LOTS OF SHOUTING...Lots of "experts" who are just guessing --I too have guessed in the past to lampoon "Insiders", most of whom are just professional guessers on TV and radio.The Raiders news on Monday made it on the national domain because the LA Market and NFL are BIG news. BIG business.
The elite guessers have all guessed conflicting opinions about the Raiders' next home, but I'm guessing Oakland for the foreseeable future. All the amateur guessers have thrown out Sacramento, San Antonio; hell, don't stop there, why not Emeryville too?
*I love KTVU sending that well-known, sports authority, Heather Holmes to Houston for the NFL meetings; ditto, KGO-TV, for sending that sports journalism pantheon, Laura Anthony. I must be missing something.
*Jason Cole, from Bleacher Report, on KCBS this morning, had the most apt, concise and accurate account of why the NFL was non-gung-ho on Mark Davis' Raiders getting LA: "The NFL doesn't want a franchise that has gang-branded images associated with it." I'm paraphrasing Cole but he hit it right on the head. It's politically-incorrect el mucho but it's a major factor you probably have never heard on any other outlets including the Sports Bleeder, KNBR.
*Mark Ibanez has covered the Raiders since 1979 therefore whatever reports is just plain true. He said so.
Meanwhile, how was breakfast?
Sadly for Oakland, the owner of the Chargers has more influence over whether the Raiders stay for a while in Oakland than any local politician or even Davis.
ReplyDeleteIf Spanos stays in SD, the Raiders will leave Oakland (they may move to Fresno, San Antonio or St Louis anyway).
Ice Cube and Eazy E of NWA sporting Raiders stuff was a long time ago. One's dead and one does family comedies now.
ReplyDeleteJason Cole is 100% correct in what he said. The NFL does not need a thug team in their ranks. Pick 53 crack addicts off of Intl. Blvd & there's your team.
DeleteThank you for pointing out Heather Holmes being sent to Houston. What sense does that make? It'd be like sending Mark Ibanez to an economic summit in NY. When Julie Haener introduced Ibanez last night by saying: "he has covered the Raiders since 1979" it seemed Ibanez, Haener and Sommerville were holding back laughter. The Foxification of KTVU is sad. DeFoxify NOW!
ReplyDelete> It'd be like sending Mark Ibanez to an economic summit in NY.
DeleteNot really, because Heather wouldn't know anything about that either.
Better analogy: It'd be like sending Mark Ibanez to a fashion show.
Actually Mark Ibanez is a pretty snazzy dresser. IJS
DeleteHeather Holmes knows fashion? Have you seen her animal print choices? Yikes!
DeleteI ain't no alleged expert, I'm the fucken authority on the Raiders!! Ask Dwight!! Rrrrrr!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe only difference between Lieberman and the professional guessers on radio and TV that he ridicules is that he's not a professional. He isn't paid to be wrong about everything.
ReplyDeleteThe raiders players, coaches and ownership are the same if they play in Oakland or LA. There is no impact on the field when it comes to relocation. The Oakland economy and the business ramifications of the team possibly moving means hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bay Area and LA - so the story is much bigger than just sports. Having a non-sports reporter actually makes sense. Happy to help RL and 10:03am understand the big picture.
ReplyDeleteKTVU currently has 4 sports anchors, Mark Ibanez, Joe Fonzi, Scott Reiss & Jason Applebaum. Rich you're absolutely right that it didn't make much sense to send the lovely Heather Holmes to Houston. Keep up the great work Rich!
ReplyDeleteKPIX also sent a news, not sports reporter to Houston
ReplyDeleteI think Holmes is from Houston. Maybe it was a gift assignment.
ReplyDeleteCan't we keep both the Raiders and the A's in Oaktown??? I know, I'm greedy!
ReplyDeleteSure, kick in some money for new stadiums. Cuz the Warriors are gone in a few years.
DeleteAnon at 7:02pm....don't you k ow hat the Taiders coming back in 1995 was the first step in Oakland losing all their franchises?
DeleteBut we've already got a football stadium. It's the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum. There! Problem solved!
DeleteI thought news budgets were being slashed. Last thing I'd waste money on is sending high profile anchors to Texas to cover "sports news" that a local affiliate sports hack could easily send back.
ReplyDeleteFollow the money. It's clear that the NFL as a group doesn't want either the Raiders or the Chargers to move. In fact, they've offered both teams $100 million to stay in their towns and fix their stadiums. If either move, then the $100 million deal is off for them. The NFL wants the merchandising. They want football fans in the three markets and not everyone crammed into one with Oakland and San Diego out in the cold, resulting in fewer overall fans and less $ from team products.
ReplyDeleteThe Rams were low-hanging fruit. The NFL absolutely wanted a team in market #2 and Kroenke made this decision easy by organizing funding, purchasing the land, and all but lining up the construction equipment to build a new stadium for his team.
12:26
ReplyDeleteI disagree. $100 million sounds like a lot...but it's peanuts compared to the overall $1.5-2 billion overall cost of a new stadium these days. It's just a token gesture--meant to show that the league "cares" about the fans in Oakland and San Diego.
The League (i.e. Goodell and the owners) has made it quite clear: They all want new, shiny high-tech stadiums. They won't put up with substandard facilities like O.Co and Qualcomm.
8:04 Well, it looks like they might get three new ones, doesn't it? True $100-million sounds small, but it is significant compared to the prior $200-million in funding they provided before. And trust me, these guys don't give away "gesture" money. It's all about the benjies. Bottom line, top dollar.
DeleteThe biggest a-hole in all this is Mark Fabiani, a Charger's attorney who set all this crap up. There's another Raider's opponent we can all hate.
DeleteIt was a waste to send people to Houston. The reporting on this story has been awful, at least locally. The NFL beat writers on Twitter absolutely OWNED this story and it unfolded online, that's assuming you were monitoring the right folks who were in the know. The outcome was clear at about 5PM our time what was going to happen--Raiders get sent back to Oakland, deal made with the Rams and an open door for the Chargers. The vote then happened and boom, football back in LA. Just another reason why television is a dying medium especially in the Bay Area.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to the stadium money issue, amazingly the St. Louis newspaper and the LA Daily News are the ones who have it right. The $100 million gift from Goodell's bank would be on top of the $200 million the NFL normally throws into a new stadium project. So that's $300 million Mark Davis has in his pocket for you guys who suck at math. Now you know why the St. Louis mayor basically told the NFL to go stick it where the sun doesn't shine. They asked for an additional $100 million and the NFL told them they weren't gonna get it.
I'm more irritated that news outlets like Fox2 keep bringing on that airhead mayor Libby Schaff to spout her usual bs talking points without calling her out for having no plan in place or missing the deadline to submit a proposal to the league. Or the fact that even still the Raider executive leadership see this as nothing more then a temporary setback for a year or two, not as an opportunity to build and work with Oakland.
ReplyDeleteYou make a great point. City leaders have to get their A-game together right away to keep the San Antonios and Fresnos of the world from wooing away the team with a new stadium. The mayor of San Diego and a county supervisor are on top of their situation down there. I think they'll have a June ballot measure there, hammered out already. People there are so fired up that it'll probably pass. Same thing can happen here, but time is of essence.
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