↵I'm no scientist, but ask 10 Raiders fans the best thing that could happen to their team and eight would answer with some version of Al Davis relinquishing control. (By "some version" I mean "bonfire in Alameda.") So news from ESPN's Chris Mortensen that Davis could be selling 10 percent of the franchise to an outside party and that a future option for outright purchase could be involved tends to tickle our greatest fancies. Six years of darkness make any minuscule amount of light look like Heaven. If the tunnel's another decade, that's alright. Just Pray, Baby.↵
↵But as always, there's a wrinkle. The suitor: C. Dean Metropoulos, who has a history on trying to get an existing NFL franchise to move to Los Angeles. Davis has feuded with local pols over stadium issues since he returned from L.A. in the '90s. And, um, he's moved the team to L.A. once already and threatens a repeat every now and then to get his name on the evening news. To involve someone like Metropoulos, who Mortensen reports had been booted from a potential share of the Jaguars because the primary owner wanted to avoid any chance of relocation, it almost seems like a death sentence to Oakland football.
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↵But again: someone not named Al Davis would own the team eventually. Waiting for Davis to change is like waiting for Warren Sapp to shut up. The sun would shine for months, win or lose. New dawns, and all that. But the new dawn would probably come in L.A. That's fine for the leftover fans in the Southland. But denizens of the Black Hole ain't rooting for an L.A. team. In fact, denizens of the Black Hole are likely to root against a team from L.A.
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↵This thing is straight out of Dante. The Raiders are no longer a football team. It's all a philosophy experiment.↵
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