Oakland Raiders Not on the Way Out of Town Just Yet

Mar 23, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis attends NFL meetings at the Arizona Biltmore. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

Not Over

Oakland’s plan is a stadium and redevelopment on 200 acres of land jointly owned by the city and the county. And San Diego businessman and chairman of Renaissance Companies Floyd Kephart is the lead financier on the current Coliseum City. And back in late February, he sounded very optimistic about his ability to get this whole thing rolling.

He’s told KUSI News, “The big difference here is that we don’t need voter approval. We’re not borrowing any money. The Raiders are doing everything in their power to stay in Oakland. Scale of one-to-ten, we’re at an eight on being able to get this done in Oakland, and I really think it’s gonna happen.”

But since then, nothing has happened and all you hear about is the project with the San Diego Chargers and Raiders. And many have criticised the move for him to head this venture saying, “He’s not the savior.” That’s true because the savior was last seen 2015 years ago and when he’s comes back, it won’t be to build a stadium.

But that’s not Kephart’s job, his job is to show the city, county, and Raiders how this can get done. And the city hasn’t shown the plan to the NFL because Kephart has until June 21 to produce it. The media likes to be dramacidal (dramatic + homicidal, I like to make up new words sometimes) and put the nail in the coffin because they don’t know about the plan yet.

The NFL knows that so to get what they want, not just the Raiders, Chargers and St. Louis Rams, they have to create leverage. The NFL has kept Los Angeles open to give teams leverage against their cities to get a new stadium under threat of leaving. They’re trying to get the rest of the NFL taken care of because they already know L.A. is going to okay.

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