The fate of two of California’s four NFL teams should become much clearer this week. The Chargers

If the Chargers decide to stay put, then as of Jan. 16, the Raiders will have the option to move in with the Rams.

The early 2016 conventional wisdom — bolstered by a seemingly definitive early December leak by Chargers officials to ESPN and by fan anger over the team’s latest bad season — was that the Chargers were sure to move without big taxpayer subsidies for a new stadium. The assumption also was that the Raiders would jump at the chance to go to Los Angeles if the Chargers passed on the opportunity.

The new conventional wisdom, however, suggests there is a fairly good chance the Chargers will remain in San Diego using an aging Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley that they despise. It also holds that the Raiders will bolt for Las Vegas, possibly after getting extensions to keep using the Oakland Coliseum for two more years while their Nevada stadium is built.

Fans turned on Rams in first year back in L.A.

The financial appeal of being a second team relocating to Los Angeles lost much of its allure when the Los Angeles Rams’ first season back in town went badly. Fans and sports talk-radio turned on the team as an awful 4-12 season unfolded, leading to tens of thousands of sold but unfilled seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Suddenly, the NFL was reminded of the apathy on display when the Rams and Raiders left for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively, in 1994. Unless NFL teams are winners, Los Angeles residents have not been heavily supportive. “Their hearts are with the Dodgers and the Lakers — period,” the late L.A. sportscaster Joe McDonnell liked to say.

There are other financial factors as well. If they moved to Los Angeles, the Chargers would have to pay relocation fees to the other 31 teams totaling either $550 million or $650 million, depending on whether it was a flat payment or a 10-year payment plan. Once there, Rams owner Stan Kroenke would either expect them to pay millions of dollars in annual rent or to contribute heavily to the cost of building the stadium; he might also ask for some of both.

But in San Diego, as a Sunday Union-Tribune analysis noted, the Chargers pay “negative rent.” “From 2006 to 2015, San Diego paid the Chargers $3.2 million for the privilege of playing there, as $25.9 million in rent credits offset $22.7 million in rent,” the analysis noted. The lease is up in 2020, but few expect City Hall to strike a hard bargain if the team remains.

Los Angeles losing its appeal isn’t the problem for Raiders owner Mark Davis that it is for Chargers owner Dean Spanos. Davis has been eyeing a move to Las Vegas for nearly a year and has already trademarked the “Las Vegas Raiders.” The Nevada Legislature has committed to providing $750 million toward a stadium, meaning that if the NFL and the Raiders commit $400 million to $500 million, the funding is firming up for a modern, suite-laden NFL stadium in a booming metropolitan area eager for its first team in the big three of North American pro sports leagues.

Oakland officials have been more strongly opposed to taxpayer stadium subsidies than San Diego officials.

As San Jose Mercury-News columnist Tim Kawakami joked after the Raiders ended a strong 12-4 season with a loss in the first round of the playoffs, the team’s future is bright — but it very well might be in Las Vegas.

Is another NFL team joining the Rams in Los Angeles? 

Good morning. TGIF. Just because we rarely get the opportunity, today we’ll start with sports. 

The St. Louis Rams may have once again become the Los Angeles Rams, capping off the biggest suspense story in the National Football League, but the controversy over the city’s final lineup of teams has flared up yet again.

In San Diego, where the Chargers have gone down to the wire with city officials on a possible move that once looked like a done deal, the next twist depends on voters. 

Although analysts and fans have cautioned that one NFL team may be plenty for Los Angeles, especially so soon on the heels of the Rams’ return, the stadium deal holding the Chargers’ future in the balance has failed to rally popular support.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “Los Angeles may be the latest opponent of a proposed bullet train route through San Fernando Valley horse country. Councilman Paul Krekorian has filed a motion to oppose an above-ground high-speed rail route fought by residents from Lake View Terrace to Shadow Hills, who say the foothills train would destroy the environment, kill horse-related businesses and put an end to an equestrian way of life. The Los Angeles Daily News has more.

• “A national gun control group that helped write California’s Proposition 63 released a study Thursday indicating that thousands of felons disqualified from owning guns are keeping their firearms in this state and most others because of the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• “One published media report this month said the campaign to legalize marijuana in California had raised $18 million. Within days, other major news outlets pegged the total at just one-third that amount, while a nonprofit campaign watchdog group said the figure was $11 million. Why the conflicting numbers?” The Orange County Register has more. (We can tell you part of the problem is the Secretary of State’s confusing and redundant website.)

• LA Weekly explains every ballot measure in haiku. Our favorite is for Prop. 66:

  “If you want the state
  To execute more people
  This one is for you”
• And The Weekly Standard writes that U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez’s strategy to unite Latinos and Republicans could be the playbook for future campaigns.  

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. 

Gov. Brown:

• Will attend Native American Day celebration at the Capitol in Sacramento. Approximately 11:30 a.m.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @ethanmcbride031

The St. Louis Rams may have once again become the Los Angeles Rams, capping off the biggest suspense story in the National Football League, but the controversy over the city’s final lineup of teams has flared up yet again.

Chargers ’16

In San Diego, where the Chargers have gone down to the wire with city officials on a possible move that once looked like a done deal, the next twist depends on voters. Although analysts and fans have cautioned that one NFL team may be plenty for Los Angeles, especially so soon on the heels of the Rams’ return, the stadium deal holding the Chargers’ future in the balance has failed to rally popular support. According to a YouGov poll conducted late last month, only “a quarter of San Diego adults strongly or somewhat support the proposal for a new, taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion stadium and convention center downtown,” as USA Today recalled. “The poll showed more than half — 52 percent — strongly or somewhat opposed the measure, with the other 23 percent not stating a preference.” 

“To win the vote, the team needs two-thirds of voters to approve the project because it’s a tax hike for a special purpose in California. If the vote fails, the Chargers have until Jan. 15 to decide whether to move to Los Angeles, where they have an optional deal to share a lucrative new stadium with the Los Angeles Rams.”

If the push to use the ballot to keep the Chargers in San Diego has been a slog, however, city officials’ backup plan has emerged as a potentially dramatic Hail Mary pass — to the judiciary. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told radio host Darren Smith “he would ask the state’s high court to ‘take jurisdiction’ over the city’s November election as it pertains to two stadium-related ballot initiatives: the Chargers plan to raise the city’s hotel tax to build a stadium and convention center, and the Citizens’ Plan, which would increase the tax to help pay for tourism marketing and an off-the-waterfront convention center,” according to U-T San Diego. Although “no public money could go toward stadium construction,” the city’s inquiry “could come as early as next week, if county officials examining signatures declare that either or both initiatives have qualified for the ballot,” the paper added. 

Vegas or bust?

Oakland’s Raiders, the other California team caught up in the L.A. relocation game, have struggled to strike a deal with their own home town. According to NBC Sports, League Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared to discourage another move to L.A., suggesting “you never want to see a community lose their franchise once, much less twice,” making reference to the Raiders’ ping-ponging over the decades between L.A. and Oakland. “I think there’s a solution there, but it takes the community to help identify it,” he said. In the wake of the Rams deal, and unable to count on the Chargers to come through on the stadium-sharing deal that had briefly given the duo a bettor’s edge against the Rams, the Raiders have shifted their attentions from L.A. to Las Vegas.

“Of course, the NFL has allowed communities to lose franchises twice: St. Louis lost both the Cardinals and the Rams,” NBC Sports noted. “So it wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Raiders to vacate Oakland twice. But Goodell said the recent authorization of a new stadium in Las Vegas isn’t enough to bring the Raiders to town.”

Nevertheless, Las Vegas has thrown its considerable weight behind serious plans to lure the team in. The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee recently cast a unanimous vote “to recommend $750 million in public funding for a $1.9 billion stadium,” ESPN reported, drawn from hotel taxes. That sum would be added to $500 million from owner Mark Davis, “which includes a loan from the NFL for a new stadium, to the project,” the network added. “The family of Sheldon Adelson — chairman of casino and resort outfit Las Vegas Sands Corporation — has pledged another $650 million for the proposed 65,000-seat, domed venue, which would be shared with the UNLV football team.”

The Spanos family, owner of the Chargers, has until January 2017 to decide whether to serve as a tenant in a to-be-built mega-stadium in Inglewood owned by Stan Kroenke and the officially relocated Los Angeles Rams. If the Chargers don’t take the option, Raiders owner Mark Davis will then have a one-year option to join the Rams in Inglewood.

In the days after the Jan. 12 announcement that the NFL had given its blessing to the Rams leaving St. Louis for Inglewood, there was considerable cynicism in San Diego and the sports world in general about the Chargers’ one-year option. The assumption was the team was gone.

But in the past 10 days, there have been glimmers of hope that the Chargers may yet be able to work with the city and county of San Diego to build an NFL-worthy stadium with $350 million of public subsidies. The main reason is the emergence of Fred Maas — a high-profile developer and former leader of the Centre City Development Corp., which oversaw highly successful redevelopment efforts in downtown San Diego — as a special advisor to the Chargers helping get a stadium built. The Union-Tribune has more:

“(Maas) has been around San Diego a long time,” Chargers chairman Dean Spanos said on a video posted to the team’s web site. “… He’s very familiar with all the political aspects of what goes on in the city, how all that works. His knowledge of San Diego as a whole will help us.” …

 

Maas was the stadium point man for former Mayor Jerry Sanders, as well as the former director of the Centre City Development Corp.

 

The Chargers suggested to Faulconer that he consider Maas to head the city’s side of stadium negotiations in 2014.

 

After meetings with Faulconer, Maas withdrew from consideration, citing concerns about the commitment he would have to make considering all that the new mayor was working through. … It was around that time in late 2014 that many people close to Spanos began to indicate he had essentially given up on getting a stadium deal in San Diego.

The San Diego Reader offered this tart description of Maas: “a specialist in steering public money into private real estate ventures.”

Raiders owner blasts A’s over long lease

Meanwhile, in Oakland, no Maas-type figure has emerged to help owner Mark Davis deal with local governments. While the Raiders renewed their lease for another year at O.co Coliseum, Davis is sounding increasingly downbeat about the lack of progress toward a new stadium — especially because of the actions of the Oakland A’s, the other primary tenant at the Coliseum.

“There’s an elephant in the room, and that’s the Oakland A’s,” Davis told CSNBayArea.com … . “They signed a 10-year lease while we were negotiating with Oakland officials, and it kind of put somebody right in the middle of things. There isn’t much you can do. They’ve tied our hands behind our back. Now it’s up to the A’s to make a declaration of what they want to do. If they don’t do that, I don’t see how we can make a deal.”

That’s from coverage in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Leaders of Nevada’s largest city are wooing Davis. Their strongest argument is the prospect of the Raiders not having to pay much or anything toward construction of a new stadium that an NFL team could share with the University of Nevada-Las Vegas’ football team. Last month, the Review-Journal reported, Davis went to Vegas and …

… met with casino giants Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, Ultimate Fighting Championship owner Lorenzo Fertitta, UNLV president Len Jessup and former school president Donald Snyder. Adelson’s Sands Corp. has proposed building a $1.2 billion domed stadium … .

Long-standing NFL concerns about having a team in America’s sports betting mecca remain intact, if not as prominent. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft have come under fire for their early investments in DraftKings, a daily fantasy sports betting site that has exploded in popularity since 2014, and they may be forced to sell their shares.