It was group therapy night on Monday at Ricky’s Sports Theater and Grill, where clumps of Raiders fans alternated among anger, hope and fatalism.
On Thursday — Christmas Eve, no less — the Raiders played their last home game of the year, and possibly their last home game ever in Oakland.
After yet another underwhelming season ends, the Raiders, along with the San Diego Chargers (who lost to Oakland, 23-20, in overtime on Thursday night) and the St Louis Rams, are expected to apply to relocate to Los Angeles. The 32 NFL owners could vote as soon as Jan. 12 on whether to allow one or two of them to leave.
Photo: Kirby Lee - USA TODAY
At Ricky’s, in San Leandro, a 10-minute drive south of the O.co Coliseum, fans stewed amid the old Raiders programs, bobbleheads and jerseys lining the walls, fearing the worst about the possible move yet looking for signs of optimism.
They had been there before — the team left Oakland for Los Angeles after the 1981 season, but returned in 1995.
And so over wings and beers, members of Save Oakland Sports, a fan group, worked through the scenarios: The Rams move, and the Chargers and Raiders stay; the Chargers and Raiders, who want to build a stadium together near Los Angeles, move; the Raiders build a new stadium in Oakland; and on and on.
“We live in this era of stadium roulette, where you don’t know which chamber the bullet is in,” said Dave Newhouse, a longtime sportswriter who covered the Raiders in the 1970s. “You’ll never see a more abused set of fans.”
More than in previous years when the NFL flirted with putting a team in Los Angeles, all signs suggest the league is taking the issue seriously, with a high probability that at least one team will land there next season or the season after.
The reason a move seems likely now is that the owners of three teams are willing to put up the total cost, or close to it, of building a new stadium there. They have also arrived at the point where they can get out of leases in their home markets.
However, the league owners have not reached a consensus on how to proceed.
Some owners favor a plan by Rams owner Stan Kroenke to build a domed stadium on the southwest fringe of Los Angeles, as part of a retail and entertainment district in Inglewood, California. Other owners like the proposal made by the Chargers and Raiders, which calls for an outdoor stadium in Carson, about 24km south of downtown Los Angeles, that would be built by a venture with Disney chief executive Robert A. Iger at the top.
Before moving forward, the owners must, according to their relocation guidelines, take into account what Oakland, San Diego and St Louis have done to keep their teams.
St Louis has done the most. It cleared many legal and financial hurdles in planning for a new US$1 billion stadium, largely government-funded, on the banks of the Mississippi River. The Rams have not publicly commented on the stadium proposal.
Civic advisers in San Diego proposed building a new stadium next to the Chargers’ current home, but the team dismissed the effort as too little, too late.
Oakland lags behind.
The city has said that it cannot afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadiums for the Raiders and the Athletics, who share the O.co Coliseum. Oakland and Alameda County are still paying off their share of a US$220 million renovation that added more than 10,000 seats and suites, nicknamed Mount Davis in reference to Al Davis, the Raiders’ owner at the time.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said the city, which along with the county owns the land around the O.co Coliseum, could retire the roughly US$100 million in debt on the building and make infrastructure improvements on the property if the Raiders built there. However, Schaaf said that might not be enough to impress the league.
“I know the NFL doesn’t expect a fully baked proposal from Oakland,” Schaaf said in an interview this week. “Oakland has a very complex situation, and we’re really committed to threading the needle of keeping this team we love, but also being responsible to our taxpayers.”
Schaaf is hopeful, however, that when the owners weigh what city or cities they are willing to abandon, they recognize that Oakland has a booming economy in the country’s sixth-largest television market. And while the Raiders have not finished with a winning record since 2002 — and they are out of playoff contention for the 13th straight season — the team has a rich history in the city dating to 1960.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but