Raiders Won’t Stay, Coliseum Chief Predicts

Los Angeles Coliseum Commission President Richard Riordan said Friday that he no longer believes the Los Angeles Raiders will stay in the Coliseum, and if Sacramento or Oakland can deliver on the $30 million to $50 million in cash they are promising to give the team for moving, “I think they have the Raiders.”

Riordan made his remarks on the eve of a much-ballyhooed exhibition game to be held tonight in Oakland between the Raiders and the Houston Oilers. It will be the first time the Raiders have played in Oakland since leaving for Los Angeles in 1982.

There has been speculation that team owner Al Davis might use the occasion to announce a permanent move to Oakland. Davis, however, dismissed that in interviews this week, saying he has not yet made up his mind where he will play in the 1990s and will not announce a decision this weekend.

Davis did not show up Friday night at a black-tie dinner in Oakland honoring six Raiders who made it into the Football Hall of Fame. George Vukasin, chairman of the Oakland Coliseum Commission, said Davis had told him that he wanted to spare himself the “emotion of the occasion,” on the eve of tonight’s game.

Coliseum Commission Criticized

Although Davis strongly criticized the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission, as he has in the past, for allegedly breaking promises to him for Coliseum renovation, he also made certain conciliatory remarks about continuing to play in Los Angeles if the Coliseum were made into a more modern facility.

Riordan, however, said Friday that he has become personally convinced that Los Angeles “is not a real alternative” in Davis’ mind and that the Raiders owner does not even want to meet to discuss the possibility of continuing to play here after the initial term of his contract expires at the end of the 1991 season.

The Coliseum Commission president cited as proof Davis’ persistent unwillingness to sign a statement agreeing that whatever would be said in such conversations could not be used later by either party in the commission’s pending $57-million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the Raiders for the team’s attempts to move to Irwindale before expiration of the lease in the Coliseum.

The dispute over the proposed statement has been boiling for two months.

‘Last-Ditch Call’

“We’ve now come down to offering him a one-sentence agreement we would both sign,” Riordan said. “I have a last-ditch call in now to his attorney, Jeff Birren. It doesn’t cost Davis a damn thing to sign it.”

Riordan said he believes that Davis is using the dispute over the statement “as an excuse for not meeting us.”

“He doesn’t want to meet,” Riordan said. “If we were a viable alternative, Davis would have signed that in a second because he doesn’t lose anything. It leads me to believe we are not an alternative.”

Davis was not available for comment Friday. But in the interviews this week, he put full blame on the Coliseum Commission for poor relations with the team.

Riordan said, “The only thing that could yet bring things around would be if we decided on our own to go ahead with Coliseum renovations and Oakland and Sacramento couldn’t deliver on their promises” to the Raiders.

However, a different assessment came from Irving Azoff, chairman of MCA Inc.’s Music Entertainment Group and a representative of the private business partnership that is managing the Los Angeles Coliseum complex. Azoff has been involved in sporadic contacts with Davis that were broken off Aug. 9 on commission orders because Davis had not signed the requested statement.

Compromise Sought

Azoff said Friday that he is trying to work out through his and Davis’ attorneys a compromise on the proposed statement that could allow talks to proceed among Davis, himself and other private managers representing the Coliseum Commission.

“I’m not as pessimistic as Riordan,” Azoff said.

Davis, in this week’s interviews, said negotiators from MCA told him that they considered the Coliseum “a toilet.”

Azoff, asked about this Friday, replied: “I don’t know it was me, but I assume it was. I’ve said that 5,000 times.”

What the remark is meant to convey, he said, is his belief that the 66-year-old Coliseum is dilapidated and needs to be reconstructed. He has proposed a $125-million reconstruction, mainly with private money.