Report: NFL meeting Wednesday to clear path for Raiders move to Vegas

Just as it seemed the San Diego Chargers were destined to join the Rams in Los Angeles, there’s more information coming out that this might not be inevitable.

More than that, at least one report is now suggesting that the NFL is meeting Wednesday in an attempt to clear a path for the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas. This meeting is apparently under the pretext that’s there’s more hope in salvaging the Chargers’ stay in San Diego than keeping the Raiders in Northern California.

If there seems to be a lot of moving parts here, that’s because there are.

First off, the Chargers have an opt-in clause for later this month that would allow them to join the Rams in the yet to be build Inglewood location in Los Angeles. If the Chargers were to bypass that, the Raiders would then be able to opt-in themselves. This all came to fruition when NFL owners agreed to support a Rams relocation from St. Louis to Southern California last January.

Now, one year later, and it seems more realistic that Mark Davis and the Raiders would rather move to Las Vegas. All the potential political hurdles have been passed in Nevada with the state agreeing to public financing of a new venue in the desert metropolis (more on that here).

Though, one would think that the NFL itself might want the Raiders to choose Los Angeles instead of Las Vegas. That became clear late last year when some around the league cast doubt about the market viability of the Las Vegas metropolitan area. There’s also concern over a potential revenue share between the Raiders and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Adding another layer to this, the Chargers’ situation in San Diego doesn’t seem to be sustainable moving forward. We saw just how the fan base reacted to a potential move late in the season, pretty much forcing the Chargers to play in front of a road crowd at home. This came less than a month after voters in San Diego put to rest any suggestion of public financing for a new venue in California’s Southernmost city.

Now, it looks like the NFL itself is potentially open to some short-term fix in San Diego while opening the way for the Raiders to move to Las Vegas.

This all seems to be moving at a rapid clip. But for now it surely appears that the Raiders and Las Vegas are on the verge of receiving approval of Mark Davis’ organization uprooting from Oakland to the desert metropolis. That’s amazing in and of itself, especially with the Chargers’ situation still in flux.