L.A. Vows to Search for a Team to Replace Raiders

One day after the dramatic announcement that the Raiders are leaving Los Angeles, Coliseum commissioners and City Hall officials vowed Tuesday to quickly launch a search for a new professional football team, but there were signs that recruiting one will be long and difficult.

As Los Angeles officials began to sort things out, following team owner Al Davis’ decision and the approval of the move late Monday night by the Oakland City Council and Alameda County supervisors, these are the main questions they were asking:

Can Los Angeles expect to attract a new team without a renovated Coliseum, including the luxury boxes and club seats the Raiders demanded before bailing out? The answer, both commissioners and the Coliseum’s private managers agree, is no.

Can the renovation be done before a pro team is committed to coming? The answer, officials say, is probably no. Without the assurance that a specific team will be playing in the facility at a certain date, it would be practically impossible to sell bonds to finance the project.

Can any renovation be undertaken before the Raiders leave Los Angeles? Officials say the likely answer again is no, because the kind of project being considered would require teams to play elsewhere for at least one season. If the Raiders do stay through the 1991 expiration of their contract, they are not apt to settle for a temporary site.

There were suggestions Tuesday that perhaps the Raiders and the Coliseum Commission will agree to terminate the playing contract early and let the Raiders go to Oakland this season or next.

Commissioner Richard Riordan, for example, noted that lame duck teams traditionally fare terribly at the gate. “If the Raiders are going to lose their shirt and draw only 15,000 or 20,000 a game, what good does it do the city or the team for them to stay?” Riordan asked.

“I haven’t met anybody yet who’s sorry that they’re leaving,” Riordan added.

In Oakland on Tuesday, officials said the Raiders were free to begin playing there early, even though it might compound the difficulty of arranging construction schedules for the planned $53.5-million expansion of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

Oakland aides emphasized, however, that that city is doing nothing to tamper with the Raider-Coliseum contract. It is exclusively up to talks between the Raiders and the Coliseum Commission whether the Raiders buy themselves out of their lease early, they said.

Coliseum Commission President Matthew Grossman, meanwhile, said it may be difficult to negotiate an early termination of the Raiders’ lease in Los Angeles, given the $57-million suit that the commissioners have filed against the team.

As options are explored, special meetings were called for Thursday of both Mayor Tom Bradley’s business-oriented Committee to Support Professional Football and the Coliseum Commission.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Bradley would outline for his committee, meeting for only the second time, the options he thinks Los Angeles has. “The mayor’s position is that the Coliseum Commission ought to go ahead with its renovation plans, so they’ll be ready for a new team, or in the small chance the Raiders’ move falls through,” Fabiani declared.

Getting ready for the future was also on the mind of Grossman. He said that when the commission meets, it will be to discuss the terms of a new agreement with the Coliseum’s lead private manager, Spectacor, whereby Spectacor would continue to spearhead planning for a privately financed stadium renovation “sufficient to attract a professional football team and to satisfy the needs of USC.”

Grossman said the commission will certainly want to go forward with an environmental impact report that it has already taken steps to commission on alternatives for improving the Coliseum.

As officials took the opening steps to try to recruit a new pro team, the man who was instrumental in recruiting the Raiders a decade ago, labor leader William Robertson, said he is not very optimistic about the prospects.

“We have two options--to try for an existing franchise or to seek an expansion franchise,” he said.

“Going off the track record of this Coliseum Commission in dealing with its tenants, I think any operator of an existing pro team would take a dim view of the prospects of moving to the Coliseum. And, as far as an expansion franchise, we have to remember the National Football League is not friendly to L.A. After all, we joined with the Raiders on the antitrust suit against the league and cost them millions.”

In Oakland on Tuesday, city aides were still marveling over the impassioned five-hour public hearing that had been held the night before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the Oakland City Council approved the Raider deal, both on split votes.

“We saw people at that hearing who never come to our council meetings,” said Carol McArthur, press secretary to Mayor Lionel Wilson.

At the hearing, hundreds of Raider supporters, mostly white working men and young people from blue-collar neighborhoods of Alameda, San Leandro, Hayward and other communities outside Oakland, were confronted by numerous residents of Oakland’s black ghetto and its predominantly white hillside neighborhoods who were passionately opposed to the Raider deal.

The Oakland Tribune found in a recent poll that 59% of those surveyed in Oakland thought it was “not important” to solicit the Raiders to come back, and scores of the 140 speakers at the public hearing Monday night took that position.

Gwendoline Bishop, from Oakland’s inner city, was one of many speakers who defied the jeers of Raider supporters to speak, telling the council members and supervisors: “I find it appalling that you would dare to waste our children’s future by putting $600 million into the Raiders instead of the schools. What an example you are setting for the children, bringing in a man who personifies greed.”

But Henry Bruno, who followed her, said, “A favorable vote tonight on this proposal will demonstrate that Oakland’s still a place where ideals live. Restore our heart and soul. Bring back the Raiders!”