The Lone No Vote against Oakland

[manasia]

"I voted how I voted, and I voted what I believed," Ross said. "You talk about the fans, and that's what the National Football League is all about. ... You've got to look around. There's very little public money available for teams today. And if you own a team, you should have the deep pockets to deliver.

I agree with his sentiment; however, cities will scrap up their last to pay for these stadiums, I do not think this culture is gonna change anytime soon.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/03/27/dolphins-owner-stephen-ross-explains-no-vote-to-raiders-move/

[JaxAvondale]

It should be noted that Ross owns a lot of land around the stadium in Oakland. So, there was some self-interest on his part to keep the team in Oakland.

[manasia]

Didn't know that. That does color his statement a bit.

[thelakelander]

He also just spent $500 million on Miami's recent stadium upgrades without public incentives. The Raiders are getting a $750 million handout to move.

It should be noted that Ross owns a lot of land around the stadium in Oakland. So, there was some self-interest on his part to keep the team in Oakland.

He'll be fine from a development perspective.  Oakland and the Bay Area, in general, are booming and that stadium area is in a decent location with direct access to BART, Oakland's airport and I-880.  Also, I don't know what parcels he owns, but much of the land in the general vicinity has waterfront access to the bay as well.

[JaxJersey-licious]

His explanation is mostly horseshit - He's more concerned about Las Vegas potentially being a part of the Super Bowl host rotation. He has the most skin in the game of all SB host as far as stadium upgrades except for LA which will have the luxury of a second tenant so it is more important to his bottom line if he can host as many SBs in a 20 year period than he can.

[Tacachale]

^Regardless of whether there's self interest on Ross's part, everything he says is true.

[BridgeTroll]

It may be true... the team will not be in Oakland anymore.  The mayor may be right... but the team will not be in Oakland anymore.  The facility is a first class DUMP... and has been for 20 years and still Oakland could not figure something out.  Not even sure old Candlestick was worse.  Ross is right... mayor is right... and Davis is right for moving.  No fan of Al or his offspring but they have been more than patient.  Oakland really does not want the team... so adios and good riddance...

[Tacachale]

^Oh, please. The city was going to commit $200 million, not to mention however much they were hoping to get from private parties. It didn't fail because of Oakland, it failed because Davis wanted more, more, more and the city didn't have it. The Raiders are spending more of their own money in Vegas than they would have in Oakland, but NV taxpayers are evidently willing to give him a three quarters of a billion dollar subsidy.

[BridgeTroll]

They have had 20 years to get something done... nothing but promises and a dump.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/27/purdy-heres-how-oakland-dropped-the-ball-with-the-raiders-and-what-it-portends-for-the-as/

Mark Purdy has been a sports writer for 30 years at the Mercury news...

Heavens to Stabler.  Heavens to Plunkett to Biletnikoff.

This decision was a rout.

Monday morning when NFL owners voted whether to keep the Raiders in Oakland, the tally was 31-1.

Against.

Ponder that.  Thirty one NFL owners here at the annual league meeting voted to approve the Raiders' franchise shift to Las Vegas. Only one owner did not. And that single dissenting owner, Miami's Stephen Ross, said he failed to join the majority because of his general philosophy of not ripping any team away from an established fan bases, not because of any particular love for the East Bay.

In other words, Oakland, you were not even close to keeping your professional football team. You were not even in the same row of the same section of the same stadium. You definitely were not in the same luxury box as Las Vegas with its $750 million in public money.
Which is fine. Why would Oakland match that? It's crazy money.  Nevada citizens may find out just how crazy, if their deal doesn't pan out in the long run.  Twenty years ago, Oakland forked over $220 million of public funds to lure the Raiders back from Los Angeles. Didn't work out so great. East Bay taxpayers are still on the hook for more than $90 million of the money from that 1995 debacle. When Hall of Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott was working to assemble his last-ditch plan to keep the Raiders in the Bay, he told me that officials and businesspeople kept bringing up the past when he was trying to get them focused on the future. I can understand.

So. Did the East Bay ever have a reasonable shot at keeping the Raiders? Did the NFL ever consider Oakland to be a viable possibility?


To get a clue, after the decision was announced Monday morning, I tracked down Eric Grubman, the league's point man on all stadium issues. He spent many hours in the East Bay meeting with politicians and government executives over the past two years. He even attended a couple of fan tailgates at the Coliseum. He developed an opinion.

"I always believed that Oakland could and can do successful sports projects," said Grubman. "I do believe it is a good city with good sports fans."

So what was the problem in Grubman's mind, in terms of keeping the Raiders? He pointed to the complicated situation with the A's lease, which prevented the Raiders from pursuing a stadium on the Coliseum stadium footprint until 2023. Reading between the lines, the NFL came to strongly believe that Oakland was going to put the A's first over the Raiders when it came toward constructing any new venue.

"I believe in large part, that was the choice they were faced with and choice they had to make," Grubman said.

He is correct in one way, incorrect in another. By the time Mayor Libby Schaaf began her term in early 2015, she more or less did face that option. And she publicly stated that if she could only save one sport for the city, it would be the A's based on baseball's 82-game home schedule versus pro football's 10 home dates.

Yet it is a false narrative to say that the A's forced the Raiders out of Oakland. The politicians of the East Bay negotiated those lease deals with both the A's and Raiders. Seven or eight years ago when both leases were coming up for renewal, an overall strategy could have been developed to keep both teams. Instead, the city signed short-term leases to keep kicking the two-team can down the road–with conflicting lease terms that prevented either the A's or Raiders from gaining control of the Coliseum site for future venues.

In an alternative universe, here's how it could have played out:  Anticipating the Raiders' desire to stay in Oakland in a new stadium on their preferred Coliseum site, the city could have helped the A's another ballpark location. Athletics owner Lew Wolff, at one point, had asked Oakland officials to help him gain the rights to property north of 66th St. and north of the Coliseum, so that he could build a ballpark there financed by him and partner John Fisher. The city declined. Wolff then asked the city and county to jointly share the cost of a feasibility study for a ballpark on the Coliseum's south parking lot. The city and county declined.

In lieu of all that, Oakland also never took steps to identify other viable sites by acquiring or outlining property or performing environmental impact studies on those sites. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball–at the behest of the Giants–decided to keep the A's from moving to San Jose, leaving them at the Coliseum on that short-term lease basis.

If any of the above elements had unspooled differently, there's a good chance that the A's could have left their Hegenberger Road address and the Coliseum property would have been wide open for a Raiders project.

And yes, with good leadership, there was a way to keep both teams without massive public money. I'll always believe that.  San Jose, on a smaller scale,  managed to find a way for the Earthquakes' stadium to be built with no straight outlay of public money. Instead, the city agreed to a development proposal on the land adjoining the stadium. The city also negotiated a tradeoff of land entitlements that rezoned property in South San Jose. This allowed Wolff to build more profitable residential structures and use the profit to help finance the soccer stadium with Fisher. All of this took creativity — and a redistribution of certain public assets–on the city's part.  But it worked.

No such creativity or civic cooperation occurred in Oakland, at least until it was much too late. According to Grubman, the NFL was willing to enter in a partnership with Oakland and Alameda County on some sort of Coliseum property development plan — but could not do so because of the A's hold on the Coliseum for another six years. The city had a right to end the A's lease prematurely with two-years' notice. But doing so would have set the baseball team free to go wherever . . . and angered MLB officials greatly. Schaaf and the East Bay politicos declined to do that.  That assured the A's they would be and will be the top priority in coming months.

All of it led to Monday's events here in the desert.  The morning had a strange feel. The 32 owners–many dressed in spiffy resort wear– paraded down a sidewalk into the ballroom where the Raiders' future was debated and decided in barely over two hours.  Afterward, Raiders owner Mark Davis gave his own version of events. When I asked him what the turning point was for him in Oakland, Davis said that after being denied the right for a Los Angeles move in January of 2016, he reconnected with a county supervisor who told him that the East Bay now had the leverage and was going to raise the Raiders' rent every year. A peeved Davis began looking for other options. He found Las Vegas.

Personally, I believe the Oakland ball-dropping began long before that. But that was Davis' view. The bottom line was, by the time he stood up to make his case before the other owners Monday, they heard him out and quickly gave him a 31-1 victory. Someone asked Davis what that told him.

"I think it tells me that we had the answers to all the questions they asked," Davis answered.

Oakland and Alameda County could have had different answers years ago that might have prevented the Raiders from ever gazing in Las Vegas' direction. But as Grubman indicated, the city and county made a choice. And the owners subsequently made their own.

Thirty one to one.

[FlaBoy]

The Raiders really should never have left LA. Going back to Oakland was just a crazy Al Davis move that was never destined to work out, especially with the Niners commanding most of the attention in the Bay Area. Now, with the Niners in South Bay, the really are the Bay Area's team and the Raiders needed to do something new IMO. They always wanted to go back to LA, this is the second best option for them.

[BridgeTroll]

They have had 20 years to get something done... nothing but promises and a dump.

No, they have had 20 years to pony up hundreds of millions of their own tax dollars to pay for a facility that benefits a private industry.

God, I really, really hope the NFL Keeps over playing its hand on literally every issue and gets bit in the ass hard.  These fucking corporate welfare queens and pseudo-morality police are the absolute dregs of this country.

The Mayor did what you and Taca say should be done... l hope it works out for them.  If it does then maybe this sort of thing will stop.  Oakland played hardball by raising rent from 900k to 3+ mil annually... for a freeking dump. 

[FlaBoy]

They have had 20 years to get something done... nothing but promises and a dump.

No, they have had 20 years to pony up hundreds of millions of their own tax dollars to pay for a facility that benefits a private industry.

God, I really, really hope the NFL Keeps over playing its hand on literally every issue and gets bit in the ass hard.  These fucking corporate welfare queens and pseudo-morality police are the absolute dregs of this country.

Why did the NFL get bit in the ass here? Davis got the city and state to pay for a stadium in Nevada. It is all about competition for these franchises. Las vegas may be special due to its ability to use bed taxes to this level, but there are other cities who will still pony up, just not many of the premier markets such as LA or NY. Atlanta just ponied up for a new stadium as did Minneapolis.

[I-10east]

Imma go in on Oakland and tell it like it is, because I'm tired of hearing this widespread sympathy laden, sugarcoated excuses (esp on sports natl media).  Oakland is a victim of having the "Big and bad intimidating fanbase" among other problems. When you're Philadelphia, you can get away with having the big and bad nasty fans that do not tolerate the opposition, because those fans show up no matter what.

Now when you're Oakland on the other hand and opposing fans would actually be a benefit (just like here in JAX) to put butts in the seats, but the vile hooligan mentality scares opposing fans, and you can only average 54,000 (even with the help of a 76,000 game in Mexico) with a very good playoff team, the word pathetic doesn't begin to describe.

The Oakland Alameda Coliseum is only a 63,000 seat stadium tarpless (a perfect stadium size on the low end concerning capacity). If your fans can't support 63K in the 11th biggest metro, you deserve to lose your team. Everyone seems to harp on this large metro like it's showing with OAKs attendance, but apparently it doesn't mean a damn thing if the city is the next Beirut.

No one give me that 'run down stadium being the reason why everyone will not come' excuse, because they were proposing a new stadium that only seat a measly 55K. IMO the "great fans of Raider Nation that show up in numbers in Oakland" is highly exaggerated; maybe in other parts of the country (namely LA) but not Oakland. The fans that do show up in OAK are very passionate, I'll give you that. Women lie and men lie, but numbers don't.

[Adam White]

Imma go in on Oakland and tell it like it is, because I'm tired of hearing this widespread sympathy laden, sugarcoated excuses (esp on sports natl media).  Oakland is a victim of having the "Big and bad intimidating fanbase" (among other things). When you're Philadelphia, you can get away with having the big and bad nasty fans that do not tolerate the opposition, because those fans show up no matter what.

Now when you're Oakland on the other hand and opposing fans would actually be a benefit (just like here in JAX) to put butts in the seats, but the vile hooligan mentality scares opposing fans, and you can only average 54,000 (even with the help of a 76,000 game in Mexico) with a very good playoff team, the word pathetic doesn't begin to describe.

The Oakland Alameda Coliseum is only a 63,000 seat stadium tarpless (a perfect stadium size on the low end concerning capacity). If your fans can't support 63K in the 11th biggest metro, you deserve to lose your team. Everyone seems to harp on this large metro like it's showing with OAKs attendance, but apparently it doesn't mean a damn thing if the city is the next Beirut.

No one give me that 'run down stadium being the reason why everyone will not come' excuse, because they were proposing a new stadium that only seats a measly 55K. IMO the "great fans of Raider Nation that show up in numbers in Oakland" is highly exaggerated; maybe in other parts of the country (namely LA) but not Oakland. The fans that do show up in OAK are very passionate, I'll give you that. Women lie and men lie, but numbers don't.

How scary are these fans? I've always thought of NFL football as being a pretty tame day out.