If your lease is running out, and you’re having trouble agreeing with your landlord on a new one, what do you do? I know for me — and by “me” I mean “Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis” — I always declare that I’m not going to pay the rent I owe for last season, because that’ll show ’em!
The Coliseum’s executive director Deena McClain said in a prepared statement that the team was withholding the rent payment “because of certain claims,” but would not disclose the issues raised by the team. She added that the Raiders expect to pay last season’s rent once it finalizes a lease extension to keep the team in Oakland next season.
This is pretty stupid: The Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Authority isn’t likely to cave in lease talks just because Davis is withholding a piddly $400,000 rent check, especially when they know that the Raiders have to play somewhere in 2015, which gives the city and county all the leverage. Maybe he’s getting frustrated that talks are dragging on so long without the authority agreeing to his terms because he’s Mark Davis, dammit, and just wants to throw a public hissy fit, and withholding rent is his only idea for how to do it, but I can’t see what it accomplishes other than to make him look bad. Wait, it’s Mark Davis, I mean of course “look worse.”
Anyway, the head of the Coliseum authority said of the rent payments, “I’m not worried. They’re good for it,” so sounds like this will be a tempest in a Gatorade bottle. But still, man, Mark Davis.
Yeah, apart from the fact that the IRS could clearly teach Davis a thing or two about the benefits of public relations skills, there may be another (slight) angle to this.
Ordinarily a tenant doesn’t win anything by antagonizing his or her landlord unduly. In Davis’ case, what with the ever present benefit of perpetual artificial scarcity of tenants in the NFL world, he might stand to gain something. I don’t believe this would happen in Oakland, but just suppose he earns the kind of response that an ordinary (paying) tenant gets – eviction.
For the average residential tenant this could be a disaster. For an NFL owner, it’s a positive boon. Suddenly his asset is not only deemed portable, it must be moved immediately.
I don’t think that would move him ahead of Mr. Walton in the race to Los Angeles necessarily, but it could help him share LA or win the right to “explore” San Antonio etc.
It’s still a really stupid move, of course, as it antagonizes the very people he wants hundreds of millions of dollars from. All I am suggesting is that he (or his lawyers) may have another angle to play here.
If he really wanted to move to San Antonio, though, couldn’t he do so now? Or you’re saying an eviction notice might help him convince the NFL to grant swift relocation approval?
(File under: This continues to be no way to run a railroad.)
Is it Mark Davis or Marc Badain, team President, making the call here? I understand Davis has the final say but the dysfunction of the Raider organization goes well beyond Davis. My feeling is that Davis is getting poor advice and direction from Badain.
Things would be moving along much more efficiently if Amy Trask was still the team President. She is smart, knowledgeable and appeared to be one of the more respected executives within the NFL.
This isn’t an apartment he’s renting, and he’s not refusing to pay. This is nothing more than a public protest, to get more cooperation from the city. As we all know, the most important issue is a new stadium. This one year lease, does nothing for the Raiders as far as progressing towards that ultimate goal. Its an eye opener, for the city and the NFL, that says “I’m still here, you’ll get what’s coming, stop ignoring this organization, step in, let’s get a deal done here or even LA if need be.” Let’s be frank, you don’t see this sort of thing from other organizations, but if we were talking about the Pat’s, Broncos, 49ers, or any other NFL Cinderella team, a deal somewhere would have been done by now. The NFL would have made sure of it, instead of placing road blocks. Truth is, LA is the most viable place for them today, Oakland simply can’t afford it. But like they did once before, keeping the Raiders from the second largest market in the Nation, is priority!
The latter, Neil. Though if he went to the league even if Oakland was still working with/throwing money at him and said “I’m an NFL franchise owner get me outta here” I’m not sure they’d put up a tremendous fight to ‘save’ the Oakland Raiders.
Davis seems to have the same problem pops did… unlike most other owners, he doesn’t have highly profitable non-football businesses to draw income from. So perhaps more than any other owner, he needs the league to be fully on his side in order to make a move work. So I don’t think he could just up and move to San Antonio… and he might find he has to ‘ease the concerns’ of the other two Texas teams to get there even if he did convince the league to allow it.
I really think that San Antonio is just being used in this (as it has been before) and stands little chance of ever getting an NFL team, Raiders or otherwise.
Dean: I agree. Trask ran this franchise a lot better than it is currently being managed both in football and business respects.
Jesus Mark, you combed over nutbar, just announce your L.A. plans for Pete’s sake and get on with the extortion like the rest of us. Maybe cut a deal with Kroenke to be the 2nd tenant in his fantasy football deal down in Inglewood. I know old man Al always had to be different but you need to get with the program, capiche?
Davis is just dragging his feet until someone else does everything for him. And that’s going to come in the form of Kroenke’s plan at Hollywood Park. The Raiders aren’t getting their own stadium in California. Levi’s was built with the requirement to be able to host 2 home teams. And the stadium in Inglewood is going to be shared if LA is to be a 2-team market. So Davis has to choose whether he wants to share in Santa Clara or share in Inglewood, which in either case means he isn’t the one doing any of the work.