Raiders owner Mark Davis: A’s leaving Oakland is ‘pretty (screwed) up’
Count Raiders owner Mark Davis among those not thrilled about the prospect of the Oakland A’s moving to Las Vegas. More specifically, Davis still holds a grudge against his former Coliseum co-tenants, who he insists helped push the Raiders out of Oakland.
Davis seemed as incensed as A’s fans and Oakland city officials were to find out the baseball team signed an agreement to purchase land to build a proposed $2.1 billion, 30-to-35,000-seat stadium just one mile north of the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium near the Vegas Strip.
In a profanity-laced interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Davis made it clear he won’t be a welcoming neighbor should the A’s ballpark deal come to fruition in Southern Nevada.
“I won’t forget what they did to us in Oakland. They squatted on a lease for 10 years and made it impossible for us to build on that stadium,” Davis said Thursday, in reference to the A’s 10-year Coliseum lease extension that expires in 2024. “They were looking for a stadium. We were looking for a stadium. They didn’t want to build a stadium, and then went ahead and signed a 10-year lease with the city of Oakland and said, ‘We’re the base team.’ ”
Davis then mocked the A’s marketing campaign while throwing much of the blame for the Raiders’ departure on the lap of A’s owner John Fisher and his team president, Dave Kaval.
“They marketed the team as ‘Rooted in Oakland.’ That’s been their mantra through the whole thing,” Davis told the Review-Journal. “The slogans they’ve been using have been a slap to the face of the Raiders, and they were trying to win over that type of mentality in the Bay Area. Well, all they did was (screw) the Bay Area.”
Perhaps this is an appropriate time to remind Davis without the A’s maybe he wouldn’t have the world’s second-most expensive stadium – the $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium – without the generous assistance from Nevada lawmakers and businessmen.
In actuality, the relationship between the Raiders and A’s had long been an acrimonious one — pretty much since the Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995 and “refurbished” the Coliseum. The A’s weren’t pleased with the Coliseum expansion project that bore “Mount Davis,” a monstrosity that still stands as a reminder of the damage to the stadium’s aesthetics.
Now, if the A’s get their wish to move down the street from the Raiders, Davis said that would be the ultimate betrayal of Oakland. (Yes, now he’s choosing to think about how Oakland fans feel about losing another major pro sports team).
“For them to leave Oakland without anything is pretty (screwed) up,” Davis said. “Because that site that the stadium was on was a good site. We ended up in Las Vegas, which is absolutely fantastic and couldn’t be better. But the A’s never gave us a real good chance to stay up in Oakland.”
Davis assured if the A’s join the Raiders in Vegas there won’t be any joyous reunions between the former Coliseum cohabitates, even though he was once a huge fan of the team.
“I have nothing against the players. I was an A’s fan, way back in the day, Reggie Jackson and all those guys. Reggie’s a good friend,” Davis said. “But not this management group, no.
“I just have, again, a lot of personal animosity toward the front office. But with a new management group? Absolutely.”
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