Make way for the Sin City Raiders
Vi va, Las Vegas! Condolences, Oakland.
The Oakland Raiders are relocating to Sin City … eventually.
NFL owners on Monday morning approved the Raiders’ request to move to the gambling and schmaltz- showbiz capital of the world, effective by 2020.
The Raiders will play at least the next two seasons at their current home, Oakland- Alameda County Coliseum, before moving into a new $ 1.9- billion stadium in Vegas at the start of the next decade.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told a mid- day news conference that the iconic franchise will continue to be named the Oakland Raiders until actually relocating to Vegas, either in 2019 or 2020.
The club has a pair of optional one- year leases at their current home and intend to fulfill them.
Raiders owner Mark Davis told the news conference he isn’t sure where his team will play in 2019. If local authorities invite the Silver and Black to stage home games at the Coliseum for a third lame-duck year, the Raiders probably would accept, he said.
Owners voted 31-1 Monday in favour of the relocation, NFL executive vice- president Eric Grubman confirmed to reporters. The Miami Dolphins were the lone holdouts, according to numerous reports. At least 24 of 32 owners ( 75 per cent) must approve any significant league change, including franchise relocations.
Grubman refused to disclose the relocation fee that Davis now owes the league, but reports had ball- parked it in the $ 300- million range, about half the $650-million fee paid by both the Chargers and Rams to move to Los Angeles.
The Raiders were a founding American Football League franchise in 1960, and spent the entire decade as a top AFL team before the league merged with the NFL in 1970. From then through 1981, the Raiders field- ed one of the league’s most powerful teams behind such legendary figures as head coach John Madden and quarterback Kenny (The Snake) Stabler. The Raiders won two Super Bowls in that era.
But in 1982, then-owner Al Davis moved the club without NFL approval down the California coast to Los Angeles, and for the next 13 seasons played in the L. A. Memorial Coliseum, winning another Super Bowl in 1983 behind star running back Marcus Allen.
In 1995, Davis returned the Raiders to Oakland and its old Coliseum home. The team hasn’t won a Super Bowl since. And in fact, had badly digressed on the field. Last season they made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years.
Al Davis died in 2011. That’s when his son Mark — a team water boy decades ago — became principal owner.
The Raiders hanging around to play at least two seasons of lameduck seasons in Oakland apparently alarms neither Davis nor the NFL. But it should.
Buffalo Bills fans had planned to abandon the team in droves had it been sold three years ago to Jon Bon Jovi’s Toronto group. Fans of the original Cleveland Browns franchise in 1995 vandalized old Cleveland Stadium, and that was just for the one lame- duck home game played there after relocation news to Baltimore had broken.
You’d have to be naive to believe the Raiders’ passionate, intimidating fans will accept the club’s leaving with just “aw, shucks” shrugs.
“I wouldn’t use the term ‘ lameduck.’ We’re still the Oakland Raiders, we love the Raiders and we represent the Raider Nation,” Davis said. “There are going to be some disappointed fans and some angry fans. It’s going to be up to me to talk to them and let them know why, how and what has happened, and hopefully we can work things out and work together for the future.”