The Oakland Raiders are planning to ship out of the bay area. Following a crazy week that saw the San Diego Chargers become the Los Angeles Chargers, comes a tweet from Ian Rapoport of NFL Media announcing that the Raiders plan to head to Las Vegas.
Sources: #Raiders WILL file relocation papers to move from Oakland to Las Vegas. Pending a vote of the owners, the @NFL enters a new world.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 14, 2017
Oakland Raiders to File Relocation Papers to Move to Las Vegas
After over a year of speculation Raiders owner, Mark Davis, has reached a decision to relocate his team to Sin City. This move comes after years of enduring a situation where an NFL football team shared an aging Major League Baseball stadium for its football games.
That the Raiders have been considering their options has been an open secret among the league and the media. Only within the last year has the option to move to Las Vegas become more and more likely as a proposed 65,000 seat domed stadium to be shared with the UNLV Rebels football team became approved by the city.
Rapoport’s sources say that the city of Oakland has made no progress on efforts to keep the Raiders in Oakland and that the Raiders will formally file the paperwork to relocation within the next few days.
Following the filing, the Raiders would then have to wait until the owners meet at the NFL’s annual league meeting to start the 2017 league year this spring to learn their fate. The Raiders will need 24 of the other 31 owners to agree to the relocation for it to be approved by the league.
That Oakland could not come to an agreement to keep the Raiders is pretty stunning especially after this season where they became one of the hottest teams in the league.
And this planned move caps off a stunning year that has seen three teams decide to seek better options than stay in their respective cities.
Whether the owners allow this move to happen remains to be seen
