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.
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