The NFL has long wanted to return to Los Angeles and after some momentum was growing last year, it mostly went to the backburner, but Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis brought things back to the forefront a bit, as he made some remarks describing his frustration with building a new stadium in Northern California and that a move could be coming.
According to Pro Football Talk, the Raiders are a potential team that could move to LA, as they have been there before and they have had issues with their stadium in recent years. The team shares the O.co Coliseum with the Oakland Athletics and they are now the last MLB and NFL teams to share a stadium after the Miami Dolphins and Marlins split and over the past two seasons there has been numerous problems, including plumbing issues and flooding last year during the baseball season.
The Athletics were forced to use the Raiders locker room at one point during the season after a game and Davis said that he signed a one year extension to play at the stadium. The report from Pro Football Talk writes that Davis wants to get a new deal done for a stadium, but there has been "no progress" and if that continues to develop, there is a chance the Raiders can look into moving.
The Rams and Raiders each previously played in LA and the San Diego Chargers have also been mentioned as a possibility, along with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The NFL isn't looking to move teams now, but that could change over time and they likely would want one of the California or Midwest teams to move rather than one from the east coast.
"They brought in Colony Capital and based on that, I decided to go ahead and do a one-year extension with them," Davis said of Oakland and the outside company that entered the fray last year in the hopes of building a new stadium. "We will play in the Coliseum next year. But there's been no progress. I had high hopes when Colony Capital came in. I still do have hopes, but there not as high because I haven't really heard anything positive from either group. It's gone silent again. We have to get something done."
From a previous report on the NFL moving to LA:
---The league wants to bring a team back to one of the biggest media markets in the country and after looking like they were getting close with a proposal with Anschutz Entertainment Group for a downtown stadium, it appears a new plan is on the move. According to National Football Post, the league is looking into a new site at Hollywood Park, as it has the size to have a billion-dollar, state of the art stadium and also could house NFL offices and other facilities for the team and the league.
In the report, sources said that the league has spoken with a number of teams about possibly buying the area site and build a stadium on it, but obviously that won't happen anytime soon. The report says that four teams could be in the running since they can get out of their stadium leases after 2014, including the Chargers, Raiders, Jaguars and Rams. Obviously the Rams and Raiders previously were in LA and the Chargers move would not be as crazy as others, as they are in Southern California as well.
