The news that NFL owners approved relocation of the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas is no surprise, but the ineptitude of the plan is.
Just ask the 1996 Houston Oilers. Cities (and fans) don’t like being used, and there’s no reason to believe that Oakland will be any different.
The Oilers had planned to relocate to Nashville in 1998, evidently imagining that two lame-duck seasons in Houston would be no big deal. They were right, but not in the way they had intended. Attendance was so abysmal that the team sought and was granted an early departure in 1997. Problem was, there was no viable stadium yet for them in Nashville.
So, Bad Plan B was to spend 1997 using Memphis. When that proved every bit as unpopular with fans in Memphis as it had been with fans in Houston and was compounded by delays in completing their new venue in time for the following season, they again had to appeal to the league for relief, this time in the form of permission to play in Nashville in 1998 at Vanderbilt Stadium, the same non-viable venue they had rejected two years earlier. Vanderbilt Stadium dates to 1922 and seats fewer than 40,000, far below the mandated league minimum.
What the Oilers got were three seasons of poorly attended games that resulted in large additional expenditures before they moved into their permanent Nashville home a year late in 1999.
Incredibly, the Raiders don’t even have a Plan B for 2019. They intend to use Oakland — and “use” is the only fair word for it — for 2017 and 2018, and then what? And that’s if people decide to show up! What do they think they’re going to do after no one shows up for their games in 2017?
The whole thing is bad from top to bottom. The city of Oakland and Alameda County failed to offer any kind of workable stadium plan, and they had decades to do something about it. Their failure in that endeavor is inexcusable, and the existing stadium is in such disrepair that it’s difficult to imagine a team spending another year in it, let alone two.
But for Raiders owner Mark Davis even to consider leaving for Las Vegas when he could have moved his team into Levi’s Stadium with the 49ers or at least have taken a stronger shot at staying in California by putting up a serious fight for a piece of the L.A. deal is more than hard to fathom, and if history is any indicator — and it pretty much always is — he’s going to need a Plan B. It’s beneath belief that he doesn’t even have one.
And here’s one last NFL history lesson. In the long run, thieves lose. Just ask St. Louis — twice.