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Why the Oakland Raiders are serious about moving to Las Vegas

By Ira Miller, The Sports Xchange
Oakland Raiders fans plead for their team to stay at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, California on August 30, 2015. Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI
1 of 3 | Oakland Raiders fans plead for their team to stay at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, California on August 30, 2015. Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

You might have missed this little item in the fog of news from the draft last week, but potentially it was even more significant because it's not something that happens every year:

The Raiders are serious about moving to Las Vegas.

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Look, sooner or later a team in one of the major professional leagues is going to settle there, and who makes more sense than this most vagabond, against-the-grain franchise?

As a significant codicil to the news of the potential move, which still is a couple years down the road, Raiders owner Mark Davis said he was willing to invest $500 million toward the stadium project in Vegas. That's really big news if you remember his late father, Al Davis, who would never put a penny of his own fortune toward a stadium, in fact perhaps best known in those circles for extorting $10 million from Irwindale, a Los Angeles suburb, toward a project that never was more than a pipe dream.

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Predictably, of course, the news that the Raiders would seriously consider a move to Sin City was met with skepticism that it could never happen, that the NFL and other owners would block it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

In fact, the more likely route to blocking the move runs through San Diego, not the NFL. If the folks in that city manage to build a new stadium for the Chargers, then the Raiders would have the option of moving to LA instead of Vegas, and sharing the Rams' new stadium. Al Davis never would have agreed to share another team's stadium, but Mark might. Might. But if the Vegas gambit moves further along while the Chargers still are dithering about their future prospects, the Raiders just might commit to Las

Vegas without waiting to see what happens in Los Angeles.

The long-held arguments against a pro franchise in Las Vegas are so outdated as to be beyond ridiculous.

Gambling? Just about every state has some form of gambling, be it lotteries or casinos or both or more. And none of them regulate gambling any stronger than they do in Nevada. Further, powerful NFL owners like Dallas' Jerry Jones and New England's Robert Kraft have been big figures in the daily fantasy sports game world, and if that isn't gambling, what is?

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And those games have been hit by scandals that have states scurrying to close them down. Yet, you couldn't watch an NFL game on TV for more than five minutes last season without seeing an ad for a fantasy sports site.

The NFL for several years now has been playing regular-season games in London, where there are casinos and legal betting shops everywhere, particularly in the high end parts of the city where teams stay. It would be the height of hypocrisy (although that is not unknown among NFL owners) for the league to say it's okay to be in a city like London with its gambling shops, but not in Las Vegas. Same goes for Mexico City, where the NFL returns for a game this season.

Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, conceded recently that the league had "evolved" in its position on gambling, but at the same time made the foolish comment that daily fantasy sports did not involve gambling. You have to wonder if he'd feel that way if powerful owners like Jones and Kraft were not involved. Does he really think we believe that fantasy games are not gambling that can easily be manipulated by, say, keeping someone out of the lineup, or throwing fewer passes or calling fewer runs for a particular back?

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Just get real here.

The Raiders, despite their sellout status, are pretty much done in Oakland. Their stadium is a dump and they can't attract the corporate support or well-heeled clientele to replace it. The NBA champion Warriors already have plans in place to abandon Oakland and move across the Bay to San Francisco. And the NFL is a league that always has chased after every dollar, never leaving any loose change on the table.

There are few places where more dollars are to be found than Las Vegas.

--Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than four decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.

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