Post by TheShadow on Nov 4, 2005 20:26:58 GMT -5
www.contracostatimes.com
By Eric Gilmore
TIMES COLUMNIST
OAKLAND - Not that long ago, you couldn't get them together in the same room unless there was a judge and a jury present.
But there they sat Wednesday, shoulder to shoulder at a table in the West Side Club at McAfee Coliseum.
Raiders owner Al Davis, dressed, of course, in silver and black, was on one end, chief executive Amy Trask on the other. In between were Oakland city councilman Ignacio De La Fuente and Alameda County supervisor Gail Steele.
They came together to announce the long overdue death of personal seat licenses and the Oakland Football Marketing Association -- effective after this season -- along with the birth of a new era of cooperation between the Raiders and their landlords.
For Raiders fans, this is cause for celebration. No more PSLs. No more seat maintenance fees. No more blatant gouging. This should have happened years ago, but hey, who's counting? The Raiders will market and sell their own tickets, the way it's done throughout the NFL.
It's all good.
Yet before those in the Raider Nation buy too much beer and too many 'dogs, remember this: No one announced an extension to the Raiders' lease at the Coliseum, which expires after the 2010 season.
Davis, in fact, laid it out clearly. The next five seasons will be a test to see whether he should keep his team in Oakland.
He said the Raiders rank near the bottom of the NFL in terms of revenue, thanks in large part to those countless empty seats at games over the past decade.
"We have five years to do enough to see that we can make the Raiders viable economically so we can compete with the other teams in our league and the other teams in our division," Davis said.
"We want to make it work. We'll give our best effort to make it work."
If it doesn't work out to Davis' satisfaction, only the most naive would be surprised if he moved the Raiders to a new home. This is a man who moved the Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982, then moved them back to Oakland in 1995.
If Davis thought it would help his Raiders win a Super Bowl, he'd move them to Alaska. So consider yourself warned.
And consider this not-so-subtle warning Davis issued Wednesday. The subject had turned to the $20 million or so Oakland and Alameda County taxpayers spend each year to pay off the bonds purchased to upgrade the Coliseum complex when the Raiders returned.
"There are a lot of cities out there who are just waiting, just waiting for (an NFL team) to raise their hand and say, 'We're interested,'" Davis said.
"And the numbers that they'll pay are very great. You saw it happen in Houston. They built a brand new stadium. You saw it happen in Cleveland when they lost the Browns to Baltimore. Brand new stadium. Big, modern edifices.
"I realize (the price to taxpayers) can't be too high, but whatever it is, you've got to think of the quality of life that we bring to the community, that baseball brings to the community, that basketball brings to the community."
That argument probably won't fly with most taxpayers in Oakland and Alameda County, who'd rather see their money used to improve schools and prevent crime rather than to improve sports complexes for professional teams.
And this reworked agreement won't get them out from under this debt anytime soon.
"The subsidy is going to continue," Steele said. "But it's not going to continue with additional legal fees."
That's because the Raiders and city and county officials agreed to end the courtroom insanity, the costly game of suit and countersuit.
In reality, the city and county had no choice but to rework this agreement and kill the PSLs if they hoped to keep the Raiders in Oakland beyond 2010.
The initial plan called for fans to repurchase their PSLs after this season. Let's just say there would have been even more good seats available to Raiders games and more blackouts than there have been. That would have basically guaranteed a Raiders exit after 2010.
De La Fuente said he was the one who initially called Trask.
"It was two years ago, my first New Year's resolution," he said. "I was going to pick up the phone and call the Raiders, to start talking. We broke the ice."
Two years of talk resulted in a new agreement.
"I think this is a step forward," Davis said.
But only a step. There's so much more ground to cover before Raiders fans in Oakland can truly celebrate.