Purdy: 49ers, Raiders should consider being roomies
By Mark Purdy
Mercury News Columnist
Posted: 01/26/2009 09:42:23 PM PST
Before you totally shoot down the idea of a combined 49ers-Raiders football stadium, remember this:
A year ago at this time, you would have shot down (or more likely, nuked) any idea that the Arizona Cardinals could reach the Super Bowl.
Anything is possible in today's NFL. So don't automatically discount that the Raiders and 49ers might concoct a plan to build and share a new stadium, as outlined in Sunday's Mercury News.
The Black Gold Rush Hole, anyone?
Granted, ordering up a combo NFL stadium is not as simple as ordering a combo meal at McDonald's. (Even if McDonald's agrees to be the stadium's naming sponsor.) But I refuse to join the ranks of those who say that it would be impossible and is a wild, hallucinatory notion.
To know why, it is instructive to know how the story came together for our reporter, Mike Swift. The 49ers did not suddenly call him and announce their hope of working with the Raiders on a new stadium project. Anything but.
Swift simply was working on a story about how NFL stadiums are financed. He contacted New York Giants owner John Mara, to learn how his team put together its new stadium deal in conjunction with the New York Jets. During the interview, Mara spoke with surprising enthusiasm about the 49ers and Raiders getting together in the same fashion and touted it as a swell idea.
After that, Swift phoned the NFL for a response to Mara's thoughts — and to the similar thoughts of
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Jets owner Woody Johnson. The league chimed in with support for a potential 49ers-Raiders stadium marriage.
Then, and only then, did Swift call the 49ers for reaction — whereupon owner Jed York agreed to discuss the team's open mind toward a co-occupied stadium. The Raiders would not comment on stadium issues but said they have a good business relationship with the 49ers.
What does it all mean? I have spent three decades observing the NFL power base. This is what I have learned:
1. Teams almost never get a new stadium built without the league's help, financially and otherwise.
2. Construction has become ridiculously expensive, and public financing has increasingly waned, which is why the NFL began loaning money to teams to help fund new stadiums.
3. The league and owners never say anything publicly unless they already have discussed stuff behind closed doors in some fashion.
My conclusion: The NFL already has decided it will not pony up the dough to help the 49ers and Raiders build separate stadiums in the Bay Area. So the 49ers (who are eager to evacuate Candestick Park) and the Raiders (whose Oakland Coliseum lease expires after the 2010 season) had better sit and talk to each other.
Yes, I know. Common wisdom is that Raiders owner Al Davis will not agree to a sharing arrangement. But if that's true, please explain why his team has never played in a stadium that it did not share?
Those venues have included Kezar Stadium (with the 49ers), Candlestick Park (with the Giants), Frank Youell Field (with East Bay high schools), the Oakland Coliseum (with the A's) and the L.A. Coliseum (with USC).
Even when the Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995, Davis didn't fight sharing a stadium with the A's. When the deal was right — meaning, when enough money was thrown the Raiders' direction — he agreed. With Davis, it's always the dollars, not the location. If he has enough money to spend on players (wisely or unwisely) and compete for championships (hey, it could happen again), he is happy.
Now, would I want to be the person who sits with Davis to hash out a stadium proposal? No. His record of contentious negotiations and legal clashes with the league speaks for itself. However, an unprecedented visit by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to a game in Oakland last season indicated a diplomatic thaw. He and Davis might have even discussed this very topic.
So. If a combined stadium with the 49ers is Davis' best option, and the league is at the table pushing the negotiations, and the money is there "... well, much stranger things have happened. Remember, there have been two Super Bowls in Detroit.
A new stadium would be outstanding, but having to share it with "Raider fan" may ruin the whole thing, big mixed emotions for me personally.
