NFL Questions Davis’ Motives

Even as he insisted that the NFL forced him to leave Los Angeles, Raider owner Al Davis testified Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that he had been talking with go-betweens and Oakland authorities for a year before moving the team back there in 1995.

Testifying under cross-examination in the Raiders’ $1-billion lawsuit against the NFL, Davis also said the league’s terms for a new Raider stadium at Hollywood Park “couldn’t have been worse if my worst enemy had done them.”

Davis is maintaining the NFL drove him out of Los Angeles by pushing for a second team to share the Hollywood Park site under better terms than those afforded the Raiders.

“It would have been insane,” Davis said, “to have a team come in and start at the same time. . . . I’m not afraid of competition, but I think it was wrong.”

Davis testified that he told several owners, “What are you doing to us? I wouldn’t do it in your cities.”

Under questioning from NFL attorney Allen Ruby, Davis said he had been approached by an Oakland emissary as early as the summer of 1994. And, even as negotiations with Hollywood Park were ongoing and intense in the first few months of 1995, Davis said the Raiders were simultaneously talking with Oakland officials.

Davis also said he considered temporarily moving the team to Oakland while the Hollywood Park stadium was being built.

Much of Wednesday’s session was taken up with key meetings in the spring of 1995 when the Hollywood Park deal appeared to come together only to fall apart.

Davis said he was asking for two Super Bowls for the new stadium and 10,000 extra Super Bowl tickets. There was also a discussion of a $20-million loan from the league.

Davis said NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had assured him the deal would go through.

“He said he would make it happen,” Davis testified.

Asked if any team up to that point had ever asked for a sweeter deal, Davis said, “No team has ever been close to the Raiders for what we were giving and what we were getting.”

Davis said that, considering he had to split his projected revenue with Hollywood Park, he figured, over the 20 years of the lease he would have signed, he would have given up $600 million.

Outside court, Ruby said the $20-million league loan wasn’t made because the Raiders never formally asked for it.

Ruby also said that the idea of a second team was the result of concern by the Fox network after the Rams left Anaheim early in 1995. That left Fox, which has the rights to NFC games, without a team in the Southern California market. But in time, Ruby said, that concern faded.

“There was never a serious plan for a second team,” Ruby said. “There was never a shred of evidence that it existed.”

In June 1995, a week after Davis has said he believed the Hollywood Park deal was dead, the Raiders--who played in L.A. for 13 seasons--announced they were heading back to Oakland. The Oakland deal featured $54 million in up-front money.

On the stand, Davis denied that the Oakland deal was financially driven. He said that Oakland simply had a stadium he considered the best for his team.

“If it was only about money,” Davis said, “I would have gone to Sacramento,” which he has testified was dangling a $50-million deal. “I just wanted some place to play.”

Asked if he held the league responsible for his return to Oakland, Davis said, “I think they had a lot to with it. The league played a very strong part, as did Oakland officials.”