Oakland Al would be proud.
That would be the late Oakland Al Davis, former owner of the Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland-soon to be somewhere else Raiders.
The team’s slogan has always been one of Al’s favorite expressions: “Just Win, Baby.”
It could just as easily be “Just Move, Baby.”
The franchise has moved a lot more than it’s won lately. It began in Oakland in 1960, moved to Los Angeles in 1982 when Al didn’t get the new stadium he wanted from the fine citizens of Oakland and then moved back to Oakland in 1994 when he didn’t get the stadium he wanted from the fine citizens of Los Angeles.
Al died in 2011 and his son Mark took over the team and he didn’t fall far from his father’s tree. He’s threatening to move again.
The Raiders could be headed back to Los Angeles, the city that the NFL has used since 1994 to extort money from stupid, corrupt politicians in other cities to get new and/or improved stadiums for multiple franchises.
In an astonishing display of civic duty, the NFL has actually floated the idea of paying for the stadium with league money.
In the meantime, Mark has floated the idea of moving the team to San Antonio. He has actually met with stupid, corrupt public officials there who, while wining, dining and taking him on a helicopter tour of the city, promised to do whatever it takes to bring the Raiders there.
The lying has already begun.
Davis said he just happened to be passing through San Antonio when he ran into his old friend, former mayor Henry Cisneros, and Henry mentioned something about moving his football team there.
The city manager released a memo saying that she had met with Davis after he had expressed interest in moving to her city.
Mark says he doesn’t want much – just a small intimate stadium that seats 50,000 fans and has room for a spot to “Put a statue of my father.”
And three or four hundred million dollars.
That’s at least how much it would cost San Antonio taxpayers to build a new stadium for the Raiders after the Alamodome outlived its usefulness in a few years.
And Davis has already told officials in Oakland that he could cough up $300 million for a new stadium there. The NFL would add $200 million more if the taxpayers would be kind enough to have $300 million more confiscated from them.
It’s hard to believe that this is still going on.
Oakland officials have already started sweetening the pot because of Davis’ not so secret trip to Texas.
There has been no political scandal in America larger or worse than the bi-partisan (Republicans have no shame when it come to this stuff) fleecing of taxpayers by state and local politicians to enrich the owners of sports teams who, for decades, have also had the benefit of a government-granted monopoly.
And it would not be possible without the media, most of whom can be counted on to do the cheerleading for the billionaire owners, who are either trying to extort the local politicians by threatening to leave, or promising pie-in-the-sky economic benefits to the soon to be fleeced taxpayers in their new location.
The sad thing is that the people of San Antonio and Oakland would probably benefit more from the government throwing a billion dollars out of a helicopter than they will from a billion dollar stadium that sits empty 340 days a year.