Al Davis Is Master of the Road Show

Perhaps the best of all schemes to find a home for the Raiders of the National Football League came recently from a Los Angeles architect, Herb McLaughlin, who suggested that team owner Al Davis build a floating stadium and take it up and down the Pacific Coast, collecting tribute from dozens of cities instead of the mere three or four he has been negotiating with lately.

With outraged citizens having just spiked a $486 million deal to return the team to its original home in Oakland and with officials in Sacramento, Los Angeles (the team’s current host) and other cities grumbling about the Raiders’ hard-eyed negotiating tactics, one might think the Raiders owner would be feeling a little low. But McLaughlin, who helpfully provided a sketch of his idea to the Los Angeles Times op-ed page, appreciates Davis’s indefatigable capacity for thinking big.

“The National Football League talks of expanding the game to Europe and Japan,” the architect noted. “The stadium could motor on over to Osaka for a game or two in August, then load up with Toyotas to be dropped off in Hawaii.”

The image of a floating stadium--easy to turn so Raiders receivers would never have the sun in their eyes--captures the spirit of Edward Everett Hale’s story of Philip Nolan in “The Man Without a Country.” In the novel, Nolan is sentenced for treason and condemned to roam the seas with no contact with the America he discovers--too late--he loves. Davis’s search for a city and stadium full of adoring fans is a much less romantic tale, revealing more about modern sports financing and civic promotion than old-fashioned concepts such as loyalty and community, but at this bizarre juncture there are some loose similarities.

Like the naval officers who came to pity and admire the traitor Nolan for his late-blooming patriotism, the city of Oakland swallowed the pain of Davis’s 1982 betrayal, when he moved the team to Los Angeles, and spent months crafting a deal to bring him back. Davis has never asked for love and affection, only for as much money and support as possible to provide a stadium that would attract free-spending fans whose dollars would buy the linebackers, offensive tackles and particularly the elusive superstar quarterback needed to win another Super Bowl.

Last month, Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson thought he had arranged for the team to return in exchange for a city and county guarantee of $660 million in ticket sales over 15 years.

Then, in the midst of a difficult re-election campaign, Wilson began to hear not just from fans, many of whom did not live in Oakland, but from voters. At the hearing where the deal initially was approved by the city council, some Oakland residents referred to Davis as “the embodiment of greed.” Editorial cartoons questioned the risk to taxpayer dollars at a time of huge expenses following last year’s earthquake.

A citizen’s group collected 33,189 petition signatures for a referendum on the deal, effectively dooming the agreement since the Raiders said they would back out if the issue went on the ballot.

Wilson reversed himself and said he no longer supported the deal, even with the reduced $486 million guarantee he had hoped would assuage the critics. But his press secretary, Carol McArthur, said the mayor remains full of hope of a Raiders return. He has begun to negotiate a new deal, she said, “and the Raiders are very receptive to that and very interested in coming to Oakland still.”

In all such matters, one has to take the city’s word for it. Davis and the Raiders have declined all comment on their wandering affections. They will not say what their intentions are toward the several communities they have dealt with in the past three years. “We decided if we addressed all the details of that,” said Raiders executive assistant Al LoCasale, “we wouldn’t get any work done.”

There have been suggestions Davis has tired once again of Oakland’s cranky inconsistencies, and is thinking more seriously about Los Angeles’ latest efforts to keep him here. “I want to ensure Los Angeles continues to have a professional football team,” said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley last week after a round of talks over renovation of the Coliseum. “Six weeks ago, many thought the odds were in favor of the Raiders moving to Oakland. I said it’s not over until it’s over,” a lesson most who have dealt with Davis now have engraved on their hearts.

One of the more pitiful stories is of the city of Irwindale, a small community northeast of Los Angeles that thought it could turn one of its barren rock quarries next to Interstate 210 into a stadium that would bring the Raiders, fans, wealth and fortune. It handed Davis a $10 million non-refundable deposit as a sign of its good faith in promising to help build the facility, then watched in horror as the deal fell through.

Next came Sacramento, the booming state capital, which had a stadium under construction as part of an ambitious effort to attract a major-league baseball team. City planners said a football team would bring $1.3 billion in economic growth over 20 years, so the city agreed to give the Raiders $50 million, the first payment due after the first Sacramento home game, if the team stayed for 20 years in a privately financed stadium.

There was, city spokeswoman Christine Olsen explained, “what we lovingly called a drop-dead clause in the offer.” If the Raiders did not accept by March 1, the deal was off. Davis was in feverish negotiations with Oakland by then and let the deadline pass. Olsen said Sacramento still is interested in having a football team, but if the Raiders reopen talks, “that will be a different situation.”

Spokespersons for Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento have had no public complaints about Davis’s behavior in this endless tag-team match of lawyers and accountants. The owner’s refusal to make public comments has probably eased his dealings with publicity-conscious, hypersensitive mayors and council members, and with the local business groups leading some of the negotiations.

But relations between cities have suffered. The potential for bitter conflict was clear in the recent San Francisco grand-jury indictment of Sacramento developer Gregg Luckenbill, a prime mover in the negotiations with the Raiders, and others for alleged misdemeanor conspiracy. They are charged with circumventing campaign-reporting laws in helping defeat an initiative for a new San Francisco baseball stadium that might have hurt Sacramento’s efforts to get a team.

Oakland and Alameda County officials also spoke acidly of Rich Milner, chief of staff for Assemblyman Mike Roos, D-Los Angeles, who was critical of the financial deal they were offering Davis. Milner told the San Francisco Examiner “if their 15-year scenario doesn’t work out, they’re going to end up in debt after 15 years, having to pay on those bonds for another 15 years with no guarantee that the Raiders are going to stay.” Alameda County supervisor Mary King, noting Roos’s Los Angeles constituency, called the remarks “totally and completely biased.”

Legislators from the rest of the state have been just as quick to declare support for a bill that would require a county vote before Los Angeles made major alterations in the Coliseum, a significant hurdle to any effort to persuade Davis to stay here.

Last week the Coliseum’s private operators told Bradley that any remodeling would maintain the famous peristyle known to viewers of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics and be “consistent with the historic and architectural significance of the structure.”

How this affects Davis’ efforts to arrange construction of new luxury boxes and other improvements in a lease that expires after the 1991 season remains unclear. Alisa Spilman, spokeswoman for the Coliseum and Sports Arena, said she cannot comment on the negotiations. Bradley said he would be in touch with Davis, but has provided no clue to the owner’s thinking.

The tumult in Oakland has warned eager suitors that a deal with Davis has its political drawbacks. Those who know the Raiders owner say he is a man full of warmth and loyalty, doing only what is best for his team, but there are many disenchanted spectators and taxpayers along the California coast who cringe at the thought of his floating into town and might agree with Sir Walter Scott:

“High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth and wish can claim,

Despite these title, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self.”