NFL owners approve Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas

PHOENIX — The Bears are scheduled to play at the Raiders in 2019. Where that will be is anybody’s guess.

NFL owners voted to approve the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas on Monday, though it could be until 2019 — or, to hear owner Mark Davis tell it, even later — before they move from Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum to their $1.9 million, 65,000-seat Nevada dome.

The Raiders have two one-year leases at their current home but could stay longer if their new digs aren’t yet complete.

“My father used to say that the greatness of the Raiders is in its future,” Davis said of his late dad, Al, who moved the team from Oakland to Los Angeles and back again. “And the opportunity to build a world-class stadium in the entertainment capital of the world is one opportunity that will give us the ability to achieve that greatness.”

Or, in short: Just sin, baby.

The Bears were one of many teams with initial concerns about a franchise moving to Las Vegas, given the NFL’s stance on gambling, but they voted to approve. Owners were swayed, too, by the projected mushrooming of Las Vegas’ population in the next quarter-century.

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who paid $500 million to renovate his own stadium, was the lone dissenting voter.

“My position today was that we as owners and as a league owe it to the fans to do everything we can to stay in the communities that have supported us until all options have been exhausted,” Ross said in a statement.

That was the most disturbing part about Monday’s vote at the Arizona Biltmore: NFL owners have signed off on the gutting of three home markets in fewer than 450 days. For a league that prides itself on stability, the three-city exodus is the inverse of stability — even if, in the Raiders’ case, it was the classic case of a team running into the arms of someone with better public funding.

Las Vegas committed $750 million toward a new stadium, while Oakland, Davis said, presented a mere five-page proposal last year “that had nothing to do with anything” to try to combat the Raiders’ failed move to Los Angeles.

Steelers owner Art Rooney II said anyone “who has visited Oakland and played a game there in the last several years understands the stadium situation there was difficult, at best.”

Combine the relocations with commissioner Roger Goodell’s offseason priorities — hastening the game and reducing commercial breaks to suit shorter attention spans after last year’s ratings slide — and momentum is not on the NFL’s side.

The Rams announced their move to Los Angeles in January 2016, with the Chargers following one year later. By contrast, only five NFL teams relocated from 1984 to 2015. And all five markets — Baltimore, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Houston — eventually got a team again.

There are no such hopes for St.  Louis, San Diego and Oakland.

Davis said he wouldn’t use the term “lame-duck” to describe the next two years in Oakland, despite this having all the charm of a divorced couple staying in the same home.

The day turned more surreal when some praised Davis for saying he’d refund the season-ticket deposits of disappointed Oakland fans.

“We’d be happy to do that,” he said. “Well, not happy, but you know how that goes.”

The NFL, more than at any time in modern history, does. And seemingly has zero problem with it.

Follow me on Twitter @patrickfinley.

Email: pfinley@suntimes.com

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