Raider-Coliseum-Irwindale Controversy

This current Raider-Coliseum-Irwindale contretemps is too farcical, even fraudulent, to be treated as serious news by any media outlet above the level of the National Inquirer. It seems quite obvious that Davis is using the Irwindale connection only as a ploy to bring pressure on the city of Los Angeles to grant his demands.

Davis may have successfully duped the gullible officials and citizens of the sovereign community of Irwindale and some members of the Coliseum Commission into playing his rigged game of “conning the public,” but that hardly excuses the Los Angeles media for being hoodwinked.

It seems unbelievable that the voters of Irwindale could be so naive as to think that any enduring benefits will accrue to them as a result of this deal, for in the unlikely event this compact is sealed, they will have effectively delivered their political and economic futures into the hands of Davis and his crafty band of legal advisers.

In short, they voluntarily will have become a “company town” dominated and controlled by the fickle and mercenary whims of foxy Al Davis and his ruthless Raiders--a fate deserved only by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and the heathen Commies, or, closer to home, by the ungrateful and embittered cities of Oakland and Los Angeles.

Obviously, the name Irwindale will have to go, to be replaced by a more appropriate appellation like “Raiderville” or “Davisdale,” while the current elected city council and mayor, in all fairness to Davis and his bankers, would be required to resign their seats in favor of a more representative governing consortium composed of team coach Tom Flores and the “Raiderettes,” with Davis himself exercising veto authority over the whole enterprise. But, hey, that’s what democracy is all about, ain’t it?

ROBERT S. COUGHLIN

Rancho Palos Verdes