NFL Unwilling to Delay Relocation Another Year

San Diego Wants More Time

Over the weekend there was an editorial from the San Diego Union Tribune, in which there was speculation that the NFL could decide to hold off on relocation to Los Angeles for another year. The idea was that this would allow San Diego more time to get it's ducks in a row in its efforts to keep the Chargers in San Diego.

Yes, more time would be nice for San Diego, which should be playing for a deal in 2016 anyway (I'll elaborate on this sometime soon).

Unfortunately, for anyone who is hoping the NFL will hold off on Los Angeles another year, Mighty 1090's Dan Sileo received a text indicating this was not a possibility:

This was also reported by Vincent Bonsignore of the LA Daily News via Twitter, using NFL VP Eric Grubman as his source.

To be honest, the odds of the NFL putting this decision off for another year were always somewhere between slim and none. This is because the NFL has to make a decision by the beginning of December. as the projected start date for the Inglewood Stadium project is the 1st weekend of December. Attempting to push that decision back another year means the NFL runs the risk of Kroenke moving without authorization from NFL Ownership (i.e. going rogue).

Meanwhile, In Oakland...

There was also some interesting news coming out of Oakland over the weekend, regarding the "New Coliseum" project being put together by financier Floyd Kephart. The proposal calls for a full redevelopment of the Coliseum Site, along with brand new stadiums for both the Oakland A's and Oakland Raiders.

However, it appears 19 pages worth of New City Development LLC documents were leaked to the Bay Area News Group. In this article, Mark Ganis of SportsCorp. Ltd. was quoted as saying:

"This is not just the worst stadium proposal I've seen. It's the worst by far."

-Mark Ganis to Bay Area News Group, 6/26/16

Also, the proposal calls for Oakland Raiders' owner Mark Davis to sell $200 million to New City Development as part of the deal, which would make Kephart / New City a minority owner of the Raiders. This is in line with what Peter Schrager reported coming out of the NFL Owners' meetings in May.

One catch, however. These documents are supposed to be confidential between officials of the City of Oakland, Alameda County, and New City Development.

Apparently, there is some question in Oakland as to whether public officials intentionally leaked the document in the hopes of killing the Coliseum City proposal. This post from asfanradio.com does a nice job of laying out who might have leaked the documents (and why), as well as provide some good background information on what's happening in Oakland.

In Closing

One the one hand, there's a sense of mild disappointment with the news the NFL won't put of relocation for another year. It adds some pressure to San Diego to get a deal done, but really, the news can't be considered a surprise.

On the other hand, it's nice to see that Oakland's stadium issue is becoming just as screwed up as San Diego's.

Author's Note: The link to Vincent Bonsignore's tweet was added about 90 minutes after the post was made public, and was added as a corroborating source.