FOR NFL, IT'S LIKE APPLES AND ORANGE COUNTY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Of the five paragraphs in a news release Wednesday announcing the NFL's interest in building a stadium in Anaheim, four were devoted to convincing people like you and me that having a franchise in the cultural heart of Orange County would be just as good as having a team in the middle of Los Angeles County.

I don't know about you, but this L.A. football fan isn't buying it.

First of all, I remember making the mistake once of lumping Los Angeles and Anaheim together. It was Oct. 29, 2002, the last great day in Southern California sports history. That night, the Lakers celebrated the previous season's NBA championship by receiving their rings at Staples Center. That afternoon, the Angels celebrated their World Series title by riding in a parade on Disneyland's Main Street USA. My column described what a fine moment it was for ``Greater Los Angeles.''

I got e-mails the next morning from angry Orange County residents, saying they didn't consider themselves a subset of ``Greater Los Angeles'' and suggesting those of us up here keep our grubby mitts off their baseball glory.

No, O.C. is not part of L.A.

Second, ask Arte Moreno if having a team called the Anaheim Whatevers is just as good as having a team called the Los Angeles Whosits. Moreno, owner of the Anaheim Angels, briefly floated the idea earlier this season of changing the club's name to the Los Angeles Angels. This was part of Moreno's plan for the Angels to take over for the Dodgers as the dominant ballclub in what the sports world will always know, after all, as the L.A. market. It sank for a couple of reasons. Anaheim residents were predictably aghast, and Los Angeles fans didn't need a second-place baseball team to go with their first-place baseball team.

No, Anaheim is not the same as L.A.

Third, check out a freeway map and the price of gas before you fall in with the notion that the proposed new football venue on Angel Stadium parking-lot land is just down the road a spell from the already-proposed sites at the Rose Bowl, the Coliseum or Carson.

When I drive from home in the San Fernando Valley to cover an Angels night game, needing to arrive before the clubhouses open to reporters at 3:30 p.m., I set out at noon for a trip that covers the 101, 134, 210 and 57 freeways, and then I have lunch in Anaheim before heading to the park. The alternatives are early-rush-hour downtown-L.A. traffic and a two-hour haul.

No, whatever Anaheim's favorite song might say, it's not that small a world.

Yet that's what the City of Anaheim tried to tell us Wednesday as it revealed ``exploratory'' discussions with the NFL about building a stadium for a football franchise that would begin play in 2008, which is 14 years after the Rams left Anaheim and the Raiders skipped out on Los Angeles.

It said the Angels and Mighty Ducks ``prove that fans from all over California travel to Anaheim to watch quality franchises.'' It said freeways and train stations would ``give NFL fans from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border easy access to the new stadium.'' It quoted City Manager David M. Morgan saying the plan would give the NFL a franchise ``in the nation's second largest television market.'' (So obviously Morgan is one Anaheim resident who doesn't mind being lumped together with Los Angeles.)

Maybe I'm looking at this through smog-glazed glasses, but if the expectation now is that pro football is going back to Anaheim before it goes back to Los Angeles, it's disappointing for anybody who thought a decade of ``NFL-to-L.A.'' speculation meant exactly that.

Somebody, please, do an environmental-impact report on the message the NFL has dropped into the waters of its negotiations with L.A., Pasadena and Carson officials, waters that might have been murky but were at least moving and lively.

Is there any way to interpret the NFL's sudden interest in Anaheim - more than a year after it began what looked like close dancing with the L.A. suitors - other than as a sign the league is unhappy with what it's seeing and hearing from L.A.?

``Until you have what you want, why wouldn't you keep looking around?'' NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Wednesday in a rhetorical question that revealed the league's intentions better than any declarative sentence.

The details of all this will give you a headache, like the Santa Ana Freeway. The NFL wants environmental-impact reports, and the fact Anaheim has already done one puts the city even with the Coliseum and ahead of Pasadena and Carson. The NFL envisions an entertainment complex surrounding the stadium, and Anaheim will always go for more of that. The NFL wants things done its way, and Anaheim might be desperate enough to go along.

Fine. Just don't expect an L.A. resident like me to run out to the Northridge Fashion Center to buy an Anaheim football jersey.

It doesn't even matter anymore who's to blame.

A team in Anaheim wouldn't be the same.