Brent Schrotenboer

USA TODAY Sports

HOUSTON – The NFL’s quest to return to Los Angeles just got a little hairy.

At first it seemed so simple: After studying the issue for months, a powerful NFL committee recommended Tuesday that the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders move into a joint stadium venture in Carson.

But then came the first ballot at Tuesday’s special NFL owners meeting. Twenty of 32 NFL owners favored a different project instead – a stadium plan backed by St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke in Inglewood, near the L.A. airport.

That’s still four votes short of the 24 necessary to approval, forcing the league to find a way to negotiate a deal, which could get complicated.

Earlier in the day, the NFL nixed the idea of the Rams moving into the Inglewood project by themselves and instead essentially gave the owners two ballot choices:

- The Raiders and Chargers in a $1.7 billion stadium plan in Carson, an L.A. suburb.

- Or the Chargers and Rams in Inglewood, near the L.A. airport.

The owners favored the latter plan on the first ballot, even though it came with considerable potential hang-ups. The Chargers told USA TODAY Sports in a statement Monday that they had "zero interest" in Inglewood. Any vote in favor of putting the Chargers in Inglewood with the Rams wouldn't be binding without a deal between the Chargers and Rams.

So it started to get even more complicated. To get the Chargers to agree to join the Rams in Inglewood, Kroenke likely would have to offer the Chargers risk protections and a greater share of control and revenues over the project.

The league also would have to find a way to take care of the Raiders, which lack a viable new stadium plan in Oakland.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had pushed the idea of the Chargers joining the Rams in Inglewood. But the Chargers initially responded to the idea by saying it was committed to the project in Carson, where it has spent significant resources and had a legal agreement with the Raiders.

Walt Disney Co. chief executive Bob Iger was tapped to shepherd the Carson project and made a presentation on its behalf to NFL owners Tuesday.

Iger told reporters Tuesday that the NFL's return to L.A. should be "big and bold."

"Two is better than one," he said, noting that L.A. would have home games virtually every week during the season. ""You’d give people in Los Angeles some choice in terms of rooting interest. There hasn’t been a team there.in a long time, I think that’s great, and I think it makes sense economically as well."

Kroenke also made a presentation on behalf of the Inglewood project, a plan that is bigger than Carson and part of a larger entertainment, retail and office development covering nearly 300 acres near the L.A. airport. The 168-acre Carson project is expected to cost $1.7 billion, compared to around $2 billion for Inglewood. Both are to be privately financed.

All three teams are unhappy with substandard stadiums in their current cities and lack acceptable or actionable alternatives to replace them. But the NFL doesn’t want three teams in L.A. and doesn’t want to finance two separate stadium projects in the same metro area. Instead, it will support one new stadium plan in L.A. capable of being shared by two NFL teams.

The trick now is finding two to agree on one stadium. If successful, the league would return to the L.A. market for the first time since the Rams and Raiders left in 1995.