This week’s big sports story in our neck of the woods is the NFL Raiders football team’s official move (today) from Oakland to Las Vegas. A humongous stadium is under construction adjacent to Interstate 15 in Las Vegas, just across the freeway from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Apparently, the “Silver and Black” is going to retain the “Raiders” name, like they did when they fled Oakland to Los Angeles in 1982 and then from Los Angeles back to Oakland in 1994. This team can’t seem to make up its mind where it wants to reside. I’m wondering how long they will stay in Las Vegas? I’m guessing just as much time as it takes another city to cough up a bigger deal.
Four locations in forty years? What about their “fans”? What kind of community loyalty is this? I think they ought to be re-named the Las Vegas Traitors.
Of course, many of the teams in the NFL have moved about, chasing the almighty dollar.
The Los Angeles Rams were originally the Cleveland Rams. Then they moved to Los Angeles, re-located to St. Louis (where they won a Super Bowl), and then re-re-located back to Los Angeles, where a HUGE stadium is being built as we speak…at a cost of $5 billion.
Maybe they’ll stay put for a decade; who knows? How about a new name: the Los Angeles Shams.
I was a big-time Rams fan when I was young, but abandoned them when they abandoned Los Angeles. Because I was still living in Southern California, nearer to San Diego than Los Angeles, I shifted my football loyalty to the San Diego Chargers, and have followed that team for the past thirty years. The Chargers had a very popular franchise in San Diego for 56 years, were typically competitive, went to one Super Bowl, but never won.
Due to lack of financial support from the city government and the citizens of San Diego (to help build a modern stadium), the Chargers decided to re-locate their NFL franchise north to Los Angeles in 2019, to co-locate with the Los Angeles Shams. They got a killer deal from Stan Kronke, the Rams’ owner, who needs some tenants for his expensive stadium. The NFL helped, too, as it felt sorry for the Chargers’ futile efforts with San Diego politicians an voters.
Ironically, the Chargers are the only NFL team to never leave Southern California (i.e. never abandon their fans), but they will have a difficult time gaining fan support 100 miles north in Los Angeles, which is curiously supportive of the oft-relocated Shams and the Traitors.
Go figure!
If the Packers were to flee Green Bay for a megabucks deal, there would be a f’ing civil war in Wisconsin. In California, where there are hundreds of entertainment options, who cares about professional football: Los Angeles, the second largest metropolitan area in the United States, didn’t even have an NFL team from 1994 through 2018. Nobody cared.
It’s a weird country we’re living in.