary stadium deal in place for the 2016 season. The league staff provided updates on progress in San Diego, St. Louis and Oakland. Kroenke and Spanos spoke briefly about their respective L.A. proposals, and then they, along with Raiders owner Mark Davis, left the room. At that point, owners shared views. Among them was an assertion by the Jets and Giants ownership, who share a stadium, that if two teams are moving to Los Angeles, they must do so at the same time in order to be on equal footing.

Among the three teams, only Davis seems OK with the idea of the process dragging out. He is also the one with the least capital and least leverage, as many in the league are of the opinion that Oakland will never have a viable stadium solution. Chargers chairman Dean Spanos and Rams owner Stan Kroenke declined comment, but sources said both earnestly seek a resolution for 2016.

Multiple sources said both Spanos and Kroenke are confident they have at least the nine votes apiece it would take to block the other from relocating.

There is a growing opinion among owners that a vote should not occur – at least not as presently envisioned – and that Kroenke and Spanos should be prompted by the NFL to get together and come up with a solution.

Grubman said San Diego submitted via e-mail a term sheet of its proposal to build a stadium at the end of last week. He said the league expects to receive St. Louis’ term sheet soon.

Grubman said he has not extensively studied the San Diego term sheet. Two sources said the sheet contained essentially the same proposal that San Diego made to the NFL in August, with the update that the deadline for a January election has passed and it will shoot for a June election.

The Chargers cut off negotiations with the city in June, primarily over concerns about the city’s plans to conduct an expedited environmental impact report. Spanos has made sure his fellow owners know the holes he sees in San Diego’s plan, including the EIR and what the team sees as underestimated costs. Owners are naturally sympathetic to what they see as a deal that requires the Chargers to assume cost overrun and litigation risk.

Grubman said Wednesday the league can negotiate with San Diego in place of the Chargers. He cited the NFL’s intervention in the late 1990s that kept the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Mass., after the team had agreed to move to Hartford, Conn.

“That’s how things sometimes happen,” Grubman said. “I don’t accept because an owner isn’t going to negotiating sessions that means there is no negotiation.”

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Grubman said the NFL cannot accept a deal on behalf of a team. The NFL staff is essentially serving in an advisory capacity.

“The owners make the decision, the league doesn’t,” Grubman said. “I don’t have a vote. Our job is to present the most attractive set of circumstances for whatever option might exist, whether that’s in Los Angeles or it’s in the existing market. I don’t believe we have all the information, because we don’t have fully negotiated deals in any market that owners can assess against what might be available to them in Los Angeles. When and if we get that from one or more markets, that will be full information. And if we fail to get it … of course, you’re comparing something you can take in Los Angeles to nothing.”

As of now, and it appears for longer than the NFL will wait, San Diego has nothing that would meet the Chargers’ criteria for a stadium deal. Multiple owners said Wednesday they would be reluctant to make the Rams or Chargers wait in their home markets for something that may or may not be realized.

That sort of uncertainty is actually likely to doom San Diego’s hopes of keeping the Chargers.