Commentary

Thank Jerry for Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders are on their way to Las Vegas, and this is owner Mark Davis' deal, of course.

He assembled the money, when many of us -- and many in the NFL -- thought he couldn't. He made the pitch to his fellow owners. This is his mega-deal and should be credited (or cursed) as such.

Mark Davis' deal, his historic moment, the signature move of his life.

But if you talk to people around these negotiations, who know exactly how the Raiders lined up the financing, the political will, and then the wherewithal to drive today's 31-1 ownership approval vote for relocation to Nevada, they all point to one man.

And it's not Mark Davis.

It's Dallas owner Jerry Jones.

Jones has helped the 49ers into the Levi's Stadium gold mine, brokered the deal to get the Rams into Inglewood, Calif., and then the Chargers there, too, and now has guided the Raiders to Las Vegas, due to start playing in the new stadium by 2019 or 2020.

Oh, and by the way, Jones owns a major chunk of Legends, a hospitality-marketing company that will now sell the suites and sponsorships for the Las Vegas stadium (with potentially the largest naming-rights deal ever), is selling them for the Rams and Chargers in LA, and sold out the suites and sponsorships for Levi's.

The result of all four teams' new stadium activity in the last four or five years? Hundreds of millions of dollars for Legends, I'm told, and if Las Vegas takes off, Jones' company is potentially set to become more valuable, by itself, than most NFL franchises.

And Jones will have sway over all these teams, naturally, most especially the 49ers, whose current team president, Al Guido, is a former Legends executive.

So why is Jones doing this? Clearly, this is a profitable endeavor for him, and he has strong reasons to want to solidify those four teams for the good of the NFL.

But he and his company have also pried themselves into this power broker role because he saw the financial weaknesses of each team ... and inserted himself and his company to help fix things.

Which is what has happened.

Certainly pulling teams from St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland all within a two-year stretch -- and I guess you could add San Francisco in there as a ditched city -- is a wrenching part of the Jones master plan.

But are the franchises more stable now? Probably or definitely. Does it mean more money for the NFL? Likely. And for Jones? Absolutely.

Why are the teams letting Jones do this? For one, nobody has ever gone broke doing business with Legends.

Beyond that, each team had its specific reasons -- and remember, each time Jones leverages one of these deals, he only grows more powerful leading into the next deal.

You want to bet against Jones now after he ramrodded the last few deals? He'll just flatten you.

So what happens while the Las Vegas stadium is under construction? That's at least two years away, maybe three, and for 2017 at least, the Raiders are committed to playing at the Coliseum.

Beyond that, Davis said he hopes to continue playing in Oakland until the Vegas stadium is ready.

Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics, the team that wanted out the most five years ago, is the only major-league Oakland sports team that has no plans to leave.

(The Warriors' San Francisco arena is due to open in a little over two years.)

This is a massive opportunity for the A's to take over the East Bay, and a bit of a responsibility, if they're ready for it.

The city of Oakland basically limited what it could offer to the Raiders because it didn't want to agree to anything that would blow up their chances to get an A's stadium done on the Coliseum property; I don't think that was the deal-killer, but it certainly was a factor in the Raiders' decision.

So now all attention can turn to the A's and only the A's.

If owner John Fisher can come up with a real plan for a new stadium on the Coliseum site, there is nothing stopping him -- and in fact, the MLB powers have been waiting for the Raiders' exit for years now.

It just happened. The Raiders' stalemate is over. They're heading out the door, which opens every possibility for the A's, who should be ready for this.

Sports on 03/30/2017

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