Silver and Back

Our team is looking mighty good.

It dominated the Green Bay Packers, who had won 32 consecutive games at Lambeau Field, the other day, and based on the way our guys usually do business, “the team of the decades” shockingly might win as many games as it loses this season.

Happy days are here again with increasing serious talk that L.A.’s very own beloved Raiders will be coming home, maybe even merging the talents of Al Davis and Donald Sterling, who has a standing offer to contribute $100 million for share of ownership, to better entertain the masses.

See, you are laughing already.

“That’s what Al wants, for us to buy out his lease in Oakland, [he drops his lawsuit against the league], we give Oakland an expansion team and he moves back to L.A.,” said Pat Bowlen, owner of the Denver Broncos.

Crazy? NFL owners were in Atlanta on Wednesday listening to presentations from groups interested in buying the Cleveland franchise, and the most outlandish possibility is about to be embraced. The favorite is Cleveland’s most-hated bidder, the Browns’ version of Davis, a renegade named Al Lerner. He negotiated the deal to send Cleveland’s team to Baltimore, even providing his corporate jet as a secret place to sign the final papers.

Crazy? NFL owners in the last 30 days have changed directions, one by one singing the praises of Houston, beginning with Jerry Richardson, owner of the Carolina Panthers and chairman of the NFL’s powerful stadium committee. He told an L.A. audience brought together for a New Coliseum pep rally that Houston is 95% of the way to being presented to NFL owners for approval.

“We’re getting a lot of pressure from Houston, which has made a lot of progress, and we’re not hearing anything from L.A.,” Bowlen said.

Houston is united behind one effort, already setting aside $200 million in public money and adding $60 million from prospective team owner and Paul Tagliabue chum Bob McNair and another $60 million from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for a new stadium near the Astrodome.

Final details on a lease have already been agreed on in principle, putting Houston years if not forever ahead of L.A., and its final plan will be presented to NFL owners at a meeting in October.

Houston is rallying behind McNair, a billionaire who made previous overtures on Tagliabue’s advice to buy the St. Louis and Baltimore expansion opportunities as well as the Miami Dolphins. Born in North Carolina and a close friend of Richardson’s, he has done everything by the NFL book and has made it known that he is not troubled by the high franchise fees being discussed in Cleveland.

Houston’s mayor already has advanced his city’s cause in a meeting with NFL owners.

NFL owners, about to get rich because of Cleveland’s willingness to pay a handsome initiation fee, will have the chance to strike it rich again in Houston, leaving L.A. without an expansion opportunity, especially since Houston would be the league’s 32nd team, and expansion beyond that isn’t likely to occur for years. It also leaves L.A. ripe in the NFL owners’ estimation for one of their own to move there. And while few of them like to refer to Davis as one of their own, they lose money every time they come to Oakland.

Crazy? Depositions have been taken in the Raiders’ lawsuit against the NFL, in which Davis has accused the league of sabotaging his deal to remain in L.A. at Hollywood Park, and those familiar with the contents suggest the NFL has little chance of winning, thereby getting hit with a huge financial penalty. It’s another reason why there is growing sentiment around the league to seek a settlement with the Raiders, letting Davis, who claims he still has rights to L.A., return in exchange for dropping his legal action.

“I was forced out in Los Angeles,” Davis said recently. “We do feel the L.A. opportunity is ours. We paid for it.”

And then, giving more away than he might have intended, Davis said, “Raider fans from all over the world will be watching us [play the Cowboys in an exhibition game]. Especially in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.”

Crazy? The East Bay entities, who brought the Raiders to Oakland, have sued the Raiders, the Raiders responded by suing them, and this is a divorce based on irreconcilable differences awaiting only the final decree.

The Raiders have become a damaged product because of the legal action filed by the city and county, who are also commissioned under the terms of the deal with the Raiders to market the sale of personal seat licenses, club seats and luxury boxes. At the same time, the budget for marketing the Raiders has been slashed, and Jerry Brown, the mayor-elect in Oakland, does not appear the sort to be sympathetic to a football team.

How bad is the situation in Oakland? The city, county and the Raiders failed to take advantage of a $19-million deal over the next 10 years for stadium naming rights because of their differences. And Oakland, which lost $16 million a year ago according to City Manager Robert Bobb and a projected $20 million this year because of a Raider deal gone sour, cannot get the Raiders to return a phone call.

The situation is so desperate in Oakland that Davis took the unprecedented move of making himself available on the radio for an interview. If the team’s public relations department begins returning phone calls, then you’ll know the Raiders are returning to L.A.

“We are the dynamic football team that sells out stadiums and wears silver and black,” Davis, living in Fantasyland, said on KTCT radio.

This year the Raiders expect to sell little more than 30,000 season tickets--a drop of almost 10,000 personal seat licenses in only three years. The Raiders sold fewer than 50 luxury suites last year. When they moved to Oakland, they did so with the guarantee from the Oakland Marketing Assn. that 175 luxury suites would be sold; a sizable number have yet to even be readied for use.

“They told the world, ‘We sold out, sold the suites, sold the PSLs,’ ” Davis said in his radio address. “They lied. Why did they lie, if they did lie, and try to suck us in and get us to stay?”

Just because he talked doesn’t mean he made any sense.

“I just want to be able to compete,” he said. “I just want to have the opportunity here that they’re going to have [with new stadiums] in Tampa, St. Louis, Nashville and Cleveland. The Raiders cannot exist without sold-out stadiums and sold-out luxury suites.”

And that is why Al Davis will be moving his Raiders some time soon, and just where do you think he’s going to go?

We’re talking crazy, crazy, crazy: Privately, the Raiders really believe if they return to Los Angeles, a welcoming committee will be amassed at the city limits to shower them with gifts.

Maybe Los Angeles Councilman Nate Holden is standing by the road, but name one other public official, businessman, citizen or legally sane person willing to become a party to negotiations with Al Davis again.

The Raiders believe that the fans in L.A. will support any team, as long as they can do it in a new stadium with all the Hollywood bells and whistles, allowing the fans to sip good drinks and get to the freeways before the start of the fourth quarter. The Mighty Ducks, a lackluster hockey team residing in a Disneyland facility in Anaheim, offer pretty good supporting evidence.

KTLA, Channel 5, recently asked viewers on its sports segment: What would you prefer: A) the Raiders’ return, B) an expansion team, or C) no team?

Keeping in mind these were sports fans, and they were being asked to e-mail their responses--a challenge for most Raider fans--50% opted for no team, but surprisingly only 14% went for an expansion team, while “the greatness of the Raiders” drew 36%.

The Raiders still contend they have a huge fan base in L.A.

The way the NFL conducts business, L.A. might have no say. What if R.D. Hubbard sells a piece of land at Hollywood Park to someone willing to work with Al Davis? What if Ed Roski and the New Coliseum Partners figure their only shot is dealing with him? What if Irwindale calls with a deal he cannot refuse?

Davis is telling people he is returning to Los Angeles, and given the chance on the radio to say he wasn’t leaving Oakland, he never did.

“He never said he was leaving either,” Bobb said.

But he can’t stay in Oakland, and so the next generation of kids in Los Angeles will probably one day be wearing jerseys with No. 24 on the back in honor of Charles Woodson.

“I don’t believe the Raiders are going to L.A.,” said Bobb, whose authority to cut a deal with the Raiders might be stopped once Brown takes command. “They are Oakland’s team come hell or high water. Fan attendance in L.A. is no greater than that in Oakland. We’ll fight legally if we have to, because the Raiders are synonymous with Oakland.”

Bobb extended a settlement offer to the Raiders recently, and the Raiders responded with the demand the city and county drop their lawsuit against the team. Bobb declined, and the Raiders not only rejected the settlement offer without comment, they filed a counterclaim asking that their lease be voided, freeing them to go elsewhere.

“ ‘The Los Angeles Raiders’ does not sound right,” Bobb said.

Oakland obviously has heard the rumors about the NFL potentially buying out the Raiders’ lease because Bobb said he just happened to have those numbers available.

“You’d start at $190 million--that’s the number I’ve been given,” said Bobb, given high marks by outsiders for his negotiating skills. “Add to that the opportunities that go beyond that number--this team is going to go to the Super Bowl--and that means a big future economic impact for the area.”

The Raiders are going to go to the Super Bowl! The only way the Raiders are going to the Super Bowl is if they buy tickets.

Oakland officials contend once the team begins to win--but in whose lifetime?--the fans will return in dramatic fashion, which will allow the city to pay off the bonds for a remodeled Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. But Raider officials are just as quick to point out that when the team went 8-2 to open the 1995 season in Oakland, they were still unable to sell all their PSLs, and that was before the stadium was expanded.

The disagreements continue, and Davis’ new-look Raiders led by an impressive 35-year-old coach in Jon Gruden will be looking for the home-field edge. Does Davis ride it out in Oakland hoping that one day he can double his season-ticket sales, or does he chase the corporate riches in L.A.?

He left Oakland the first time for more money in L.A., left L.A. for more money in Oakland and now there’s money to be had in L.A.

“I suppose if the NFL came to us with cash,” Bobb said, “the kind of cash comparable to what we’re seeing talked about in Cleveland and guaranteed us a team right today keeping the Raiders’ name, then we would be hard-pressed not to look at that deal. But right now we have a deal with the Raiders, and we’re going to do everything we can to keep them right here.”

With sincere wishes from almost everyone in L.A.: Good luck.