NFL okays Raiders move, 31-1

#Raiders owner Mark Davis became a made man today, and the #NFL, Las Vegas, & Oakland are changed forever https://t.co/lpzgyrU67J

— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) March 28, 2017

InvaderRam wrote:

will it affect them negatively or not at all?

Historically, the Raiders were the only team to win after a move.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/04/03/cleveland-browns-paul-depodesta-nfl-draft-peter-king

Peter King

On the Raiders’ move

To put it mildly, the reaction to the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas at the meetings was muted. The Las Vegas backers were fired up, of course. But even though the owners voted 31-1 in favor of the move, it wasn’t an enthusiastic vote of confidence that they love Las Vegas; it was more resignation that the Raiders would never get a good stadium built in Oakland unless owner Mark Davis agreed to take on a partner. Which, unfortunately for Oakland, he refused to do.

I’ve written this several times, but Davis probably could have found a 50-percent partner who would have been a keystone to building a stadium in northern California, the same way the Mara family merged with the Tisches in 1991 when the cost of doing NFL business became too high for one family without significant income elsewhere. Easy for me to say that Davis should have sold half his team; I understand it’s his call. His father, the late Al Davis, steadfastly refused to cede any control of the franchise to partners. Ditto Mark Davis.

Look at a map of the Bay Area. Look at San Jose, on the southern end. Right next to San Jose is Santa Clara, where the 49ers play. Up in Oakland, 42 miles north of San Jose, is where the Raiders will be leaving. To get from San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley to see the 49ers is a solid hour in the car.

And I can tell you that what concerns the league now is the fact that the northern part of the Bay Area, the sixth-largest market in the country, is now going to be without an NFL team. With so much money, and so much fan interest, having one team and having it at the southern end of the region, with nothing at the northern end, is disconcerting.

The fans in this region already are turned off by the 49ers, and it will take a rally orchestrated by GM John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan to get them excited again. The Raiders were being built into a power, the kind of team fans from all over the Bay Area could have learned to love. Now, the Raiders may not even be loved in the next two years inside the Oakland Coliseum.

Maybe a fabulously wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur will spearhead a drive to pick off a struggling NFL team and move it west in the next three or four years, and lead the building of a new stadium. If not, the NFL will miss the greatness of this region at a time when it’s continuing to explode (in a good way) economically.

Somehow the NFL has to figure a way to stop the bleeding in great football regions like San Diego and San Francisco/Oakland. It’s not going to be easy. But there are too many great fans of pro football in California getting slapped in the face with the moves of these two franchises.

That’s one of the reasons no NFL owner or executive was celebrating the move of Oakland to Las Vegas … and the Chargers in Los Angeles as a second team makes absolutely zero sense either. The Chargers in L.A. and the Raiders in Vegas are good for the NFL’s business. But there’s nothing else good about either move.