Al Saracevic: Oakland deserves its day in court as it battles NFL’s crooked system for moving teams.
Oakland: NFL relocation process is fixed game that benefits owners
The city of Oakland delivered a broadside hit to the Raiders and the NFL on Tuesday, suing for damages surrounding the team’s imminent move to Las Vegas.
It’s probably too little. Definitely too late. But anything that makes Goodell and Associates sweat is good by me.
The suit, filed in federal court, is chock-full of juicy language and accusation. The NFL’s owners are painted as an “illegal cartel.” The move itself is labeled an “unlawful conspiracy.”
The suit alleges the league’s relocation policy is a fixed game, in which owners vote in their financial interests and not the fans’. Specifically, a team needs to pay a hefty relocation fee when moving from city to city. In the Raiders’ case, that adds up to $378 million, to be split evenly among all the other NFL owners. Who wouldn’t vote for that?
The suit reads:
While Oakland proposed a $1.3 billion new stadium that included a mix of public and private funding to the tune of $750 million, Oakland’s offer did not, and could not, put tens of millions of additional dollars ... into the pockets of each of the remaining 31 NFL Club owners. Only relocating the Raiders did.
This is not a fair process in a competitive marketplace: It is a NFL-rigged process that ... promotes relocations in order to further line the pockets of NFL Club owners with millions of dollars paid by their billionaire competitors to the sole detriment of the Host Cities that are unwilling or unable to pay. It is, essentially, a leveraging of the NFL’s monopoly power, used to extract value from municipalities through an auction that ignores the court-mandated objective relocation procedures ... so the Raiders are moving and paying a bogus $378 million relocation fee.
Speak it, Oakland. Speak truth to the NFL and its clearly crooked system.
Last month, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told The Chronicle’s Scott Ostler that Raiders owner Mark Davis never tried to make a deal with the city, at least on her watch.
On Tuesday, she told The Chronicle, “The NFL’s Billionaire Boys Club ditched Oakland out of sheer greed and left taxpayers with millions in unpaid stadium debt. Our community’s support and loyalty were met with nothing but bad faith. Oakland and Raider Nation deserves our day in court.”
Hopefully, she’ll get what she wants. Then we can learn even more about this sordid divorce.
Apparently, the marriage has been on the rocks for years. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges that Davis and his NFL colleagues had decided on Las Vegas long ago.
More lawsuit language:
Despite Al Davis’ hectic ownership style, and a Raiders team [that managed only 29 wins from 2003 to 2009], the remarkably loyal Oakland community continued to passionately support their home team year after year. However, unbeknownst to Plaintiff, the Raiders — with the NFL’s full support — were plotting to leave.
Tellingly, as early as 1998, Mark Davis, Al Davis’ only child and the heir apparent to the Raiders, purchased the Internet domain name, “LasVegasRaiders.com.” He subsequently renewed the domain name yearly. Within two years, Mark Davis also purchased a cellphone number with a Las Vegas area code.
I can almost hear the gasp in the jury box now. “He bought a Vegas cell phone!”
Regarding the failed “Lott Proposal,” which could have kept the team in the East Bay, the suit says:
In fact, at a closed-door NFL meeting, Marc Badain, a highlevel Raiders official, referred to the Lott Proposal — a proposal that could have finally introduced African American ownership into the NFL for the first time in the league’s history — as a “political, cover-your-ass joke.” Badain announced that “it would have been better if [Oakland] offered nothing.” Contrary to that assertion, the Lott Proposal was real.
Unless the NFL decides to pay off Oakland, this should be good theater. But little more.
That’s the sad part of this whole affair. This lawsuit — though morally correct with the promise of embarrassing an abusive monopoly — has little chance of changing things for the true plaintiffs, Raiders fans.
The city, and its lawyers, are seeking compensation for the money they spent on trying to keep the team in Oakland (estimated at $240 million). They want that back in triplicate. They don’t ask for the team back.
Maybe that’s a good call. Haven’t we had enough of the Davis family grifters? (The team declined to comment on the lawsuit.) Let them be gone. Let’s see if Oakland can extract its pound of cash in return.
Maybe this lawsuit can provide some protection to the next municipality that buys into a team, then finds its soul on the market? Maybe the NFL will think twice before running this game elsewhere?
Maybe we’re kidding ourselves.