Roger Goodell Addresses Raiders Relocation

With the hope retaining the Raiders, city of Oakland and mayor Libby Schaaf submitted an updated stadium proposal last week, but commissioner Roger Goodell wasn’t particularly impressed with the specifics of the plan, as he detailed in a letter to Schaaf, per David Debolt of the East Bay Times.Roger Goodell

“The material that we reviewed earlier today confirms certain information that had previously been communicated orally, such as a willingness to bring bank financing to a stadium project, and a proposed valuation of the land at the Coliseum site,” Goodell wrote to Schaaf. “It also confirms that key issues that we have identified as threshold considerations are simply not resolvable in a reasonable time. In that respect, the information sent today does not present a proposal that is clear and specific, actionable in a reasonable timeframe, and free of major contingencies.”

In other words, Schaaf’s “updated” strategy was not updated at all, but rather a rehashing of the same plan the city had been presenting for some time. Indeed, Vincent Bonsignore of the Los Angeles Daily News reported Friday that Oakland’s new plan “did not move the chains forward,” while Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets neither the NFL nor the Raiders have a different view of the situation as a result of Schaaf’s letter.

“Despite all of these efforts, ours and yours, we have not yet identified a viable solution,” Goodell wrote. “It is disappointing to me and our clubs to have come to that conclusion.”

Instead, the Raiders’ intention to relocate to Las Vegas appears all but finalized, and NFL owners are expected to vote Monday on the club’s plan. The Raiders and owner Mark Davis will need to garner 24 votes (out of 32) in order to move to Sin City, at which point they’ll pay a cheaper relocation fee than did the Rams and Chargers to move to Los Angeles. Additionally, the Raiders have secured a record $750MM in public money for a $1.9 billion stadium in Vegas.

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