[Elvis]

Loyola does have an athletic field but I can't remember how big it is. They couldn't have a more beautiful location. My ex-wife used to go there but it was a long long time ago when I was there. Public access would be the main issue IMO.

The field was for soccer if I remember correctly so there should be adequate room. They could stay at Marina Del Rey and it's a short bus ride.

LMU is near Sofi and the Rams have a hotel they stay in the night before games so maybe that would stay the same.

People who claim to be in the know say it's gonna be LMU, we'll find out if they're right soon enough...

[Dare]

Isn't it on the hill above Marina Del Rey or is my memory wrong?

[Elvis]

That's a lot of training camp for SoCal:

[Elvis]

Also a lot of scrimmage possibilities...

[Elvis]

This is getting interesting. Neither the Raiders nor the Saints can have camp open to the public because this is Rams/Chargers territory. They can have private stuff, season ticket holders, etc.

We know the Saints are just here for the year while their facility is being upgraded but the Raiders are a bit homeless at the moment when it comes to training camp.

And Rams still haven't officially said where they're gonna have camp, or how public it will be. (However, after the draft, someone interviewing McVay said they were looking forward to seeing fans at camp).

[Elvis]

[Elvis]

At this point, what team won't be spending some of camp in SoCal?

[Elvis]

https://x.com/PGutierrezESPN/status/1815054300848239022

Raiders quietly returning to Southern California for camp

Paul Gutierrez, ESPN Staff Writer
Jul 21, 2024

THE LAS VEGAS Raiders are returning to Southern California ... not that you've heard much, if anything, about it.

Triumphant horns and exuberant strings will not emote "The Autumn Wind" to announce their arrival. Nor will silver and black confetti fall from the sky to celebrate their return.

The Raiders, who called Los Angeles home from 1982 through 1994 and maintain their massive popularity in SoCal, are heading to Costa Mesa in neighboring Orange County for 18 days of training camp, with veterans reporting Tuesday and breaking on Aug. 9. Yet because of NFL policy, the Raiders cannot promote their presence.

No billboards. No newspaper ads or radio commercials. Las Vegas media can cover camp, but no invites for L.A. or Orange County media. Nor will practices be open to fans, though some VIPs, select season-ticket holders, sponsors and invited guests will be allowed into the Jack Hammett Sports Complex, about 40 miles south of SoFi Stadium.

Since permanently relocating from St. Louis and San Diego, respectively, the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers share territorial marketing rights to the area.

"Every club has an exclusive home territory extending 75 miles in all directions from the exterior corporate borders of the city for which it holds a franchise," per league policy. "If another club holds its preseason training camp within that exclusive territory then it cannot be marketed locally."

But training camp must go on, with or without the public knowing.

"That's where we're having camp," Raiders owner Mark Davis told ESPN, "but the Chargers and Rams have the ability to block us from [promoting.] It's fine."

Davis paused.

"It would be nice if all the fans could be there, but, whatever. Like I said, the Chargers and Rams have that ability."

It all makes for an awkward if cool return to a haven of Raider Nation.

THE RAIDERS HAVE held training camp at their Henderson, Nevada, facility since moving to Sin City in 2020 (they called Napa, California, their training camp home from 1996 through 2019). So getting out of the Southern Nevada heat -- where July and August temperatures average over 100 degrees -- for camp while continuing to expand their brand in a fertile fan base seemed a fruitful gesture.

But league sources acknowledged the Raiders, with their popularity, setting up shop where two other teams do their business, did not go over well with either the Rams or Chargers. Even as there was a "more the merrier" vibe for camp, a league source said. "That's the upside," the source added, "more teams."

Officials with the Rams and Chargers declined to comment.

So, why did the Raiders move training camp to a place where not only their general fanbase could not watch, but also where they could not market the team?

The move was the brainchild of Antonio Pierce , who is entering his first full season as Raiders head coach. He grew up 30 miles away, near Compton, before embarking upon a nine-year playing career with Washington and the New York Giants .

"It's about team bonding," Pierce said. "When I played ... we never stayed at our facility. I was used to traveling and going away and kind of [being] bunkered up, 90 or 85 players at a time, or whatever it was. And team bonding, getting together and getting to know one another, to get away from all the distractions. It's all about ball. Just ball."

Davis agreed.

"The best part of not doing it in Las Vegas is the bonding," Davis said. " ... When camp is here [in Henderson], the vets, the ones that have homes here, they go home and see family. When you're away at camp, you're together. That kind of bonding.

"It was something Antonio wanted to go after."

Interestingly, there will be five NFL teams within 100 miles of each other during camp. The New Orleans Saints are holding theirs in Irvine, not far from Costa Mesa. Meanwhile the Rams (Thousand Oaks), Chargers (El Segundo) and Cowboys (Oxnard), will be in the L.A. area.

The Cowboys have been in Oxnard off and on since 2001, before the Rams and Chargers returned to the Los Angeles area, and were essentially grandfathered in with clearance for marketing and open practices.

WHEN THE RAIDERS relocated from Oakland, they still had designs on holding training camp in Napa every offseason. But the pandemic prompted NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in 2020 to force all teams to hold camp in their respective facilities that summer, forcing the Raiders to stay in their newly built Henderson facility.

It worked out so well the Raiders stayed put. Yet even then, there was not enough room for open-to-the-public practices, so only select season-ticket holders, VIPs and sponsors were allowed in.

Such was the case, too, in Napa, where the Raiders began letting in fan groups in 2012 only after the death of longtime owner Al Davis, who tried to keep prying eyes at a minimum.

With Costa Mesa a one-off situation, the Raiders could potentially eye a return to Wine Country or even Northern Nevada, where the Raiders also had designs on eventually going before the pandemic. But Napa might also present similar marketing/media issues with the San Francisco 49ers, the lone team in Northern California since the Raiders moved from Oakland four years ago.

The Raiders' SoCal sojourn is a one-year deal that includes the team paying $165,000 in rent to the city of Costa Mesa with other "contributions" that include $600,000 in improvements to the fields at the complex; 100 tickets for local students to attend an NFL game in Southern California; donation of outdoor weight training equipment to Costa Mesa High School; and a new mobile recreation van for programs in underserved areas.

"I ain't ever been [to Costa Mesa] before, so I'm looking forward to it," Raiders receiver Jakobi Meyers said. "It's going to be a good time."

They return to Henderson for the remainder of camp after an Aug. 10 preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings, and, yes, select fans will be allowed at certain practices. They'll also hold two open-to-the-public night practices at Allegiant Stadium on Aug. 14 and 20.

It all has Joe Ortiz, president of the Black Hole booster club's Los Angeles chapter, feeling a certain way. His favorite team coming so near his home sans the hoped-for and expected accouterments, is bittersweet, he said.

"I couldn't even get tickets [to the Costa Mesa practices]," said Ortiz, a concrete technician who grew up in South Central L.A. and now lives in Anaheim. "But [everybody] knew they were coming. I'm sure those that show up will support the team. It's awesome because everybody will show up, but it sucks that you can't get in. It's a beautiful situation but..."

Ortiz's voice trailed off.

He said he regularly gets 300-400 fans at his tailgate party at SoFi Stadium when the Raiders come to town.

"We're diehards," he said. "It doesn't matter where they go, we're there."

Except camp, a move that the Raiders hope will pay dividends.

"We've got to win, man, that's it," Davis said. "And, hopefully, this will help."

[Elvis]

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/20 ... ts-raiders

Where can you attend five NFL training camps in one day? Only in Southern California

Attend five NFL training camps in one day? It’s possible to do in Southern California if you don’t mind traffic.


By Sam Farmer
Staff Writer
July 28, 2024

Location, location, location.

That’s what the Las Vegas Raiders and New Orleans Saints were thinking when they decided to move their training camps to Southern California, joining the Rams and Chargers and traditional summer transplant Dallas Cowboys, who have set up shop in Oxnard almost every summer since 2001.

The stretch between Ventura County to Orange County represents the densest cluster of teams in NFL history, even more concentrated than the so-called “Cheese League” in the mid-1990s, when five teams held camps in Wisconsin and the Vikings stayed in neighboring Minnesota.

Southern California almost had a sixth team this summer as the Houston Texans quietly looked into moving their camp to Thousand Oaks, where the Rams were holding their temporary headquarters ahead of the completion of the Woodland Hills site.

With that in mind, we set out to visit all five Southland camps in a single day, understanding that the drive was doable but we would need a Star Trek transporter to actually see every team at practice. We would be on the grounds of each camp but would wind up interviewing a lot of blocking sleds and tackling dummies.

Nonetheless, Los Angeles Times photographer Brian van der Brug and I mapped out our plan to drive from Oxnard (Cowboys) to “The Bolt” in El Segundo (Chargers) to Loyola Marymount (Rams) to Costa Mesa (Raiders) to UC Irvine (Saints). Five teams. An audacious nickel package, to be sure.

Those stops in that order span 121 miles, but we all know that could mean three months in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

There weren’t a lot of cars on the road when I left Dana Point at 4:45 a.m. in hopes of getting an early start at Cowboys camp a couple of hours later. Brian was coming from Thousand Oaks, so we decided to work our way down the coast from north to south.

I grabbed a quick breakfast along the way and, taking note of a Cowboys billboard near Oxnard, met Brian at the modest team hotel around 7:30. We drove separately to the camp, which wasn’t set to open until the following day. It was a beehive of activity, just no players or fans. Workers were unfurling banners that featured the faces of star players, and stocking the merchandise tents with jerseys, cups, miniature helmets and the like.

This is a second home to the Cowboys. They have their system firmly in place. It was a little more than decade ago, in a room of the neighboring hotel Jerry Jones had converted into his summer office, that the Cowboys owner indicated that the Rams could be coming back to Los Angeles.

Sitting behind his desk and pouring table salt on the rim of a beer can, Jones told me if Rams owner Stan Kroenke couldn’t work out a deal to stay in St. Louis — and such a deal was highly improbable — he was gone. Kroenke, Jones said, was one of the few people in the world with the cash, club and cajones to solve the L.A. stadium puzzle. As we now know, that’s precisely what happened.

We picked up our credentials and walked around the fields and checked out the bleachers, which will accommodate thousands of fans per day. Soon, we hit the road.

It’s 67 miles from Oxnard to El Segundo, but at that time in the morning — with freeways looking like ruby varicose veins on my phone — the glacial slog would take more than two hours. We got to “The Bolt” as new coach Jim Harbaugh and his Chargers were wrapping up practice.

We got a full tour of the lightning-bolt-shaped facility with team executive Fred Maas. Saw the equipment room that looked like a sporting-goods store, the digital imagery that allowed for meticulous measurements for perfect-fitting helmets and cleats, a team auditorium that would rival any IMAX theater, and a Wolfgang Puck kitchen that includes a pizza oven made to look like a giant Chargers helmet.

The building features all sorts of glass walls and balconies overlooking the practice fields, and still under construction is a club where premium customers can sit at fire pits, order drinks and appetizers, and drop in to watch practice from a lofty perch.

The Cowboys set the standard for NFL practice facilities with “The Star,” a spectacular 91-acre campus in Frisco, Texas, that serves as team headquarters. Now many teams are following suit, among them the Rams, who are building a massive headquarters and entertainment complex on 100 acres in Woodland Hills.

The Bolt, which sits on 14 acres, provides the Chargers with three fields and a state-of-the-art facility, allowing the team to plant a flag in L.A. Standing on a balcony, you can see SoFi Stadium in the distance and, on a clear day, the Hollywood sign beyond that.

After saying hello to Harbaugh, Brian and I made the 15-minute drive to LMU, temporary summer home to the Rams while their training facility is under construction. They wouldn’t be practicing until later in the day.

The Rams sacrificed space by moving north from their previous summer home at UC Irvine, but they wanted to be in L.A. and at a place with lodging, allowing players to walk from their rooms to the practice field. Practice time is limited by league rules, so Rams coach Sean McVay didn’t want to burn time on a bus shuttling players from their hotel to a facility, as in years past.

The setup is relatively small at LMU, with only one practice field. It’s lined with bleachers for fans, who sign up online to obtain free tickets. There are various fan areas and food trucks, and on this day, a gentle breeze coming off the ocean.

It’s a half-mile walk to camp for Maurice Jones-Drew, the former UCLA and NFL running back who’s now a color analyst for Rams radio. His main home is in the Bay Area but he has a condo near LMU. On this day, he walked up to camp to check out the new digs.

“Everyone’s trying to get a piece of L.A. because of the weather,” he said. “You can practice here. Think if you were in Louisiana right now. How do you practice out there? Being able to be in a nice, somewhat controlled environment, weather-wise, makes it so much better.”

He knows. Jones-Drew spent much of his career in Jacksonville, where 90 degrees and 90% humidity were the norm for a summer day. He finished with the Raiders, though, and often wore a rubberized boxer sweatshirt so he could break an adequate sweat at training camp in Napa.

Three camps down, two to go.

Left LMU to make the hour drive south to Costa Mesa, where the Chargers held camp in previous years. They left for their new facility and the Raiders stepped in, looking to escape the Las Vegas heat.

Problem was, the Raiders didn’t inform the Rams or Chargers they were coming. Those teams each paid more than $600 million in relocation fees to the rest of the league for exclusive rights to the L.A. market.

Teams are largely free to hold training camps where they want, but what they can’t do is market themselves in the territory of another franchise. So initially, the Raiders and Costa Mesa had grand plans of open practices, fan appreciation events, youth clinics and the like. The NFL stepped in, however, and curtailed that.

So even though the Raiders are back in Southern California, someone could drive past the Jack Hammett Sports Complex and not notice they are there. There are a few silver-and-black signs and opaque fencing surrounding the 2½ football fields, but the footprint is discreet.

There’s a tent for media and a few rows of bleachers, enough for the roughly 250 season-ticket holders invited to practice, along with the 100 or so friends and family members invited to camp. It’s a homecoming for new Raiders coach Antonio Pierce, who grew up in Long Beach.

The Cowboys can put up billboards and have thousands of fans at practices. They were grandfathered in, here long before the Rams and Chargers relocated to L.A.

Before Oxnard — which used to be the summer home to the Los Angeles Raiders — the Cowboys held training camp in Thousand Oaks. It’s one big game of musical chairs.

If the Raiders are low-key about camp, the Saints are downright stealthy. They’re in Irvine for only a year while their facility in Metairie, La., is getting upgraded. They gave the Rams and Chargers a heads up they were coming, and their camp is closed to fans.

There are guarded road blocks outside their fenced-in practice fields and small signs in Saints gold and black that read “Private Event.” If people not connected with the Saints need to cross through that part of campus, they’re told to walk briskly by and not take any photos.

Neither the Raiders nor Saints were practicing when we got there. We made brief visits and walked the fields, checking the boxes on our whirlwind tour. Access to a helicopter might have allowed us to see more actual football.

Back home that evening and unwinding from the day, I swapped texts with friend Mike Madden, son of the late John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster.

Five camps in one day.

“Somewhere,” he said, “my dad’s jealous.”

Sam Farmer

Honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his “long and distinguished reporting in the field of pro football,” Sam Farmer has covered the NFL for 25 seasons. A graduate of Occidental College, he’s a two-time winner of California Sportswriter of the Year and first place for beat writing by Associated Press Sports Editors.