This isn’t going to work.

And don’t just take it from me — take it from Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who told Front Office Sports this week that the A’s current plan for a ballpark on The Strip “does not make sense.”

I can see where she’s coming from, because I can see where the A’s are allegedly going to build their new ballpark from my Super Bowl hotel window.

The famed but well-past-its-prime Tropicana is slated to be torn down in April, leaving a roughly 35-acre blank canvas on the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. This is some prime real estate.

And of that 34-acre plot, owned by the Bally’s corporation, the A’s will be given a little more than a quarter.

Now, I might have grown up in the Midwest, but I didn’t know an acre from a fathom. Still, that didn’t sound like a lot of space.

Sure enough, nine acres is less than 400,000 square feet.

Or, to make this all super simple: It’s not enough room to build a ballpark.

And I think the A’s know it, too.

The hockey rink up the street — T-Mobile Arena — takes up roughly the same amount of space.

Back in the Bay, the Howard Terminal site in Oakland was 55 acres. But the block I live on in Alameda is 10, and the Costco I go to in San Leandro is on a 15-acre lot.

And having been to nearly every MLB stadium on this continent, I can say this: You’re going to need more space than a Costco.

Yes, even if you want to build even a smaller, 33,000-seat stadium. And certainly, if you want to build one with a retractable roof to create views of The Strip, as promised. (Then again, why would the A’s keep a promise?)

Even the A’s spring training ballpark in Arizona, Hohokam Stadium — capacity 10,500, including the outfield lawn seating — takes up 10 acres.

To be fair, A’s owner John Fisher and team president Dave Kaval have some experience with building small plots — the San Jose Earthquakes, also owned by Fisher, have a 10-acre stadium. Kaval spearheaded the building of it.

This, of course, is the same stadium that I overheard MLS executives bashing as “boring” and “simple” on its opening night in March 2015. It’s a stadium Fisher now considers “outdated” because of its lack of luxury boxes.

And since a baseball field itself will take up half of those nine acres on the Tropicana site, I’m not sure how Fisher expects to squeeze enough luxury boxes and premium seating to avoid the same fate in Las Vegas.

The A’s don’t pay for Major League-caliber outfielders, now they might not be able to afford an actual outfield.

So no, the plans don’t make sense, as far as anyone can tell.

That’s probably why the A’s have refused to release new renderings of their ballpark, despite promising them in early December.

And all that wishy-washiness — the A’s, like in Oakland, have bounced from site to site, promising the next one will be “the one” — isn’t building excitement for the green-and-yellow brand.

Fisher spoke at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce event in January, trying to drum up local investment in the team. When Fisher was done speaking, the emcee of the event tried to capture the excitement the audience had for the region’s new team.

“The Las Vegas A’s! We like the sound of that, right Vegas?”

“Yeah? Yes?”

“Are we alive back there?”

Such a disaster. pic.twitter.com/S2UN4N2qf8

— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) January 24, 2024

The silence told the whole story.

And I don’t think it’s a surprise that I have not yet seen an A’s logo on anyone in Las Vegas.

The A’s bid for relocation to Nevada was unanimously approved by Major League Baseball in November, after the team secured at least $380 million in public funding from the state. The Nevada teacher’s union is reportedly suing the state, challenging the legality of those funds.

Goodman told Front Office Sports that the A’s “gotta figure out a way to stay in Oakland.”

Now she might have an ulterior motive with her comments. The A’s would be moving to Paradise, Nevada — an unincorporated area in Clark County. Not her territory.

And while she made a push for the A’s to move to the real Las Vegas, the sentiment on the team staying in Oakland was stronger.

The A’s meanwhile, need to figure out where they’re going to go after Oakland.

The A’s lease at the Coliseum ends after this upcoming season. ESPN reported last month that the A’s and the city haven’t talked for nearly a year, and I don’t expect that to change. The A’s might have wanted the city to call their bluff when they said they’d be going exclusive with Las Vegas, but Oakland hasn’t blinked.

Now Fisher and Kaval have backed themselves into a small corner of The Strip. They say their new Las Vegas ballpark will open in 2028.

I wonder if the sportsbooks here will give me odds on that. I’ll take the over.

The Salt Lake City region — desperate to add a second professional sports team — is making a strong push to be the team’s interim home. The A’s have also toured the Giants’ Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento, a move that might allow them to restructure their current television contract with Comcast. Heaven forbid Fisher, whose net worth is estimated to be just shy of $3 billion, walks away from any money.

Las Vegas has many flaws, but it is an event town. If you know how to put on a good show, there is no grander stage in the world at the moment.

And the A’s think the worst show in baseball — produced by Fisher — will rate.

Perhaps one day the A’s will squeeze themselves into a tiny ballpark on The Strip. It’ll probably have a fixed roof, no view, and limited amenities — a place that’s nothing like what was sold to Nevada lawmakers or the Las Vegas public.

Sure, visiting fans will come for a few years, looking to watch their favorite team and lose some money in the process — an ode to the Raiders’ new way of life in Las Vegas, where they’re never the home team at their own stadium. But that novelty will wear off after a while, too.

And then what will the A’s be left with?

The smallest market in baseball and a tiny ballpark that will be “outdated” within a decade.

Fisher is gambling on Vegas, and he should take the advice that no one around here seems to heed:

Cash out. Take your winnings and go.

Sell the team. It’s the only worthwhile path remaining.

Because in this town, the house always wins.

And this stadium can’t.

On Monday, NFL owners awarded Levi’s Stadium Super Bowl 60, to be played in February 2026.

It’s a bit of a surprise that it’s returning to the bay, as Super Bowl 50, held in 2016, left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Bad planning, bad traffic, bad weather (the sun was out, roasting upper-deck fans), and a downright awful game all led to the belief that Levi’s Stadium’s first Super Bowl would also be its last.

Surely, the 49ers and the NFL will try to fix the mistakes of that Super Bowl week. But the easiest solution isn’t going to San Francisco and using Chase Center or Oracle Park for events. No, it’s hosting the week’s ever-growing list of festivities near the stadium.

Super Bowl LX should be the Silicon Valley Super Bowl, the San Jose Fiesta, the South Bay Celebration.

The last time the Super Bowl came to our region, the week of events was focused in San Francisco, the town the 49ers still pretend to represent.

Yes, SAP Center hosted the early-week Opening Night, and the teams practiced at Stanford and San Jose State, but big whoop. The big shots and big events were up north. San Francisco’s Market Street was riddled with America’s favorite narcotic — football — and the Moscone Center, the Ferry Building and Pier 70 were all hot spots throughout the week.

San Jose and the South Bay were an afterthought. So much so that when folks staying in San Francisco hotels needed to get to the game on Sunday, no one seemed to consider Highway 101 traffic.

No, the stadium isn’t just “down the street.” That’s a rookie mistake.

It’s an all-too-typical story. There are more than 4 million people in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties, and they are far too easily forgotten when we talk about “The Bay.”

Even with some population decline, San Jose remains the Bay Area’s largest city and one of the largest cities in the United States. And it’s a real city, too, unlike so many of the low-density sprawls in Texas, Arizona and Florida. Yet the epicenter of Silicon Valley is treated as if it’s Sacramento by outsiders (and some insiders, too).

So while the lofty “economic impact” numbers that PR agencies toss around are mostly phony, I think there would be value in San Jose, Santa Clara County and the South Bay actually serving as the Super Bowl’s true host this time around.

The reason Levi’s Stadium won the bid for Super Bowl LX is simple: It’s running unopposed.

With the World Cup coming to North America in the summer of 2026, many of the NFL’s top-choice stadiums will need to renovate their fields at the end of the NFL season to better accommodate the other kind of football.

Levi’s is ready, though.

And while San Jose and the South Bay will not be running unopposed for the week’s festivities, after so many decades of being treated as second-best — an afterthought — this region deserves some recognition over The City.

It deserves a celebration of itself.

It’s not as if there’s not enough corporate money in the region to make it happen.

And after receiving oodles of public funding from the city of Santa Clara, the least the 49ers can do is campaign to make Super Bowl LX a South Bay affair.

San Jose, in particular, should be the epicenter of the Super Bowl week. So much of the news regarding the city is doom and gloom. But, like all great cities, San Jose is constantly evolving, and there are plenty of signs this current transition will be for the better. I hope all the positives will be celebrated often between now and 2026, but we should put that party on the books anyways.

I want to see Santana Row and San Pedro Square bustling. Let’s extend Christmas in the Park until February — you know the theme.

Let’s welcome every corporate vice president and big-media airhead to a city and region where modern work actually gets done.

Let’s invite the world to a part of the bay they have mistakenly overlooked and underestimated for too long.

We’re really going to do this again, so let’s do it right. Let’s celebrate the South Bay, Silicon Valley and San Jose this time.

Good riddance.

The news that the A’s had bought land in Las Vegas to build a new ballpark (that the A’s will ask someone else to pay for) is a gut punch to fans of the green and gold and the East Bay community as a whole. Only a few months ago, there was an optimism that things just might work out.

But squandering hope is all this A’s organization seems capable of doing.

And while it’s ridiculous that the East Bay will be left without a major professional sports team, it’s also ridiculous to pine for the A’s to stay.

Yes, there’s a great history here. There was a dynasty, Rickey Henderson, the Bash Brothers, the Big Three, the Streak, and 21 postseason berths. But anything worth remembering came under different leadership. The A’s that were worth saving — worth a fight — ceased to exist when John Fisher took over as the team’s full owner after the 2016 season.

Fisher has proven, time and time again, that he doesn’t care about Oakland, the East Bay, or the A’s. The team is merely a political pawn for real estate deals.

Under Fisher’s leadership, executed by team president/lackey Dave Kaval, the A’s have dismantled the goodwill between the fan base, the region, the city and the organization. He returned the A’s to the laughingstock status Charlie Finley achieved in Kansas City before moving the team to Oakland in 1968.

Fisher and Kaval are unserious people. They’re perfect fits for an unserious place like Las Vegas.

You need no more evidence of that than the duo’s plan to build a $1.5 billion retractable-roof stadium on the site of the Wild Wild West truck stop. It’s not so much on The Strip as it is “strip-adjacent.” And by that, I mean there are several seedy strip clubs in the neighborhood. It’s also catty-corner from Budget Suites motel — where you can surely rent by the hour.

It’s a far cry from the waterfront in Oakland. It makes the Coliseum area look classy.

But it’s cheap land and free money, and, truly, that’s what the A’s are all about. The Nevada Independent reported Wednesday that the Silver State will pay for the new ballpark on the wrong side of I-15.

Even with someone else’s cash, it’s a crapshoot if Fisher and Kaval can build something.

But, of course, while they fumble around with putting a shovel in the sand, they’ll consider the “unviable” Coliseum to be more than good enough.

The A’s say — hope? — their new stadium will be ready by 2027. Their lease at the Coliseum has one more year, expiring after the 2024 season.

So what happens in the meantime?

The city and Alameda County should learn from the Raiders’ exit. Even after the team had made its intentions clear, even after the NFL had ratified the move to Las Vegas, the Raiders were allowed to stay in the East Bay. They played at the Coliseum and practiced in Alameda for three more seasons. Oakland didn’t have enough self-respect to kick them out.

That can’t happen again. Not after the way the A’s played the East Bay community.

At the command of the silent Fisher, Kaval said anything and everything to make Oakland and the East Bay feel like they were the only place for the A’s. “Rooted in Oakland” was the slogan, even as Kaval took countless Southwest flights to Vegas. Frankly, the A’s incompetence was the only thing holding them back from making this move to the desert earlier.

So it behooves Oakland and Alameda County to kick the cheaters out of the house as soon as possible.

If that requires some lawsuits, so be it. If it means waiting until the lease expires in 2024, that’s how it is. At the very least, the city and county should match Fisher’s actions, at the very least, and jack up the rent when the Coliseum lease expires.

If the A’s are done with us — as they announced in the most passive-aggressive way on Wednesday night — then we should be done with them. It’s an act of dignity. Fisher and Kaval can reap what they have sown and go play at a Triple-A ballpark in the Vegas suburbs for a few years, a decade, or an eternity.

I want to say that the Oakland A’s died on Wednesday night, but the truth is that Fisher and Kaval killed them well before any land was bought in Nevada.

No, this moment — while regrettable — is one of liberation for Oakland and the East Bay.

Deep down, we know that even if Fisher had been given what he wanted here — free land and a whole bunch of free money — he would always build the minimum-viable ballpark (see: PayPal Park, home of Fisher’s San Jose Earthquakes) and field the cheapest possible team.

That’s his business model. It works for him and no one else.

Give Fisher what he wants or he takes the team away. The blackmail went on long enough. Oakland and the East Bay have deserved better than Fisher’s A’s for a long time now.

So if Las Vegas is naive enough to want to take on this mess, I say let them. But make sure they do it as soon as possible.

I want Las Vegas to find out that in order to be a big-league city, you have to have a real big-league team. And so long as John Fisher owns the team, it will always be a bush-league operation.

Questions, comments, or criticisms that demand answers?

Email Dieter. You could be featured in his next mailbag.

Don’t ask the NBA’s MVP voters. Ask Forbes.

The finance magazine released its annual rankings of most valuable sports franchises on Friday, and, as we’ve come to expect, you didn’t have to go far to find the Golden State Warriors.

Could you imagine telling a Dubs fan in 2010, when Joe Lacob and Peter Guber bought the team for $450 million in 2010 — a sum believed to be a 35 percent overpay at the time — that there would be only five teams in the world more valuable than the Golden State Warriors in 2021?

Even the suggestion even makes me laugh. But that’s where we are, with the team valued at $4.7 billion.

There are a lot of tremendous people who work and have worked for the Warriors over the last decade that have made this incredible monetary glow-up possible. Ownership obviously matters a ton, too.

But in this situation, I do want to take something away from all of them.

There has been no Warriors employee that has come even close to making the impact of Curry.

So just how valuable is the greatest shooter of all time? If you wanted to qualify it, you’d need a 10-figure number.

I’m likely oversimplifying things, but there are three major factors at play when it comes to franchise value: stadium, league TV deals, and merchandising.

No one can tell me that Curry isn’t the driving force behind all three factors for the Warriors.

Curry has made the Warriors’ brand cool, particularly with kids. His jersey is consistently one of the NBA’s top sellers. The Warriors logo and Curry’s No. 30 are everywhere in the Bay, the sixth-largest media market in the country, per Nielsen. The brand was made so powerful during Curry’s rise to prominence and his first MVP award in 2014-15, that the Dubs had to scrap their concept of renaming the team if/when they moved to San Francisco. The idea had been to be the San Francisco Warriors once again, but still in Oakland, the Golden State Warriors were having too much success and gaining too many fans — particularly internationally — to drop the peculiar location moniker.

Suddenly everyone knew that “Golden State” meant the Bay.

Curry’s ascent to MVP and the Warriors’ first title in 40 years brought the organization unprecedented revenue. Even in an old, beat-down arena, the Curry show brought in money hand over fist. (It helped that Oracle Arena had an allure to it as the toughest place to play in the NBA.) In this case, the correlation between Curry’s success and the Warriors’ financial upturn does equal causation. All that money bankrolled the Warriors organization’s build of a new stadium. The team’s unprecedented success also created serious goodwill in the unsavory politics game that is erecting anything taller than a toddler in San Francisco.

Chase Center is the House that Steph Built. That building doesn’t happen without the Baby Faced Assassin. Full stop.

And now the Warriors organization owns a state-of-the-art arena in the City outright. Forbes reported Friday that when there were full houses, the team brought in a staggering $7 million per game. That’s more than a quarter of a billion dollars per season for Warriors home games, not including playoff dates (which bring in way more money per contest) or any of the other events Chase Center would host.

The spectacular stadium might have cost billions to build, but it’s apt that a bank put its name on it: The building is an ATM for the Warriors.

And again, they can thank Curry for that.

The only NBA team worth more than the Warriors on the Forbes list was the Knicks, who have stunk for decades but own Madison Square Garden, which I hear is a pretty good piece of real estate in midtown Manhattan.

But the Knicks, Warriors, and every other NBA team can thank Curry for their increased valuations.

In 2011, the Knicks were the most valuable franchise in the NBA, per Forbes, but they were worth less than the Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Rams, Jacksonville Jaguars, McClaren Formula 1 team, and the Raiders, who had games blacked out on TV because so few people wanted to go to the Coliseum.

A decade later, the NBA has become one of the world’s marquee leagues in the last decade and they have the TV rights deals to prove it.

In the two years preceding the NBA’s first massive TV rights deal — the one that boosted the salary cap by roughly $20 million per team in the summer of 2016 — the Warriors set ratings records. There were think pieces in East-Coast publications about how to best stay up to watch Curry and the Warriors, while the Dubs’ showdown with LeBron James in the 2015 NBA Finals brought in the largest TV audience the league had seen since Michael Jordan’s last title with the Bulls.

The NBA’s national TV deals now pay it twice as much as Major League Baseball for a season that’s half as long.

Sorry, LeBron, that’s Curry’s doing.

The Warriors and Curry still carry the league’s rankings today. The guard’s exuberance and joy on the court remain infectious — even though he’s been in the league for more than a decade, now, we still can’t quite get our heads around how he’s doing this and we have to watch to see what will happen next.

Our luck in the Bay to find this once-in-a-generation type of talent is the whole league’s benefit. There were nine NBA teams in Forbes’ Top-50 list.

Curry is eligible to sign a contract extension this summer — one that will make him the NBA’s highest-paid player for a second time. The deal would be four years at an estimated $215 million.

If Curry waits until after 2022 to re-sign with the Warriors, he could sign a five-year deal worth $278 million.

These are crazy numbers for a professional athlete, even one who has three titles and is gunning for a third MVP trophy.

But it doesn’t take too much effort to find that such contracts are a pittance compared to Curry’s real value.