So this is weird: Last Saturday, according to a report on SBNation’s Oakland Raiders blog, sports agent Leigh Steinberg wrote on Forbes’ we’ll-let-just-about-anyone-post-here-for-free site that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf was close to announcing a deal for new stadiums for the Raiders and A’s:
The A’s have threatened to go to San Jose, the Warriors to San Francisco, and the Raiders to multiple locals. This would have a devastating impact on the morale and economic climate of Oakland. Now, there appears to be an opening, under the leadership of Mayor Libby Schaaf, to innovatively revitalize Oakland and solve the needs of all three teams. Mayor Schaaf is expected to make a dramatic announcement regarding the Raiders situation early next week.
That’s not what it says now if you go to the actual Forbes site, though, where that last sentence about the “dramatic announcement” has been deleted.
No explanation or acknowledgment of the change appears on either Forbes or SBNation, not even in comments (yes, I read through an SBNation comments section, this is what I do for you folks), so no way to tell whether somebody at Schaaf’s office called up Steinberg (or Forbes, if they bother editing their unpaid contributors) to say “knock that off” or if he just thought better of alleging things that weren’t going to happen. There are still two days left in the week, so I suppose Schaaf might yet surprise us all with news that Mark Davis has found $500 million under the sofa cushions and Lew Wolff has agreed to build a stadium elsewhere than the Coliseum site. I wouldn’t be holding your breath, though.
It was an April Fools joke. No announcement, here’s the info to the “joke”- it was Schaff and Zennie
https://twitter.com/DailyNewsVinny/status/717130378192953344
https://twitter.com/zennie62/status/717153469254111232
You know, April Fools joke occurred to me, but I ruled it out since the Forbes piece was written on, you know, April 2.
Richmond mayor Tom Butt as an April Fools joke also announced the Raiders were going to build a stadium on the site of the Hilltop Mall complete with a new BART line and a fleet of duck boats for bringing fans from the waterfront.
If Zennie gets brought up in an article and called a stadium consultant (he isn’t one), that is a pretty significant red flag that what’s being written in total nonsense. All he does is operate Youtube and Twitter spambots to talk up his napkin sketch plans.
Zennie wasn’t mentioned in the Forbes piece, though.
I think the lesson here is “Take anything you read on the internet with a grain of salt, and empty the whole shaker for Forbes ‘contributors.\'”
More complaints about the Coliseum as a “dreary, outdated facility that is an ongoing civic embarrassment” in yesterday’s Mercury News. I hope Gary Peterson is getting a kickback for these columns.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_29733661/peterson-oakland-coliseum-conundrum-sad-unsolvable-riddle
The Anonymous commenter (as if typical) failed to note the large, detailed spreadsheet I built behind the “napkin drawing” or the large number of posts reporting on my talks with Piper Jaffrey Investment Bankers, who in a conference call, approved the spreadsheet model I created.
Nor did they note the website: http://zennie62.wix.com/coliseumreboot#!
I have become used to the closed-minded, and racist, behavior that comes with discussions around stadium financing on the Internet and in the media. Fortiunately, deal makers aren’t contaminated with such problems.