Sorry, folks — I haven’t been keeping you up on all the breaking Oakland Raiders relocation rumors. Which means you’ll be as confused as I was by this headline from CBSHouston:
Report: Oakland Raiders Not Moving To San Antonio
I’m really hoping this becomes a daily thing — tomorrow “Oakland Raiders Not Moving To Los Angeles,” the next day “Oakland Raiders Not Moving To Ouagadougou.” Because I know today’s reporters are underpaid and overworked, and that’s a really easy way to generate copy.
Okay, the actual reason behind the headline, if “reason” isn’t overstating it, is that last week Raiders owner Mark Davis had lunch with former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros, and Cisneros called the odds of the Raiders moving to Texas a “very clear 50-50 proposition.” Before the meeting had even taken place, mind you, but when a guy who was mayor 25 years ago talks, people listen, I guess.
That news bounced around the interwebs for a bit, until somebody noticed that a Bleacher Report writer said that NFL sources told him it was all just for leverage:
Been told by 3 NFL sources there's no way #Raiders move to San Antonio. Mark Davis is being polite, working leverage. Either LA or Oakland
— Jason Cole (@JasonCole62) November 7, 2014
I’m still not convinced that Los Angeles talk isn’t similarly working leverage — given that there’s still no semblance of a viable stadium plan — but people seem to be taking it seriously, and there is at least the possibility that something will happen if owners of teams wanting to keep their options open (the Raiders, St. Louis Rams, and San Diego Chargers, mostly) get worried someone else will get dibs on L.A. first and leave them without any leverage at all. The deadline for announcing plans to move for the 2015 season is in February, so expect to at least see the rumormongering to heat up to a boil until then, even if it remains more (or at least equally) directed at shaking loose stadium cash in Oakland, St. Louis, and San Diego than on L.A.
There’s no semblance of a viable stadium plan in Oakland either.
No, but at least Oakland’s Coliseum is marginally more upgraded than L.A.’s.
Remember in the 1970s when a lot of MLB teams used St. Petersburg as leverage to get new publicly funded stadiums? Guess what, now St. Petes (Tampa Bay Rays) is using Montreal as leverage for the same thing!
That was the ’80s, actually. In the ’70s it was Washington (the Padres) and Toronto (the Giants), though neither of those teams managed to get new stadiums out of those threats. Tampa Bay, on the other hand, can lay claim to a share of the credit for new stadiums in Chicago, Houston, Cleveland, and I’m sure a bunch of others I’m forgetting.
I want one of those Nate Colbert “Washington” baseball cards.
I have Johnny Grubb!
San Antonio wanted the Raiders, until they got a look at Mark Davis’ combover. RIMSHOT! Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week.
But seriously, that was one of the lamest leverage plays I’ve ever seen us try. The only person who sincerely believes San Antonio can or will get an NFL team is that used car salesman who sold me the Vikings, Billy Joe Red McCombs.
We don’t need to move any teams anywhere. Personally, I don’t want some other owner to get the L.A. gravy without me and the rest of the boys from the Club of 32 wettin’ our beaks, if you know what I mean. And if you’ve watched how I routinely fuck my various business partners, well, you know what I mean! It’s just that the rest of these NFL kingpins are just as ruthless as me, so I don’t mess with them. I try to find suckers to screw, like the taxpayers of Minnesota for example.
But I digress… San Antonio? Seriously? Why don’t you just threaten to move to Mobile, Alabama. It would accomplish about as much. Frankly, I think the whole ‘build us a palace or we’ll move’ thing might be running out of steam in NFL-land. Thank god I got my tax-funded billionaire pleasure-dome greased, er, approved in a proper legal manner and under way…. did I mention that I love the smell of public stadium cash in the morning!?
I mean no disrespect to either lady, but eventually even Zsa Zsa Gabor and Elizabeth Taylor ran out of men willing to marry them.
Just sayin.