How All Major Sports Died in Oakland

How All Major Sports Died in Oakland

[Music] I mean, what are we what are we doing? What are what what are we doing? And taped to the ceiling. Yes, those are Pepsi cups. Successful teams go through rebuilding periods, but when it comes to their attendance scorecard, not exactly a home run, but watch again. The Raiders fan has a knife. Oakland, they had the Raiders, they had the Warriors, they had the A’s. teams with championship history, teams with an identity, and teams with devoted fans. As of 2019, they were all playing in the same stretch of land in Alama, California. 6 years later, all three of those teams have abandoned Oakland. We’ve never seen a team lose all of its sports like this, and I want to know why it happened. So, I’ll sit here and patiently wait for you to explain it to me in the comments. Oh [ __ ] Uh, never mind. That’s That’s my job. My job is to tell you. I’m supposed to dive into why Oakland lost all of its teams. We’re going balls deep into uh Oakland, California. Something only San Francisco has done before me. [Music] H. Today’s episode is sponsored by Bear sportsh. The death of major pro sports in Oakland isn’t so much a sudden tragedy as it is a long drawn out slow motion car crash. Except the drivers are billionaires and the people left behind are the ones paying for the repairs. The Warriors left, the Raiders left, the A’s, the last team standing, are in holding before they inevitably move on to the desert. Has the Sacramento area fan base proven itself at Sutter Health Park? This is a AAA ballpark. It can’t sell it out. You know, they’re playing in Sacramento now, bidding their time in baseball purgatory before making their way to Las Vegas, where the strip clothes, the drinks flow, and apparently taxpayer funded stadiums grow on trees. It’s wild to think about what Oakland used to be. 50 years ago, it was one of the only cities in America with a team in every major league. It was a bluecollar sports utopia on the other side of the Bay Bridge. The Raiders, the A’s, the Warriors, and for a brief moment, even the NHL’s Golden Seals with their all yellow skates and sweaters that look like they had been designed by a legally blind leprechaun called Oakland home. Years of mismanagements and losing led to the team saying adios, the West Coast. But Oakland wasn’t just home to teams. It was home to characters. The Raiders under Al Davis were an outlaw biker gang that somehow got invited to the Super Bowl. John Madden’s belly shaking on the sidelines. Kin Stabler slinging passes. And let’s be honest, a [ __ ] ton of 3:00 a.m. beers. The team once famously traveled with its own bale bondsmen. That wasn’t marketing. That was just the red the A’s. The A’s were Pier Oakland. Reggie Jackson with his swagger and mustache. Catfish Hunter. Vita Blue. Raleigh fingers with the handlebar stash that could stop traffic. The swinging A’s won three straight World Series in the 70s and did it wearing uniforms so bright and alluring they could double as traffic safety vests. They played hard, partied harder, and somehow managed to be both the most successful and most dysfunctional team in baseball at the same time. And the Warriors, their glory days weren’t born in San Francisco’s shiny Chase Center. They were born in the loud, sweaty, ferocious Oracle arena. Rooracle as they called it. Again, Steph Curry revolutionized basketball there. Klay Thompson turned three-point shooting into performance art. Draymond Green committed about 90% of his technical fouls within those walls. Even Kevin Durant’s mercenary stopover happened there. For better or worse, probably worse, but it happened in Oakland. Heading to the Golden State Warriors, how are you viewing this move from Durant? Well, I’m viewing it as the weakest move I’ve ever seen from a superstar. But little by little, the teams packed up and left. Originally announced in 2013, the Warriors were the first domino crossing the bay in 2019 to San Francisco’s glittering new Chase Center. Sure, they technically stayed in the region, but for Oakland fans, that’s like your significant other saying, “I’m moving in with our richer, hotter neighbor across the street.” But you can still call me yours. It doesn’t soften the blow, does it? Especially when you know your neighbor is getting all the blows. Please subscribe to this YouTube channel. The Chase Center, a 1.4 4 billion arena in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood offered luxury suites, corporate naming rights, and prime real estate to wine and cheese clientele. Oakland couldn’t match that financially or politically. So after the 2018/9 season, the Warriors packed up and moved west. They kept the trophies, changed the zip code, and left behind fans who got the arena up to 112 dB and helped build their identity. The Raiders followed suit in 2020, swapping the black hole for a blackjack table. Now they play in a $ 1.9 billion stadium that looks like Darth Vader’s butt plug. Mark Davis took the franchise to Las Vegas and doubled its value almost overnight. He also spiked business at the Vegas PF chains. He absolutely is dialed in at PF Chains. Say what you will about the product on the field, but Vegas knows how to sell spectacle. And the NFL never met a cash cow it didn’t like. Does Tom Brady buy an ownership stake in the Raiders if they’re still in Oakland? Probably not. No, not that coward. The Raiders have always been NFL vagabonds. They spent 12 years in Los Angeles from 1982 to 1994. But their identity was established in the Oakland Coliseum, the Black Hole, and everything that gave the Raiders their mystique was built in the city of Oakland. Who couldn’t forget those fans? Like the Violator, probably not the only Violator on those grounds, but the only one with the balls to admit it. And finally, the A’s. After probably the most painful separation out of the three, they’ve already left. After their final game in Oakland, after more than 80 million fans had walked through the Coliseum turned styles over 56 years, the A’s packed up and headed to Sacramento for a few lame duck seasons while their Vegas stadium plans simmer. They currently play in a minor league park with major league indifference, a temporary way station before the inevitable. The heartbreak hit home when more than 33,000 fans showed up to that final coliseum game to say goodbye, not with anger, but with heartbreak. Thank you for your lifelong support of the Oakland Ace. The Coliseum was truly the last dive bar in sports, the last vestige of an era. The A’s were the last to leave. But in many ways, their exit hurt the most. The Warriors had new money dreams. The Raiders always had one foot out the door. But the A’s were the soul of Oakland. cheap tickets, dollar dog nights, a drum banging, costumewearing, signwaving fan base that showed up even when the ownership didn’t care to invest. Why does that sound familiar? The gross negligence goes up to the top. Put simply, the Rockies operate on a different, lesser plane of existence than the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball. And the dick stops with buck. I mean, the buck stops with dick. Oh yeah, the Rockies. My Colorado Rockies. For decades though, fans endured endless rebuilding cycles, shoestring budgets, and playoff heartbreaks because they loved the green and gold. They loved the Coliseum leaks and all. They loved the fight. Ownership did not return that love. A’s owner John Fiser embarked on a comically long list of failed stadium proposals. Fremont, San Jose, the Peralta District, Howard Terminal. Each time fans got excited, renderings were released, and then everything fell apart due to politics, community push back, or lack of funding. The Howard Terminal project was the last best shot. It had momentum. a downtown waterfront stadium, 35,000 seats, mixeduse development, job creation. In 2022, the project was approved by Oakland City officials. But not long after the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission voted to remove the port priority use of Howard Terminal to allow for a new ballpark housing units and office space. So essentially, San Francisco screwed over their neighbors. Any new negotiations dragged, deadlines slipped, and Fiser pulled the plug. Instead, he announced in 2023 that the team would relocate to Las Vegas. Another franchise off to the desert. Another stadium funded in part by public money. We keep rolling out money after money after money for these stadium deals. It happens all over the country. another blow to the East Bay. It’s not just that the teams were leaving. It’s the history. It’s the culture. It’s the fact that generations of families piled into that aging concrete coliseum to watch Reggie crush home runs, Ricky Steel bases, and Raleigh close games with that glorious mustache. Hell, they had the distinct honor of watching Mark Maguire hit dingers without steroids. My oh my, what a shot by Maguire. I’m pretty sure most of those were without steroids. The A’s were never just a baseball team. They were Oakland’s defiant middle finger to the big market bullies of the sports world. They won with creativity, not cash. Billy Bean’s Moneyball teams flipped the sport on its head with the payroll that wouldn’t cover a Yankees luxury tax bill or match George Stein Brener’s royalties from all those Seinfeld appearances. Oh, George. And even when ownership became stingier than Ebanese or Scrooge on payday, the fans stayed. They protested, they boycotted, they reverse boycotted. But you can only fight a billionaire for so long when he’s holding the relocation paperwork. God forbid a billionaire team owner ever used their own [ __ ] billions of dollars to build a goddamn stadium for their fans to enjoy their teams to play in. John Fischer, heir to the Gap fortune and owner of the A’s, made his intentions clear years ago. When you’re tanking attendance, selling off players, and letting the stadium decay to the point where the possums have squatters rights, you’re not committed to the city. You’re committed to leaving. Fisher whed that this process has been worse for him than the fans, which is like an arsonist complaining about smoke inhilation and burning the tip of his finger while lighting the match. So, the A’s are in Sacramento for now, playing out the clock, waiting for their Vegas debut. They’re following the Raiders down uh I-15 into the Neon Mirage, where if you close your eyes and listen, you can hear Joe Peshy swearing and Vince Vaughn saying Vegas, baby. They’ll play in Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park temporarily with dreams of a stripside stadium in 2028 if the funding holds up. But will Vegas embrace them? Maybe. The Golden Knights built a rabid fan base overnight and already have a Stanley Cup to show for it. But they had help. Generous league expansion rules, salary cap parody, and savvy front office moves. The A’s. They have one of the worst owners in sports, John Fischer. They have a roster gutted as stars. They have a fan base left behind in Oakland and a tourist economy in Vegas that may or may not care about baseball by year three of another 100 loss season. Being an A’s fan is hard. It’s hard hard work. You have to be ready for pain. When they develop a star, that star quickly becomes an asset to reload the farm system. You just can’t be attached to any one player. I don’t know if the fans in Vegas will know what it takes or if they care enough to support the A’s, but that’s where we’re at right now. This isn’t just a Bay Area problem either. It’s a reflection of how pro sports operates now. Vegas wasn’t allowed near major leagues for decades. Too much gambling, too much risk. But then legalized sports betting exploded nationwide and suddenly Vegas wasn’t a liability. It was the future. Fast growing population, endless entertainment options, willingness to throw public money at new stadiums like its Monopoly cash. Nevada, of course, doesn’t have state taxes, so most of that money comes from tourists gambling away their hard-earned cash at the casinos and spending $60 for buffet lines that used to cost five. Regardless, stadium funding comes from public money. The money that is designated to other public resources like, you know, schools and other unimportant [ __ ] The Raiders already left Oakland once. Uh that was back in the 80s and then finally returned in 1995. But it was always a shaky reunion. The Coliseum was outdated even back then. And by the 2010s, it had become one of the most dilapidated venues in all of pro sports. Raiders owner Mark Davis wanted a new stadium, something modern and flashy that could compete with the NFL’s architectural arms race. The city of Oakland had ideas, including a grand redevelopment project called Coliseum City, an ambitious plan that would have transformed the area with new stadiums, housing, and infrastructure. But ideas don’t build stadiums. The financing never came together. And while Oakland officials tried to hold on, they couldn’t offer the one thing Las Vegas could, $750 million in public funding. The Raiders originally tried a bunch of weird proposals. They wanted to share Levi Stadium in Santa Clara. They tried to move to Concord. They flirted with San Antonio. Them big old women down in San Antonio. Oh my god. Los Angeles. And they tried to work out a two stadium plan with the A’s and all of it fell through. Nevada put up 750 million to lure the Raiders, 380 million to help the A’s, and 30-year non relocation agreements. Meanwhile, Oakland, facing housing crisis, inequity, and a declining black population, simply couldn’t keep up with the sports arm race. Former mayor Jean Quan tried everything short of holding owners hostage to keep teams in town. But billionaire owners want more than charm offensives. They want blank checks, presumably to seduce older women, just like that kid did in that movie, blank check. And when they don’t get blank checks, they leave. They just [ __ ] leave. They tell you sports is business. They tell you it’s just economics. I love Oakland. I love the fans in Oakland. And I know that there’s going to be disappointment and maybe some anger. It wasn’t the players. It wasn’t the coaches that made this decision, but it was me that made it. There’s there’s no words that I can say um that are going to make people at home who are really upset about the team uh leaving uh feel better about the team or about me. But for cities like Oakland, it’s never just business. It’s identity. It’s history. It’s families piling into the coliseum for generations. It’s watching Tim Brown and Jerry Porter on Monday Night Football. Jerry Rice betray the city of San Francisco to join the dark side. Joseé Conco using his time in the dugout to write his book Juiced. No one suffered more than I did. It’s hard to recap an entire history of three pro sports organizations, but they do more than provide a few hours of entertainment for fans, families, and friends. And now Oakland joins the small, sad club of big cities without a major league team. It’s a sports ghost town. The Warriors are San Francisco’s now. Got burnt with the Warriors. The Raiders are Vegas’s Vegases. Is this We got burnt with the Raiders. The A’s are also Vegases. Now we’re getting burnt with the A’s. Playing in the sweltering summer heat of Sacramento for the time being. Just killing time before they officially trade in the East Bay for the strip. And the thing is, no shiny new stadium, no bottle service at Allegiant, no Cirus Olay pregame show will replace what those teams meant to this city. Oakland gave sports its heart while the billionaires gave it a relocation notice. In the end, as the last pitch was thrown out at the Coliseum, as the A’s loaded up the moving trucks, Oakland didn’t just lose its teams, it lost part of itself. Some of the blame lies with the ownership. The Warriors prioritized luxury over legacy. The Raiders leveraged loyalty to get a better deal elsewhere. The A’s stripped the roster, slashed payroll, and practically begged the league to let them go. But some of the blame also lies with the systemic problems. Public funding for stadiums has become a grotesque competition where cities bid against one another to subsidize the already wealthy. Oakland couldn’t compete in that game. Not with its tax base, not with its priorities. And the teams knew it. The aftermath is painful. There are economic losses. Small businesses that have thrived on game days are now gone or struggling. There are cultural losses. The sense of pride and identity that come with rooting for a team that actually represented you, your neighbors, your city, and there’s a sense of betrayal. Three breakups in five years, each more bitter than the last. Vegas might be for winners and losers, but for now, Oakland Oakland just loses. And it feels like nobody with power ever really cared. Thanks for watching. That’s good sports. Please subscribe here on the YouTube. Got to subscribe on the YouTube or I’m moving to Lasing Vegas, too. That’s right. Moving to Vegas.

How All Major Sports Died in Oakland. Click here https://bearmattress.com/thatsgood & use CODE: THATSGOOD to get 40% off your mattress. The Raiders, Warriors & Athletics have all abandoned the city of Oakland. That’s Good Sports talks about why that happened. #raiders #athletics #warriors #nba #mlb #oakland #nfl #NFLNews #thatsgoodsports #BrandonPerna #lasvegasraiders #lasvegas
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