Raiders coach Hue Jackson yesterday said that “there is a ‘plan’ in place as the Raiders move forward without Al Davis, but neither Jackson nor anybody else in the organization is ready to reveal that plan,” according to Steve Corkran of the OAKLAND TRIBUNE. In an e-mail yesterday, Raiders Chief Exec Amy Trask addressed the matter of future Raiders ownership, and said, "The team is not for sale. The team will remain in the Davis family." Jackson said that “he is on board if Davis' son Mark, the new voice of the organization, feels the need to hire a general manager-type, or whatever else he deems necessary” (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, 10/11). In regards to football operations and GM duties, Jackson said Al Davis "already taught me how to do those things." Jackson: "We spent countless hours talking about the things that had to be done and how to do them. I'm very well versed in how to do those things and feel very comfortable doing those things.” In S.F., Rusty Simmons writes Jackson described Mark Davis as a “fun guy who loves the players and his team.” Jackson: "I think his vision is no different than his dad's in his commitment to excellence, his pride and poise and in his desire to win" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 10/11). In Oakland, Monte Poole writes Jackson is “the obvious choice because he has been the team’s coach and most visible presence for nearly a year, the logical choice because Davis strongly believed in rewarding success and loyalty, and the sentimental choice because no one in the building worked closer with the longtime boss.” Jackson is the “only credible choice because no football person on the Raiders payroll has more authority or had achieved a higher level of Davis’ trust” (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, 10/11).
UNCERTAIN FUTURE: In N.Y., Judy Battista writes Davis’ widow, Carol, and Mark Davis “will inherit the team, and the expectation in league circles is that it will remain with them.” Battista: “But the bigger issue is what will happen on the football side.” Al Davis, “to the end, was making all the big decisions about personnel and coaches.” Jackson “will probably gain influence in that vacuum, particularly because his stock will continue to rise with his early success.” But whoever selects a GM “and has Mark Davis’s ear could shape the organization for years, even as the franchise tries to live up -- and in some cases down -- to Al Davis’s decisions” (N.Y. TIMES, 10/11). Comcast SportsNet Bay Area’s Bill Romanowski said Trask “was doing an awful lot that we don’t know about." Romanowski: "I think Amy’s got more power than you think, and Mark (Davis) right now is this person who’s going to try to figure out, ‘Well, do I really want to do this?’” CSNBayArea.com’s Ray Ratto said, “The question goes beyond who’s running (the organization), it’s whether they can afford to continue running it. We don’t know if Mark Davis wants to continue to hold onto it. We don’t know if he wants to sell it” (“Chronicle Live,” Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, 10/10).
UNFINISHED BUSINESS: YAHOO SPORTS’ Michael Silver wrote “the apparent handing down of the franchise’s controlling interest from Davis to his son, Mark, may well cause a seismic shift in the NFL’s stadium construction and franchise relocation landscapes, with implications likely to reverberate across the facility-challenged state of California.” Silver asked, “Will the Raiders now be more receptive to cutting a deal with the 49ers that would establish the two franchises as co-tenants in a newly constructed Bay Area stadium? … Will the Raiders be wooed back to L.A. as a tenant by one of two competing groups attempting to build stadiums in the region?” An NFL owner Sunday said, “There’s so much uncertainty, and this definitely changes the game. As far as L.A., now the race is on, and the Raiders returning just became a lot more viable.” Two other NFL owners said that they “believed the league would be receptive to a potential Raiders relocation south, given California’s stadium construction challenges and the attendance issues the team has experienced since returning to Oakland in 1995 following a 13-year stint at the Los Angeles Coliseum.” The groundwork for such a move “may already be in the works,” as sources said that Al Davis six months ago “sat down with officials from AEG … to discuss the possibility of the Raiders playing in a proposed downtown Los Angeles stadium.” However, Davis “balked" at AEG Chair Philip Anschutz’ "insistence on owning a sizeable share of the franchise, and the talks went nowhere.” Sources said that “if the team prefers to stay in Northern California … the Raiders will likely be receptive to sharing a stadium with the 49ers” (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 10/10).
