NFL reporter: San Diego a player for Raiders; Las Vegas still alive

By Tom Krasovic, Associated Press

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017 | 12:21 p.m.

The Super Bowl was still cooling off Monday when a longtime football journalist heated up the NFL topic in San Diego.

"I think the Raiders are in play in San Diego, though I do not believe the Las Vegas option is dead yet," Peter King wrote for MMQB.com.

King offered no other details, which is unlike him, although he did touch on the ongoing attempt of Raiders owner Mark Davis to secure a stadium deal with Las Vegas.

"The problem in Vegas, after billionaire Sheldon Adelson pulled his $650 million investment, is that big-money people there don't want to cross him," King wrote.

Staying in Oakland, the franchise's home for 44 years, may be another option for Davis.

The San Jose Mercury New reported that sharing Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara for a few years could be a solution, too, although Davis has said he's not interested in bunking with the 49ers. The stadium, which opened in 2015, was built to house two home teams.

The obstacles to moving the Raiders to San Diego are familiar. How to pay for a new stadium? How to gain NFL approval to allow three teams in Southern California and only one in Northern California?

The NFL is adept at pitting cities against each other to improve an owner's hand at the poker table.

For two decades, the League used Los Angeles as leverage to extract subsidies from other municipalities.

Is San Diego now to become a League tool in attempts to find the Raiders a home?

If there is a genuine move afoot to get the Raiders a new stadium in San Diego, it almost certainly will need to entail a creative solution and heavy private financing.

San Diego, meantime, is playing a hand weakened by much-neglected Qualcomm Stadium, the publicly financed former Chargers home that opened in 1967.

In a pitch for mixed-used development on the 166-acre site that includes the stadium, an investor group has highlighted the heavy cost San Diego taxpayers must bear to maintain the stadium. Estimates project about $250 million in public liability over the next 20 years. San Diego owes about $38 million on the stadium remodeling and the Chargers training site and team offices, per a deal in the 1990s.

Resolving the stadium issue is part of the investment group's proposal to build a stadium on the northeast portion of site and bid out development on other parcels. The plan envisions a Major League Soccer team sharing the venue with San Diego State's football program. Acreage on the site would be set aside for an NFL-sized stadium.