SCHAUMBURG, Ill. – After two days of meetings that only seemed to reinforce the inevitability of the NFL’s return to Los Angeles, league officials emphasized their primary focus is finding a solution that ensures the league’s long-term success in the Los Angeles-Orange County market.

With the Chargers, Raiders and Rams all interested in relocating to Los Angeles, that decision will not be easy, NFL officials and owners said Tuesday.

“A lot of moving parts, complicated,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said. “The road to the end is going to be challenging. (And that’s) nothing to do with L.A. I guess you use the metaphor of musical chairs, and there’s a bit of that going on.”

Carmen Policy, the former 49ers and Browns executive, told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s 32 owners Tuesday at a suburban Chicago hotel that a $1.75 billion stadium in Carson solves what he calls the NFL’s “California problem” as well as creating a “mega market” stretching from Santa Barbara to the Mexico border, making it the largest in the league.

“If you look at it, look at all the different pieces, it all kind of comes together and fits,” Policy said of the Carson project. “The puzzle gets completed.”

Rams owner Stan Kroenke briefed Goodell and the owners on his plans for a $1.86 billion stadium in Inglewood, that would be the most expensive sports stadium in history.

While Policy and others said they envisioned the NFL making a decision on which teams will be allowed to relocate to Los Angeles in January, certainly before the Super Bowl, Goodell stressed that league’s focus is long term and not a more immediate time frame.

Los Angeles presents, Goodell said, “relatively unique circumstances where you have multiple teams interested in relocating to the market where there are two different solutions. And our focus on that is, if they meet the relocation policy, is to make sure they have a solution that is going to work for the long term in Los Angeles.

“That’s the key issue for us, making sure that whatever we decide as a membership that we have the ability to be successful in Los Angeles for the long term. That’s why we’ve spent the last two decades trying to come up with a solution. That would provide that kind of foundation.”

But it is increasingly clear that the league is headed back to Los Angeles. The league is considering launching a campaign as early as September to take deposits on season tickets for teams relocating to Los Angeles. Under the plan, fans looking to purchase tickets would be given levels of priority based on when they applied and whether they are current or former NFL season ticket holders. Fans could opt out of the process.

Policy told the owners Tuesday the Carson project is the ideal solution to the NFL’s quandary in Los Angeles. He left no doubt about the Chargers’ and Raiders’ desire to determination to relocate to Carson.

“Let me say this: The Raiders and Chargers are committed to L.A.,” Policy said. “They’ve spent a lot of money, a lot of money” on the Carson project.

One of Policy’s four points of emphasis during a 30-minute presentation was that the Carson venue addresses the stadium issues for the Chargers and Raiders, who play in aging facilities that team officials said threaten their ability to remain competitive.

“It works for California and it certainly works for the L.A. market and now it works for the two teams that are playing in the most dilapidated and terrible stadiums in the league,” Policy said after his presentation. “You have to remember these two facilities predated (San Francisco’s) Candlestick (Park) in terms of accommodating football, and Candlestick today is rubble and dust.

“It cures the California dilemma. You’re not only curing the California dilemma but you’re curing it with California teams. These teams have been born and bred in California. They’ve always been in California.”

Citing an NFL study that found that the Chargers and Raiders are the league’s most popular teams with Southern California fans, Policy also argued the Carson project would extend the league’s footprint throughout the region, creating a market of 22 million people that would be even larger than New York, long the nation’s largest market.

“If the Chargers and Raiders go to L.A., what you’ve done is create a mega market from Santa Barbara to Mexico and you increase your population in your market by over 3.2 million people,” Policy said. “You’re going to be slightly above New York in total population.”

Carson plans also call for the NFL to be provided, rent-free, eight-plus acres for the NFL Network, a West Coast wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and other league entities.

While Policy’s presentation focused solely on the Carson plans, Kroenke spent part of his session dealing with the franchise’s difficulties in St. Louis.

During the presentation, a Rams official showed a slide of a suite with a fireplace containing a roaring fire. A Rams official said the fire in the fireplace is fake “just like everything in L.A.”

The official also said the Hollywood Sign was visible from the stadium on a clear day “should that ever happen.” And there was a reference to Los Angeles’ notoriously late-arriving fans. The Rams official said the stadium should have a special parking area for fans who arrive late.

Kroenke did not speak to reporters after the meeting.

“Our goal has always been to show the NFL what the opportunity is (in St. Louis) and beyond that they can go where they want to go,” Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said.

While Kroenke made his presentation, a group of Rams fans gathered outside the hotel carrying signs and banners that read, “Rams Must Stay,” “No Way Rams In LA” and “In Dave We Trust,” the latter featuring an oversize face on top of it. The face belongs to former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock, who is leading efforts to build a $998-million stadium on the St. Louis riverfront partially financed by public funds.

Demoff said he had a conversation with Peacock on Monday night.

NFL senior vice president Eric Grubman, the league’s point man on the Los Angeles situation, said the St. Louis stadium project has made “consistent progress over quite a number of months” but details on the financing remain to be worked out.

Under a financial plan presented by the Peacock group to NFL officials last month, $201 million would come from extending existing bonds on Edward Jones Dome – the Rams’ current home – $187 million from tax incentives, $160 million from personal seat license sales, $200 million from the NFL, with Kroenke and the Rams picking up the remaining $250 million.

San Diego officials made a presentation on plans for a $1.1 billion stadium in Mission Valley to Goodell and the six-owner NFL Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities on Monday.

While Grubman said the presentation showed that city and county officials have made a “significant amount of progress in terms of putting together something which is beginning to be defined,” there “were a lot of questions” about the likelihood of legal challenges to an environmental report on the project as well as other legal and political concerns.

“And those questions remain open,” Grubman said.

San Diego officials told Goodell and the committee Monday that they would not pursue the stadium project if they don’t have an agreement with the Chargers by September.

Last month, the city gave the Chargers a Sept. 11 deadline to reach a deal, although Christopher Melvin, the city’s point man on the project, said the deadline could be rolled back two weeks. The city wants to hold a Jan. 12 special election on the Mission Valley venue. The Chargers broke off negotiations with the city in June on the advice of their legal counsel because of concerns about the legality of the EIR.

“Nothing’s going to be done in 2015,” said Mark Fabiani, the Chargers’ special counsel. “That’s crystal clear.”

The outlook is even more dire in Oakland. Raiders owner Mark Davis said he has not spoken in weeks to Floyd Kephart, the San Diego-based real estate consultant designated by Oakland city and Alameda County officials to come up with a financing plan for a new stadium for the team.

Grubman said he also saw no progress during a meeting with Oakland officials in the Bay Area late last month.

“The Oakland Raiders have great fans, but the facts on the ground are there has been no viable proposal that’s been made to the Raiders,” Grubman said. “We had a fair and open discussion, but it was not specific around a proposal. So, in that, I was disappointed for the fans because there’s no proposal on the table that gives us something we can go to work on. That’s what we like.”

With the return to Los Angeles looking increasingly likely, Grubman has been involved in discussions on temporary venues to house relocated teams during stadium construction. He said he has had multiple discussions with multiple options and seemed confident that would not be a significant issue.

There still remains plenty of hard work ahead. Any team looking to relocate must secure the approval of three-quarters of the league’s owners.

“It will be a vote of the owners, and I think they’re going to sit back and they’re going to say, ‘OK, is the project doable?’,” Policy said after his presentation. “The answer, I think, is yes.

“They’re going to say, does it work for the teams? And the answer, I think, is definitely yes. And then they’re going to say, does it work for the NFL? And, I think, I really believe, does it work for the NFL long term? And that’s going to be what decides how this thing goes.”

Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com