COMMENTARY : If the Raiders Can Do It (Sigh), How About The Long-Lost Colts?

--The Raiders are moving back to Oakland. (Sigh)

You try it.

The Raiders are moving back to Oakland. . . .

(Sigh)

It’s darn near impossible to say the words without conjuring up another move and images of trucks rolling in reverse, back in time, back in space, back from Indy, back to us. If the Raiders can move back to Oakland, couldn’t the Colts? . . .

No. They couldn’t. They’re not. They won’t (unless you see Bob Irsay negotiating with Irwindale; then, maybe). Go ahead: Sigh.

But at least truth and justice reside somewhere in the world, if not in our particular part of it. Like sweet Loretta Martin, the Raiders get back, get back, get back to where they once belonged. You see, people will occasionally do the right thing. All you have to do is give them a $600-million nudge, which is what Al Davis was given to bring the Raiders back to their rightful home.

OK, it wasn’t romance. You want romance in the sports world, you get a date and rent a baseball movie. And don’t look for any trend developing here. The Donald’s not going back to Ivana. The Dodgers aren’t returning to Brooklyn. Rob Lowe’s not going back to Atlanta.

This is just business. Whatever anyone says, you can go home again, if the price is right, and $600 million over 15 years is so right, it’s what we used to call righteous.

Most of the money is in ticket guarantees, just so the team doesn’t have any incentive to do any sales work of its own, and the rest comes in improvements to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, including the building of luxury boxes that rich people can lease and then write off on their taxes. There are some city councilmen in Oakland who have expressed concern over the size of the guarantee for a city that has too many homeless people in the street and not enough teachers in the classroom. But at least it’s got football.

Sure, 37,000 seats in the revamped stadium will cost at least $30. And a lot of ticket-holders are going to have to commit in advance to pay a premium ranging from $2,000 to $16,000. And, for Oakland just to break even, the Raiders will have to average 57,000 fans over the next 15 years. It’s a great deal.

Why didn’t Los Angeles see the obvious advantages of such a bonanza? Funny you should ask. It seems the folks in L.A. were so sick of Davis and his will-he-or-won’t-he stance on a home for the Raiders that, according to a recent poll, 83% of the people said they didn’t care if the Raiders left or buried themselves in an Irwindale gravel pit. And politicians, whatever else their flaws, all know how to count.

The L.A. position contrasts nicely with the Oakland population, who, when the Raiders left, voted ashes and sackcloth as the official town uniform. The people in Oakland will welcome Davis back as the prodigal son. They’ll forgive, if not forget. The team is theirs again; that’s what counts.

There has been much made of the fact that the Raiders, dressed in silver and black, the Hell’s Angels of pro football, belong in blue-collar Oakland and not rhinestone-collar Los Angeles. All the cliches are being rolled out. We hear about the post-Perrier depression in L.A. and how the only time anyone drinks any kind of water in Oakland is as a chaser. Actually, Oakland has a sizable yuppie population, and Los Angeles, home to the Crips and Bloods, is the drive-by shooting capital of the world. If the Raiders like to think of themselves as outlaws, Los Angeles is as good a place as any to live.

Besides, in the Raiders’ good years in L.A., they averaged over 70,000 fans. They averaged 50,000 last season amid all the rumors of flight and in the just-win-babies’ fourth consecutive season out of the playoffs. Maybe the streets aren’t paved with football fans, but you can make a living here.

But, enough of their problems. This is basically a happy ending, anyway. The question we should be asking: What does this mean to Baltimore? More good news. This move obviously takes Oakland out of the running as an expansion site and also effectively removes Sacramento, which is in the same end of California as San Francisco and Oakland, thereby losing out to geography. There’s as good a chance the National Football League will put an expansion team in the L.A. Coliseum as there is in the Rome Colosseum, which is only slightly older and also doesn’t have luxury boxes. That leaves the usual suspects--Memphis, Tenn.; St. Louis; Jacksonville, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; San Antonio and Irwindale.

If the NFL expands by two teams, Baltimore seems to have a great chance. If it expands by four--and there are indications that might happen--Baltimore is a lock. Of course, there’s the nasty matter of when, and if the NFL, under its new commissioner, is sincere about sticking to the concept of no expansion before a labor agreement, then we may be teamless for the duration.

Which leaves us--what?--sighing?

Or maybe we could float $600 million Bob Irsay’s way. That would pay for the move back, with enough left over to pay the bar tab.