The Los Angeles Raiders took a step closer to becoming the Oakland Raiders again when managing general partner Al Davis signed a letter of intent with the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum board of directors, a move that would bring the team back to the Bay area for the 1995 season.
Davis informed the NFL yesterday of his intent to sign a 15-year lease with Oakland. The deal will allow for an $85 million renovation of the Oakland Coliseum, including expansion from 54,000 seats to more than 65,000; the building of new locker rooms for the team; and the addition of 121 luxury boxes to the stadium's current 54 by Aug. 1, 1996.
The NFL's owners will meet the week of July 10, probably in Chicago, to discuss the Raiders' planned move. The Raiders will need the votes of 75 percent (23 of 30) of league owners to move. According to a Knight-Ridder report, several NFL sources said the league would not try to stop the move. "The feeling is . . . why fight it? The bottom line is, where else are the Raiders going to play this fall?" one NFL official said. "They might as well play in Oakland."
If the Raiders return, it would be the first time in professional sports history that a team moved back to its original city. The Raiders won two of their three Super Bowl championships while in Oakland, where their rabid following and roster of characters created a mystique and contributed to one of football's dominant teams for two decades. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1982, however, the team has lost much of its luster.
The move would leave the NFL without a team in the country's second-largest city and media market. And in deciding to leave for Oakland, Davis eschewed a league-sponsored proposal to move into a new $250 million stadium on the grounds of the Hollywood Park racetrack by 1997 or 1998. That stadium already had $35 million committed from the city of Inglewood, Calif., and the league had hoped to have an NFC tenant in the stadium by 1998.
But Davis apparently worried that the stadium could not be completed in time for the 1997 season and did not want to spend three more years at the aging Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where his season-ticket base had dipped below 30,000 in recent years.
The Raiders issued a statement on a team letterhead (with "Los Angeles" blacked out) that read, in part: "A number of issues factored into our decision -- but most important was the knowledge that both venues should and will have NFL football in the very near future. . . . The Raider organization worked long and hard with the NFL to develop the state of the art Hollywood Park stadium opportunity and it remains a viable site attractive to NFL teams. The inadequate stadia in the Los Angeles area for the interim years influenced our decision. We wish Hollywood Park well."
Davis has played with the hearts of fans in Oakland since moving to Los Angeles in 1982. But this time, the city of Oakland doesn't have to foot the bill for the cost of renovating Oakland Coliseum. That was the key for the 10-member board of directors, which unanimously approved the letter of intent yesterday by voice vote.
The city will issue bonds for the cost of renovating the stadium and get that money back in the sale of personal seat licenses, which give the buyer the exclusive right to purchase tickets, but not the tickets themselves, in any given season. Those PSLs will last for 10 years and range in cost from $250 to $4,000 for seats on the 50-yard line.
Oakland's city council and the Alameda County board of supervisors, which is a co-owner of the Coliseum, both are likely to approve the move. The city council approval process will take about three weeks from the first reading of the ordinance to the last reading to allow for public comment. A final vote of the council is expected toward the end of July. The board of supervisors is expected to act on the measure by July 15th.
Oakland Coliseum board president George Vukasin said in a telephone interview that while the city has been down this road with Davis before -- most recently in 1990 -- the city's lack of financial responsibility in this case is what makes the proposed deal so attractive.
"He's made two public announcements that he was moving to Oakland," Vukasin said. "And we weren't able to deliver at our end. In this case, we can. I'm an old pro in dealing with Al and understand there's still some hurdles to overcome, but I'm certain he's sincere in his effort. . . . " Oakland will need to fill the Coliseum at 80 percent capacity during the next 16 years in order to break even on the deal, Vukasin said. The Raiders sold every seat for 12 straight years before Davis announced his plans to move to Los Angeles.
Among the issues likely to be discussed by the NFL owners are: Whether the Raiders have adequately given notice of their intent to leave. League rules require any team that wants to move must inform the league 30 days before scheduled league meetings. As the league meetings were two months ago, the Raiders obviously haven't done so. But the Raiders could argue that because they had no lease to play in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for 1995, and that they've been talking about leaving since last February, that that constitutes notice of intent. The Raiders' position will be "considered on the merits," a league spokesman said. Whether the league will still will award Los Angeles two Super Bowls by the year 2005. That was part of the deal with Hollywood Park to keep the Raiders in Los Angeles. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue will assess that and likely report to owners at the Chicago meeting. ,-3 Whether the Raiders will have to pay relocation fees to the rest of the league. The team paid $8 million in 1970 as part of the AFL-NFL merger, but that was paid directly to the San Francisco 49ers for territorial rights purposes. The Raiders may have to pay the rest of the league in this case, because Oakland had been a candidate for an expansion team.
Even if the owners were to reject the move, Davis probably would take the league to court, as he did in 1982, and fight the case while his team plays in Oakland. Davis won the case and has precedent on his side, so the league's chances of challenging him again -- particularly because the NFL didn't want him to vacate Oakland in the first place -- are slim.