Raiders could move only if Mark Davis sells

A report by Pro Football Talk indicates that the Oakland Raiders, along with the St. Louis Rams, should be on the short list of teams that could relocate to Los Angeles. But, as the report points out, there’s a perceived catch. Mark Davis may not be allowed to take his team to Southern California.

For a team to relocate, 24 of the 32 owners, or 75%, must vote in favor of a move for a team to be allowed to relocate by the league. According to the report mentioned above, the prevailing opinion is that Mark Davis would not receive enough votes in favor of relocation to move forward with the process.

It’s not clear exactly why so many of the other owners don’t want Mark Davis moving his team south. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s about moving the team at all. Al Davis was a great leader of the Oakland Raiders for decades, but he was also a thorn in the NFL’s side for about as long. The other owners may be hoping to use their relocation veto power as leverage to force Davis to sell the team.

Whether there’s any interest of selling the Raiders on Davis’ end has yet to be seen. Al Davis was a polarizing figure, but he was still an NFL icon. It’d be a shame for someone other than a Davis to own the Raiders. It just wouldn’t seem right. As of right now, there’s been nothing to indicate that Mark Davis intends on selling the team, and he’s made no formal efforts to relocate the team, so it’ll likely be months if not years before we find out how much support from the other owners Mark Davis actually has.

About Shane Clemons

Shane Clemons came from humble beginnings creating his own Jaguars blog before moving on to SBNation as a featured writer for the Jaguars. He then moved to Bloguin where he briefly covered the AFC South before taking over Bloguin's Jaguars blog. Since the inception of This Given Sunday, Shane has served as an editor for the site, doing his best not to mess up a good thing.

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