Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis Met With Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen On New Stadium Plans

Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis Met With Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen On New Stadium Plans
Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis Met With Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen On New Stadium Plans Now it can be confirmed via a large number of sources this week, that Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis is indeed meeting with and talking to Ronnie Lott, the NFL Hall of Fame Legend with the Silver and Black and the San Francisco 49ers. Moreover, Davis met not just with Lott but with another Raiders Legend Marcus Allen, and that happened this week. This new news ads to my previous vlog officially reporting that a 'memorandum of understanding' is expected to be signed between what has come to be known as the “Ronnie Lott Group” (consisting of Lott, former NFL Quarterback Rodney Peete, sports agent Bill Duffy, Fannie Mae Chairman Egbert Perry, Mission Bay Development Group Founder Seth Hamalian, and now Allen), and the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda. What Allen's role in the group is not clear at this time, according to my friends I've talked to, but I will speculate that Allen's great relationship with Davis (who extended an olive branch to bring Marcus back into the Raiders as an officially recognized legend after Allen was first treated poorly by and then eventually blocked by the late Al Davis), coupled with the fact that Lott and Allen were USC teammates and Peete was a USC quarterback legend, and remains good friends with Allen and Lott to this day (to the point of recently celebrating Holly Robinson Peete's 50th birthday), has something to do with Allen's involvement in the Ronnie Lott Group. But the main point for this entry is that Davis has talked to Lott, and more than once, about an Oakland stadium plan that includes development of what I'm told will be about 35 to 40 acres of land within the 120 acres of land that is Coliseum City. Moreover, Lott has the involvement of a group of banks that, together, give him enough financial firepower to do a 'Stan Kronke-type' privately financed deal (referring to the owner of the LA Rams and the fiscal engine behind the storied organization coming back to Los Angeles after years in St. Louis). That said, this project will involve public investment and that would go for infrastructure needs. In short, the Lott plan picks up where the Floyd Kephart plan left off, but without the fiscal, developmental, and political issues – this is a group that Mark Davis is comfortable with. Moreover, I'm starting to think that Davis himself had some role in assembling this, though I can't yet prove that. The reason I believe Mark Davis may have played some role in former NFL Players and Raiders Legends being at the center of this is, is because of his interest in the well-being of retired NFL players and in particular Raiders players. Davis wasn't at the recent gathering of Mike Ditka's Gridiron Greats fund raising organization just to visit Las Vegas; he truly believes in being supportive of maintaining the financial and health conditions of former NFL players. What a story it would be to have Lott, one of the NFL's great people, and his friends and business partners, and so many NFL Legends at the center of keeping the Raiders in Oakland. It's something NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to see happen and now it seems Davis is on board with what Lott's doing, because he's meeting with him. Indeed, a lot of actions that need to fall into place are: on Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council approved a near-three-quarter-million-dollars to hire consultants for a land appraisal of Coliseum City. Now the idea that neither the City of Oakland nor the County of Alameda has spent any more money than internal staff time is a thing of the past. This path toward a new stadium for the Raiders in Oakland is taking shape, carefully and rightly. It should be noted that the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda have already committed more money to a stadium in Oakland than has Clark County done for the Raiders in Las Vegas. In case you're keeping score. Stay tuned.
via YouTube http://youtu.be/EcFBKbmknNo