Marcus Allen wants Raiders back in Los Angeles
By Mike Dyce
It looks like the Oakland Raiders are moving it is just a matter of where. At the Levi’s Stadium unveiling, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell hinted that the Raiders could be joining the San Francisco 49ers at their new digs in Santa Clara.
“They have to make that determination, whether they’re in a new stadium in Oakland or whether they feel that it’s best to join this stadium,” Goodell said, according to the Bay AreaSports Guy. “We’re working on that, and that’s one of the decisions they’ll have to make.”
Hall of Famer Marcus Allen said that he doesn’t want to see the Raiders in the 49ers’ new stadium but would rather see them move back to Los Angeles.
“I’d rather see — I know people in Oakland won’t like this — the team back in Los Angeles,” Allen told Pro Football Talk. “I think it’s a viable option. . . .We can’t have them back at the [L.A.] Coliseum, the Coliseum now is USC’s home. . . . But there’s some locations there that I know I’ve talked to a few owners [about] and I know that they’ve liked. I can’t divulge my sources though.”
Allen added: “I just think it’s ripe right now, being the second largest market and being the entertainment capital of the world it’s almost necessary to have a team there. And I think with the corporate support and the brand that has already been there, that’s been established, that has a huge following, I think it’d be a no-brainer.”
Goodell weighed recently weighed in on a potential Los Angeles franchise at The Beverly Hilton during a panel on Thursday Night Football
“It still comes back to, ‘Do we have the right solution in Los Angeles?’ And that comes back to a stadium,” Goodell said Thursday, via NFL.com. “Do we have a stadium that we feel can be competitive with the high-quality stadiums? I just came from San Francisco, from a ribbon-cutting for a new stadium (in Santa Clara) and we’re excited about that and we’re investing billions of dollars in creating those kinds of stadiums.”
Said Goodell: “We would like to do that. We think there’s a great opportunity to be successful (in Los Angeles). I think opportunity’s starting to develop, maybe in part because we have that long-term planning in front of us.”