[Elvis]

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti ... er-premium

NFL whips up the Raider Nation to fleece East Bay taxpayers
By Chip JohnsonOctober 26, 2015 Updated: October 26, 2015 3:33pm

The costumed citizens of the Raider Nation are certain to show up in force at an NFL-sponsored town hall meeting at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre on Thursday night to discuss the team’s future, setting the stage for a bizarre, Halloween-themed public hearing.

We can look forward to three hours of ranting and raving about tradition and history and civic pride. But it would be inaccurate to describe the team’s relationship with residents as a love affair.

More accurately, it’s been a mostly one-sided romance. The fans give. The team takes.

Raiders fans aren’t so much fans as enablers in a dysfunctional relationship.

Over the years the Raiders have left home for the bling-bling of Los Angeles, dictated the terms of their return and every few months threatened to pack up and leave town again. It’s become an abusive relationship — and anyone who remains with a life partner who acts in such fashion needs to double-check their self-esteem, because that’s where true pride resides.

I wasn’t born in Oakland, but as a lifelong Cleveland Browns backer, I sure can sympathize with the plight of Raiders fans. Cleveland sued and won the right to keep the team’s name, even though it couldn’t halt the franchise’s move to Baltimore in 1996. So a few years later, a new team came to Cleveland, and they called them the Browns, and they’ve pretty consistently stunk.

Nothing like the Raiders, I know. Still.

Maybe that’s why every time the Raiders threaten to pull the plug, it pushes my buttons a bit. It’s why, when the team issued its latest threat to pull up stakes, this time to join the San Diego Chargers in building a shared stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, I urged the good people of Oakland and Alameda County to call their bluff. My position is unchanged.

East Bay residents — particularly the ones who pay taxes in the city and county — and hard-core fans have bestowed valuable gifts upon the team. Start with the ludicrous “personal seat licenses” that the Raiders required of fans who wanted to purchase season tickets when Al Davis and Co. came back from L.A. in 1996. Consider the millions of dollars that taxpayers will be paying through 2026 to pay off the historic mistake that turned the Coliseum into a stadium fit for neither baseball nor football, whose Mount Davis is now tarped off year-round for lack of game-day fannies.

The Raiders are not the only people in this mess who have failed to play straight with the sporting public. The city has been stuck on unreasonable, impractical stadium proposals that have frustrated the team and left the NFL wondering who’s driving the clown car.

Over the years, we’ve heard government proposals to build a new baseball-only stadium in the parking lot on the north side of the Coliseum, and an implausible plan — not once, but twice — to create a vast array of retail, commercial and entertainment venues around a new stadium.

That pie in the sky, called Coliseum City, was a political prop for one-term Mayor Jean Quan, nothing more. It was never real, no matter how passionately — or frequently — city officials said it was.

Oakland isn’t the only stop for the league’s public-meeting roadshow. The NFL will hold similar gatherings in St. Louis and San Diego so fans there can weigh in on the future of a privately held enterprise. The teams in those towns have made it known they are shopping for new stadiums in new cities.

The NFL’s strategy appears to be to market the popularity of the sport in the hopes of whipping up enough public pressure to force city officials to cave and sell out their broader constituency, the taxpayers.

I certainly hope that when the Paramount doors swing open Thursday night, the Raiderettes will be there — rounding out what can only be regarded as a pep rally to wring many more bucks from people being played for suckers.

Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column runs on Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @chjohnson

[Stranger]

NFL whips up the Raider Nation to fleece East Bay taxpayers
By Chip JohnsonOctober 26, 2015 Updated: October 26, 2015 3:33pm
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The NFL’s strategy appears to be to market the popularity of the sport in the hopes of whipping up enough public pressure to force city officials to cave and sell out their broader constituency, the taxpayers.

I certainly hope that when the Paramount doors swing open Thursday night, the Raiderettes will be there ....

You know, if I put on my tin foil hat I'd have to wonder if the Raiders incredible victory this Sunday is tied in anyway to this Thursday's effort to "whip up" public support in Oakland.

Yeah, maybe it's farfetch, but maybe it isn't

[RedAlice]

Chargers lost because they are an "old team" and the Raiders are a young team.

A young team not unlike our Rams.


I've been saying to all who will listen: Carr to Cooper is AWESOME!

eta: And, I am dating a Charger fan, in love w that Charger fan, and all of my friends are Charger fans.

I am still right. Raiders are on the UP. As are we.

Worst team to take to LA: Old ass Chargers.

[Stranger]

Chargers lost because they are an "old team" and the Raiders are a young team.

A young team not unlike our Rams.


I've been saying to all who will listen: Carr to Cooper is AWESOME!

eta: And, I am dating a Charger fan, in love w that Charger fan, and all of my friends are Charger fans.

I am still right. Raiders are on the UP. As are we.

Worst team to take to LA: Old ass Chargers.

I'm actually hoping the Raiders stock rockin the league, as I'd secretly love to have a local AFC team to root for.

[Elvis]

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/ma ... e4bd2.html

NFL teams aim to vulture off the community

Do communities exist merely to make NFL owners richer?

David Hunn’s article "Stadium plan: City to pay $70 million, rebate taxes" (Oct. 24) says, "Generally, the NFL considers naming rights and even game-day taxes — on tickets, hot dogs, parking and beer, for instance — revenue that belongs to team owners, not to the public."

So, the National Football League denies the basic social contract that government collects taxes to provide basic, necessary services impartially to all citizens and businesses. The avarice of billionaires take precedence over the needs of citizens in St. Louis and 31 other cities?

As a season ticket holder, I support the Rams with money sent directly to them for tickets, and, I accept that a portion of what I spend on overpriced beer and cold chicken strips goes into Stan Kroenke’s bulging pockets. If the NFL also requires the meager pennies of sales tax from my beer, doesn’t that make a mockery of “Play 60,” pink wristbands and all the other things teams say they are doing for the community? NFL teams are not good corporate citizens, they are vultures.

Let the Rams leave St. Louis. A city without an NFL team is a more fair and just place.

Glenn Koenen • Oakville

[Elvis]

It's a very weird dynamic going on here.

On the one hand we have the smaller and mid-sized markets incentivizing the NFL to play in their cities. And of course the NFL loves that.

But on the other hand, in the biggest markets, the private sector has decided it's profitable to do it without public money. Why split the profits? So you have a city, St. Louis (and maybe San Diego if Carson isn't a bluff) trying to keep their team by offering them public money from moving to Los Angels which is offering them nothing.

Strange times indeed...