By Jordan Long
The Oakland Raiders are still searching for a home to play in for 2019. They will not move to Las Vegas until 2020. They didn’t have their lease renewed in Oakland. Raiders Owner Mark Davis dropped out of talks in December to try to have their home games played in the Oakland Coliseum. Two options being considered for home games next season are Oracle Park or sharing Levi’s Stadium, both of them come with obstacles to overcome.
Oracle Park is the home of the San Francisco Giants. This wouldn’t be the worst option. They would need to modify the field for the NFL since it is a baseball field. Oakland is used to playing at a baseball field since they shared the Coliseum with the Oakland Athletics. Oracle Park has hosted football games in the past, most recently in 2011 for the University of California while their stadium was being renovated.
The difficulty with this choice is the Giants’ schedule, even for preseason games. The NFL schedulers must look at the Giants’ home games and work around them. The NFL preseason is in August and the regular season for the Raiders starts September 8th or 9th depending on if they will play on Sunday or Monday Night. The Giants have home games on 2 of the 1st 4 weeks of the NFL season. It wouldn’t be hard to have them have away games during the Giants’ home games.
The other option is to play at Levi’s Stadium. It is built for the NFL since it is the home of the San Francisco 49ers. The Raiders must obtain NFL approval for this to occur. The 49ers have territorial rights.
This may not be the best choice because it is not a true home field for the Raiders. The 49ers could say no to this option because they might not want to share the stadium. The Raiders should look for a place that they could have a home field.
The best solution that not many have talked about is to play home games at Sam Boyd Stadium which is the home of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas football team. There aren’t scheduling conflicts since UNLV’s home games are on Saturdays. The stadium holds 36,000 and it would give the Raiders a taste of what is to come once they move to Vegas.
The Raiders will need to figure out where to play home games soon. They have options but have to pick the one that will work for them. Hopefully an announcement will come soon. ty47 \l
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