Oakland Gives Davis Until Noon Monday to Decide on Raiders Move

OAKLAND — If Oakland authorities thought they could force Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis to meet a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for giving an answer on whether his football team would move back to Oakland, they had another think coming.

Two hours before the deadline, and nearly three years after he first started talking about the possibility of moving his team from Los Angeles, Davis got a postponement until noon on Monday.

Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson and the chairman of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Don Perata, dropped for now their threat to cancel a Monday night joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and the Oakland City Council at which formal approval of a $660-million offer to the Raiders is to be considered.

They said Davis had given them “very sound” personal reasons for delaying his announcement of a decision, but they would not say what they were.

“My own gut feeling, I’m inclined to think they’re coming,” Wilson said.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a source familiar with talks between the Los Angeles Coliseum’s private business managers and Davis said that Ed Snider, head of Spectacor Management Group, would probably talk again to the Raiders owner over the weekend.

But the source said there are not many reasons for Los Angeles to be optimistic about keeping the Raiders.

He said the chances seem smaller now that Snider will be willing to make an advance payment to the Raiders, as a promise of eventual Coliseum renovations, which the team could keep if the project were not accomplished.

MCA Inc., Spectacor’s partner in the private management of the Coliseum, is unwilling to join in such a payment, the source said, and Snider himself is dubious of committing Spectacor alone to make it. The source said Snider has not yet finished negotiating a private lease of the Coliseum grounds with the Coliseum Commission and he believes if he gave millions of dollars to Davis, Spectacor would would lose leverage in the commission negotiations.

While not ruling out a change of mind by Snider, the source said it seems more likely that Davis will move to Oakland rather than risk getting neither advance money nor accomplishment of the project from Los Angeles.

“I think Los Angeles is a victim of timing,” the source said. “The Coliseum commissioners have waited so long to make their final arrangements for a ground lease and (revamping) the Coliseum that Snider has very little to offer Davis.”

“The funny thing is, he has the impression that Al Davis wants to stay in Los Angeles,” the source said. “We’re chasing him out of town.”

However, Coliseum Commissioner Richard Riordan said Friday night that finding someone to blame for not reaching a deal “is irrelevant. Our consultants, the private managers and I should have been pushing it,” he said. “Nobody was pushing it.”

But, Riordan added, he still believes if Davis waits two weeks, a Los Angeles deal will come together.

In Oakland, meanwhile, Wilson, Perata and George Vukasin, the chairman of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Commission, waited most of the day to hear from Davis. Finally, about 3 p.m., Davis called and they had a 20-minute conversation with him.

Wilson and Perata, at a news conference later, said Davis gave them “private assurances” that they felt comfortable with, but they would not discuss their content.

Perata said that if, on Monday, Davis says only “maybe” his team is coming, that “would not suffice” and there would be no need for a meeting to approve the deal.

“As far as I’m concerned, Wilson said, “it’s over on Monday” one way or another.

Reich reported from Los Angeles and Zamora from Oakland.