Zoff' squares off on stadium and Olympic bid.

Some, including many of New York's top politicians, may have been shocked by the late collapse of the Jets' West Side stadium plan. Not New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority president George Zoffinger.

As far back as last February, Zoffinger had predicted that the stadium would not be approved.

Now he has another prediction. Because the West Side stadium had been made such a centerpiece of the city's Olympic bid, Zoffinger feels that even with the Mets' new stadium plan acting as a replacement, New York City probably won't get the 2012 Olympics.

"I sure hope we get it, but I don't know if that looks very likely at this point," said Zoffinger, who is a board member of pro-New York Olympic organization NYC 2012.

"Putting all the eggs in that West Side stadium was a tactical error. We should have had a more regional approach and we could have found ways, I think, had we been willing to do it and not been so parochial."

Of the Mets' stadium substitution, Zoffinger indicated that it's "a little late in the game to be changing what you're doing, I don't think that it's helpful to the bid."

Explaining why it was so apparent to him that the stadium plan wouldn't work while Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki trumpeted the idea, Zoffinger explained that the project's economics never made sense.

"To build a billion dollar stadium, how do you recover that with ten football games a year? You don't," Zoffinger said. "One of the things that people don't realize is that at the Meadowlands, when we have concerts and things like that, we really make our money on the parking and the concessions. The Jets stadium was going to have no parking."

The stadium's incorporation into the plan to expand the Javits Center didn't offer a convincing revision to its potential profitability either.

"Nobody is going to want to have a convention inside of a domed stadium, if they were doing that you'd have conventions in Minneapolis, in the dome down in New Orleans and all these other places, it just doesn't happen," Zoffinger said.

"And another thing, I hate to say this, but the convention business is not such a good business anymore. There's a lot of competition, a lot of these convention centers that are being built are basically standing empty for a good portion of the year."

Indicating why the stadium captured as much support as it did, Zoffinger said that sports developments carry an aura of excitement and popularity that sometimes can distort the realities of their true feasibility and profitability.

"People get caught up in all this sports stuff," Zoffinger said. "And it's a shame because what ends up happening is that politicians end up spending taxpayer money on sports related items and the public basically gets fleeced. And I think that, in this particular case, you had the idea of professional football in Manhattan and it clouded the view of people when it came to the economics."

Zoffinger hadn't been vocal in his opposition to the West Side stadium's construction, but did express his doubts about the project so much as it pertained to the Giants Stadium deal that New Jersey inked in April.

That deal came after months of legal wrangling, stalled negotiations, and seesawing relations between the Giants and the state.

Zoffinger, who was originally fervent about not allowing the Giants certain tax concessions the football team had demanded for its new stadium, wound up parting with his longstanding oppositional stance in a gesture that paved the way for acting Governor Richard J. Codey to successfully resume negotiations and strike a deal.

But Zoffinger indicated that his change of position was prompted more by mounting pressure against him rather than his belief that the project would be a profitable one for New Jersey.

"I didn't see the light, but I felt the heat," Zoffinger said at the time.

Zoffinger originally wanted to hold off negotiations with the Giants until July, by which time he predicted the Jets stadium deal would have collapsed, leaving the team with little other choice but to remain in the Meadowlands.

That situation would have paved the way for him, he said, to negotiate a better deal for the state. Governor Codey had rejected Zoffinger's stance in April and stated that he believed the Jets stadium would be built regardless of whether New York gets the Olympics.

Under the terms of the current deal, the Giants will pay $6.6 million dollars a year to lease 78-acres of land adjacent to its current 28-acre site, a figure that Zoffinger said was woefully below value.

Now that it seems the Jets will be staying in the Meadowlands, Zoffinger expressed that he is hopeful he can negotiate a better deal for the state, while satisfying both teams.