Roger Goodell Is An Idiot: The Raiders Relocation Story

[pbmax]

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/19143486/the-story-how-owner-mark-davis-moved-raiders-las-vegas

I am loving everything about this story so far and I am only 8 paragraphs in. Its going to celebrate Jerry Jones, but I think I can overlook that.

[QBME]

Apologies for being lazy and hooking on to the topic, but the City of St. Louis has filed suit against the NFL and all owners for economic damages suffered by the relocation of the Rams to LA.

I'd almost rather be Oscar Munoz at this point.

[Pugger]

I kinda hope all 3 of these teams that moved struggle in their new homes. It sucks for 3 fan bases who got screwed. I also hope St. Louis wins their suit. If they do perhaps it will deter other teams from moving away.

[pbmax]

The NFL basically moved the Raiders because Adelson helped get Nevada to pony up a $750 million for the stadium. They are coughing up more than half of a 1 billion plus stadium. That thing is somewhere between the new Rollerdome in Minneapolis and JerryWorld. And unlike the article sort of hints, Mark Davis was about to have the best stadium deal on the planet with Adelson (no debt on completely new stadium) and now he will have between $450 and $850 million in debt. In the latter scenario he has all the revenues, but also a lot more risk.

But the League traded down in television market again and the smaller base for ticket sales includes a lot of vacationers. This could easily backfire.

I both abhor and love the fact that the Oakland City Council kept sticking knives into the Raiders even long after Al was dead, including right after Mark Davis lost the LA move vote. I think that was both mean and counter-productive, but somewhat understandable given the fractious relationship. Just like in Cleveland, the baseball team is going to get a nice new stadium out of this for a single sport.

[Guiness]

Good article pb, thanks for the link. Well written.

As expected, there was a LOT more than was visible to the eye going on there.