Oakland Raiders focused on Los Angeles, says Carmen Policy

Jan 29, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; General view of Super Bowl XVIII championship ring to commemorate the Los Angeles Raiders 38-9 victory over the Washington Redskins on January 22, 1984 on display at the NFL Experience at the Phoenix Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sport

National Football League owners and commissioner Roger Goodell have been meeting in Chicago this week to discuss the future of the NFL in Los Angeles. The owners – either as a whole or the nine-owner Relocation Committee – heard both the Stan Kroenke-backed proposal for a stadium in Inglewood as well as the Chargers-Raiders joint proposal for Carson. Groups from Saint Louis and San Diego also presented their plans for new stadiums on those markets, in hopes of retaining the Rams and Chargers, respectively. One notable absence from the special NFL owners meeting was a proposal from a group representing the City of Oakland or another proposal to keep the Raiders in the Bay Area.

Carmen Policy, a former NFL GM and team president who worked for legendary owner Eddie DeBartolo with both the 49ers and current Browns franchises, was hired by the joint Raiders-Chargers group to promote the Carson project, and presented it to NFL owners. After presenting the Carson plan to owners, he gave an interview to assembled NFL media in which he stated that the “Chargers and Raiders are focused on Los Angeles” and reiterated his arguments for the superiority of the Carson project over the Inglewood project.

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Policy remarked that projections of a completed project in 2018 – something the Inglewood backers promise – are unrealistic and stated that Carson would be completed in time for the 2019 season. He also remarked that he believed that Chargers and Raiders fans in California would remain loyal to their teams and the two-team stadium would be instrumental in building a “megamarket…from Santa Barbara to Mexico” for the NFL, in a region that is home to roughly 20 million people.

Policy’s remark that the Raiders are “focused” on LA, combined with the fact that there was no competing proposal by any group in the Bay Area to keep the Raiders in Northern California, spells almost total doom for the hopes of Oakland fans who want to keep their team. League exec Eric Grubman, who has been the NFL’s point man on LA relocation issues, stated to NFL Network’s Ian Rapaport that the City of Oakland had made “no viable proposal” to the Raiders whatsoever – completely dismissing Floyd Kephart’s widely criticized plan presented back in June.

With talk about moving the relocation window up and voting on the future of the NFL in LA possible as early as October of this year, Oakland is nearly out of time. Without a viable stadium plan in Oakland, it seems unlikely that then NFL would not allow the Raiders to move to the Los Angeles market, whether that be to Carson or Inglewood.

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