As sports stadiums built in the 1990s show their age, many professional sports teams are looking for new facilities — and public money to pay for them.

“We are just in the heating up phase of the next stadium construction wave,” said J.C. Bradbury, a Kennesaw State University economics professor who has researched the issue. “That’s part of the reason why you’re seeing a lot more stadiums happen.”

Across the country, pro sports teams are gearing up to improve or build new stadiums and arenas. In Chicago, both the NFL’s Bears and the MLB’s White Sox are exploring moves. Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals are all working toward new or improved stadiums. So are the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Clippers.

Elected leaders continue to shower tax revenues on stadium and arena projects with the aim of recruiting or keeping teams and boosting local economies. But public debate is growing, as decades of research shows that taxpayers don’t see a positive return on their investment.

“This is without exception,” Bradbury said. “It’s really across the board that these are really poor public investments.”

That hasn’t stopped the deals from getting larger. Adjusted for inflation, stadium subsidies have risen to a median of about $500 million from a 2010 median of $350 million, Bradbury said.

In 2022, New York officials approved a record $850 million subsidy to finance a new stadium for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

Then, last April, the Tennessee Titans landed more than $1.2 billion in state and local funding for a new professional football stadium in Nashville.

The momentum is only growing, with governments benefiting from pandemic aid and strong economies, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written extensively about stadium subsidies.

“Stadium deals tend to beget other stadium deals,” he said. “When the Bills got their money from New York, that made it easier for the Titans to get their money from Tennessee.”

Super Bowl and schools

Las Vegas just hosted Nevada’s first Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium, which was supported by a $750 million public subsidy in 2016 to lure the Raiders from Oakland, California. Now, Oakland’s baseball team, commonly called the A’s, is seeking its own stadium on the Las Vegas Strip.

But Nevada teachers are challenging a 2023 law authorizing up to $380 million of public funds to relocate the A’s to Las Vegas.

A political action committee backed by the Nevada State Education Association filed a lawsuit earlier this month challenging the law’s constitutionality. The group also is pushing for a ballot initiative that would allow voters to veto a portion of the public funding.

“These are billionaires, right? They could do it themselves if they wanted to,” said Alexander Marks, director of strategy for the teachers union.

“There’s a lot of folks who at the end of the day want to see their government dollars going towards responsible things like public education, roads and hospitals,” he said. “And any dollar we take away from that and put into a stadium is a misguided use of that dollar.”

Nevada ranked 48th in per-pupil education funding, according to the National Education Association’s 2022 rankings. The same report ranks the state’s student-to-teacher ratio as the largest in the nation.

Marks said state leaders frequently tell educators there isn’t enough funding available to tackle issues such as classroom sizes. He pointed out that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed legislation last year that would have continued funding a universal free lunch program in schools.

“Where are our state’s priorities?” Marks said. “The stadium is great but the school lunch bill has to get vetoed? We don’t quite understand that.”

Jeremy Aguero, a Nevada consultant hired by the Raiders and the A’s to work on the football and baseball stadium projects, said the NFL stadium already is a mathematical winner. A 2023 audit of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority showed a dedicated hotel tax was collecting more money than was needed for debt payments on Allegiant Stadium.

And he said bringing in major sports events has boosted state revenues.

Aguero noted that Nevada’s legislature last year passed a record budget for K-12 education for fiscal year 2025, increasing per-pupil funding by more than 25%.

“So from that standpoint, our schools have more money because of Allegiant Stadium,” Aguero said. “Our police and firefighters have more money because of Allegiant Stadium. Our state and local governments — for everything from social service to higher education — have more because of major events that are taking place in major event centers.”

A matter of economics, identity

While public subsidy amounts are growing larger in terms of dollars, they are actually growing smaller as a share of overall stadium and arena costs, said Judith Grant Long, an associate professor of sports management and urban planning at the University of Michigan who has studied the issue.

Team owners and developers are increasingly pitching stadiums and arenas as wider developments that include entertainment, apartments and hotels. And elected officials are increasingly dedicating public funding toward expenses such as infrastructure and transportation, which theoretically can deliver a larger community benefit than just a venue.

That dynamic, though, can put wealthy team owners in the powerful position of holding some of the most valuable real estate in their markets.

Long said professional sports remain a small sliver of the overall economy. And mounds of peer-reviewed academic research shows that stadium and arena investments cost more than their economic benefits.

“The prevailing economic wisdom is that, generally speaking, the economic impact, measured in jobs and taxes, does not cover the average public investment,” Long said.

But these decisions aren’t always about pure arithmetic.

Maintaining a major sports franchise is a point of civic pride for many leaders, particularly in smaller markets.

Oklahoma City Republican Mayor David Holt said the city’s economy and identity has transformed since the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics relocated there in 2008 and changed the team name to the Thunder.

“Oklahoma City was nowhere on anybody’s radar until we got the Thunder,” Holt said. “Our identity as a big-league city has become so intrinsic to how we see ourselves and so much a part of our momentum these last few decades.”

Oklahoma City is among only a few cities outside of the nation’s top 40 media markets with an NBA, MLB or NFL team, Holt said.

That’s why he strongly supported an initiative last year to extend a one-cent sales tax to fund a new publicly owned, $900 million arena for the Thunder. The arena will cost taxpayers about $1 billion once interest costs are factored in, the mayor said. The team has committed $50 million to the project, about 5% of the public commitment.

The NBA franchise is worth more than $3 billion, according to Forbes. Its seven-member ownership group is led by Clay Bennett, a wealthy venture capitalist.

In December, more than 70% of voters approved the tax extension, ensuring the team’s presence in Oklahoma City until 2050.

Holt said not building the new arena — and potentially having the Thunder leave the city — would have been a gut punch not seen in the area since the oil bust of the 1980s.

Wisconsin state Rep. Rob Brooks, a Republican, acknowledged the difficulty in assessing the true value of a pro sports team.

Last year, as lawmakers considered legislation to fund upgrades at the Milwaukee Brewers’ American Family Field, he focused on the tangibles, particularly how much the team and visiting teams contribute to state income taxes.

“I really just tied it to the tangible stuff … because everything else is hard to measure,” he said.

Legislation sponsored by Brooks made about $500 million in state funds available to the stadium project, which aims to keep the team put until 2050. But that cost will be funded specifically by the team’s income tax collections, Brooks said.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the legislation in December.

“It just made sense that as long as we have a facility that has more than half of its useful life left, let’s maximize our investment that we’ve already made,” Brooks said. “Had we been making an entirely new investment, that would have been a whole different argument.”

A flurry of stadium deals

Justin Wilson, the Democratic mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, is well aware of the studies criticizing stadium and arena deals.

But he thinks local taxpayers are well protected in the proposed legislative deal to move the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals to his city from downtown Washington, D.C.

A plan championed by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin calls for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns both teams, to invest $400 million upfront and pay ongoing lease payments to a new stadium authority. Wilson noted that the public portion of the funding will come from user fees and taxes collected within the new arena development — not from taxpayers across the city or state.

“That was one of the things that we focused on from the beginning, really learning from the litany of bad sports arena and sports stadium deals that are all around the country,” Wilson said.

But the plan faces political opposition — from leaders in D.C. and some lawmakers in Richmond. While legislation backed by Youngkin made it through the state House last week, it faced a setback in the state Senate, where a key committee leader said the bill was “not ready for prime time,” The Associated Press reported.

The effort also faces organized opposition in Northern Virginia, where residents worry about the subsidy and local complications such as traffic and mass transit.

Indiana Democratic state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. wants to lure the NFL’s Chicago Bears, who are aiming to leave longtime home Soldier Field, to northwest Indiana. Harris filed a bill that would create a new taxpayer-funded sports development commission charged with attracting a pro sports team to the area.

“Maybe we can draw them over,” Harris said. “And if we can’t draw them over, maybe we can bring some attention to the area and attract another team.”

The Bears, a team valued at over $6 billion, purchased and demolished hundreds of acres of property in the Illinois suburb of Arlington Heights last year. But recently the team has shifted its focus to lakefront property in Chicago.

“The timeline has to be in 2024,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren told WGN-TV last week. “In a perfect world, I would like to have clarity in this legislative session that is coming up.”

In Indiana, the legislation sponsored by Harris didn’t make it out of committee. But he said there’s still interest from state and local leaders in luring a professional team to northwest Indiana.

“I’m actually still having people reach out to me,” he said. “They want to help and support this initiative. So I will bring this back next year.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The 16-acre compound, with multiple turf fields, some offices and a large swath of parking space, has attracted the interest of San Francisco real-estate firm Prologis, which is offering to buy the property for $24 million.

Just under half of that money would go to Oakland, which co-owns with Alameda County the facility at 1150 Harbor Bay Parkway in Alameda, atop the flatland that leads to the scenic ocean harbor.

It would be a much-needed financial boost for a city dealing with a budget deficit of historic proportions. But the larger impact would be to the property’s current tenant and one of Oakland’s fastest-growing cultural institutions: the men’s soccer franchise Oakland Roots SC.

Should city and county officials approve the purchase this month, Prologis intends to continue leasing the compound to both the Roots and its new companion women’s team, the Oakland Soul.

The soccer fields may also continue to serve as a training ground for European soccer clubs seeking a warmer region during the winter months, including potentially a role in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, some of which is set to be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

“The World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world, and this use would shine a global spotlight on Oakland and the East Bay,” the report states, before noting that the facility would need significant maintenance, including a $3 million upgrade to the roof of the building that once served as the Raiders headquarters.

The Roots, meanwhile, have been striving to remain in the city whose tree insignia inspired the franchise’s name and branding, as well as its guiding ethos — to be rooted in Oakland amid the departure of other sports franchises. But the task has proven difficult.

Team officials had anticipated that they might be booted from the property when the city and county decided to sell, especially if the new owner was more interested in, say, building new housing on the property rather than hosting sports franchises there.

Ahead of key dates this month, including a City Council vote next Tuesday, Roots officials have declined to comment on the pending sale.

The Raiders facility is where the Roots practice, but it will play home games during the entire 2024 season at Cal State East Bay in Hayward — the second season at the soccer field there, after the team ditched Laney College over a turf issue.

The Roots’ goal is to play the following season in a modular stadium built on the parking lot of the Coliseum complex, plus a longer-term stadium in a large adjacent space, the Malibu Lot.

Ongoing negotiations between the Roots and Coliseum officials over a stadium at the giant East Oakland property have mainly centered around scheduling games on nights when A’s baseball — perhaps in its final season — isn’t already using the property.

The team’s temporary agreement with the Coliseum would constitute a “special event,” which would require the team to be there for no more than 60 days in 2025 — a stopgap measure while the team tackles the complicated task of finding a semi-permanent home.

“I’m hoping we are nearing the end,” said Henry Gardner, the head of the Joint Powers Authority, which oversees the Coliseum site on behalf of the city and county.

NEW YORK — Carl Weathers, a former NFL linebacker who became a Hollywood action movie and comedy star, playing nemesis-turned-ally Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies, facing-off against Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Predator” and teaching golf in “Happy Gilmore,” has died. He was 76.

Matt Luber, his manager, said Weathers died Thursday. His family issued a statement saying he died “peacefully in his sleep.”

Weathers was as comfortable flexing his muscles on the big screen in “Action Jackson” as he was joking around on the small screen in such shows as “Arrested Development,” Weathers was perhaps most closely associated with Creed, who made his first appearance as the cocky, undisputed heavyweight world champion in 1976’s “Rocky,” starring Sylvester Stallone.

“It puts you on the map and makes your career, so to speak. But that’s a one-off, so you’ve got to follow it up with something. Fortunately those movies kept coming, and Apollo Creed became more and more in people’s consciousness and welcome in their lives, and it was just the right guy at the right time,” he told The Daily Beast in 2017.

Most recently, Weathers has starred in the Disney+ hit “The Mandalorian,” appearing in all three seasons.

Creed, who appeared in the first four “Rocky” movies, memorably died in the ring of 1984’s “Rocky IV,” going toe-to-toe with the hulking, steroided-using Soviet Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren. Before he entered the ring, James Brown sang “Living in America” with showgirls and Creed popped up on a balcony in a Star-Spangled Banner shorts and waistcoat combo and an Uncle Sam hat, dancing and taunting Drago.

A bloodied Creed collapses in the ring after taking a vicious beating, twitches and is cradled by Rocky as he dies, inevitably setting up a fight between Drago and Rocky. But while Creed is gone, his character’s son, Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed, would lead his own boxing trilogy starting in 2015.

Weathers went on to 1987’s “Predator,” where he flexed his pecs alongside Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and a host of others, and 1988’s nouveau blaxploitation flick “Action Jackson,” where he trains his flamethrower on a bad guy and asks, “How do you like your ribs?” before broiling him.

He later added a false wooden hand to play a gold pro for the 1996 comedy classic “Happy Gilmore” opposite Adam Sandler and starred in Dick Wolf’s short-lived spin-off series “Chicago Justice” in 2017 and in Disney’s “The Mandalorian,” earning an Emmy Award nomination in 2021.

Weathers grew up admiring actors such as Woody Strode, whose combination of physique and acting prowess in “Spartacus” made an early impression. Others he idolized included actors Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and athletes Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, stars who broke the mold and the color barrier.

“There are so many people that came before me who I admired and whose success I wanted to emulate, and just kind of hit the benchmarks they hit in terms of success, who created a pathway that I’ve been able to walk and find success as a result. And hopefully I can inspire someone else to do good work as well,” he told the Detroit News 2023. “I guess I’m just a lucky guy.”

Weathers played college football at San Diego State University — he majored in theater — and went on to play for one season in the NFL, for the Oakland Raiders, in 1970.

“When I found football, it was a completely different outlet,” says Weathers told the Detroit News. “It was more about the physicality, although one does feed the other. You needed some smarts because there were playbooks to study and film to study, to learn about the opposition on any given week.”

After the Raiders, he joined the Canadian Football League, playing for two years while finishing up his studies during the offseason at San Francisco State University. He graduated with a B.A. in drama in 1974.

After appearing in several films and TV shows, including “Good Times,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Starsky & Hutch,” as well as fighting Nazis alongside Harrison Ford in “Force 10 From Navarone,” Weathers landed his knockout role — Creed. He told The Hollywood Reporter that his start in the iconic franchise was not auspicious.

He was asked to read with the writer, Stallone, then unknown. Weathers read the scene but felt it didn’t land and so he blurted out: “I could do a lot better if you got me a real actor to work with,” he recalled. “So I just insulted the star of the movie without really knowing it and not intending to.” He also lied that he had any boxing experience.

Later in life, Weathers developed a passion for directing, helming episodes of “Silk Stalking” and and the Lorenzo Lamas vehicle “Renegade.” He directed a season three episode of “The Mandalorian.”

Weathers introduced himself to another generation when he portrayed himself as an opportunistic and extremely thrifty actor who becomes involved with the dysfunctional clan at the heart of “Arrested Development.”

The Weathers character likes to save money by making broth from discarded food — “There’s still plenty of meat on that bone” and “Baby, you got a stew going!” — and, for the right price, agrees to become an acting coach for delusional and talent-free thespian Tobias Funke, played by David Cross.

Weathers is survived by two sons.

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Attorneys for the National Football League and Jon Gruden made their cases today before a three-judge panel of Nevada Supreme Court justices.

At issue is whether the panel will let stand a 2022 ruling by a district court judge that said Gruden’s lawsuit against the league could move forward.

During the oral arguments before Supreme Court Justices Elissa Cadish, Kristina Pickering and Linda Marie Bell, each side had 15 minutes to present.

It’s unknown when the panel might hand a decision down.

Gruden is accusing the NFL of intentionally leaking the emails — which contained racist, homophobic, and sexist language — that led to his resignation from the Raiders in 2021. He is seeking monetary damages for the leak, which he claims destroyed his career.

Gruden’s emails went from 2011 to 2018 to former Washington Commanders executive Bruce Allen and were found amid emails the league obtained during an investigation into the workplace culture of the Washington team. The emails were sent when Gruden was an ESPN announcer.

The league wants the court to reverse a state court judge’s decisions in May 2022, letting Gruden’s lawsuit proceed, and not to order out-of-court talks that could be overseen by Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Click here for updates on this story

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The two-vehicle crash occurred about 2 a.m. when a Chrysler 300, apparently “going very fast, high velocity,” ran the red light and collided with an SUV, Houston Police Assistant Chief Megan Howard said.

Five men and one woman died, including Hayden, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Four people were pronounced dead at the scene. Those killed included the driver of the Chrysler and a man who appeared to be homeless, Howard said.

Four people were taken to the hospital and two of them died, Howard said, while one female passenger was in critical condition with life-threatening injuries.

Police interviewed a male passenger from the SUV at the hospital. Investigators were working to identify the driver of the SUV, Howard said.

Hayden, 33, was born in Houston and starred at the University of Houston, according to his profile page on ESPN.com. A first-round draft pick in 2013, he played in eight seasons through 2020 for the Oakland Raiders, Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars.

“D.J.’s courage, perseverance, and dedication to his teammates will be fondly remembered by everyone who knew him,” the Raiders, now based in Las Vegas, said Saturday in a statement. “The prayers of the entire Raider Nation are with D.J.’s loved ones at this time.”

In 2012, Hayden survived and later recovered from a near-death tear to a major vein by his heart after he and a teammate collided during practice, requiring emergency surgery.

But McDaniels’ record actually was worse the second time around than it was with the Denver Broncos in 2009 and 2010, and late Tuesday night, the Raiders announced that owner Mark Davis fired McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.

“After much thought about what the Raiders need to move forward, I have decided to part ways with Josh and Dave,” Davis said in a statement. “I want to thank them both for their hard work and wish them and their families nothing but the best.”

The news broke with an email from the Raiders at 10:04 p.m. (Pacific).

Linebackers coach Antonio Pierce will serve as interim head coach, the team announced in an email at midnight. That was preceded by an 11:15 email announcing Champ Kelly as the interim GM.

In both cases, the Raiders said a “comprehensive search” for successors would begin “once the season is complete.”

Davis had hoped to bring New England’s success westward when he hired McDaniels, the longtime Patriots offensive coordinator. Ziegler worked in New England’s front office, and between the two, they transformed the Raiders into Patriots West by signing several players with ties to that organization.

But despite taking over a team that made the playoffs in 2021 before losing to the Cincinnati Bengals in the wild-card round, the success Davis so badly wanted never made its way to Las Vegas.

The Raiders under McDaniels went 6-11 in 2022 and are 3-5 so far this season for a .360 winning percentage. His record at Denver was 11-17 (.393 percentage).

Even so, Davis has stood by McDaniels, and the timing of this dismissal is surprising.

But McDaniels had some things working against him. The Raiders have failed to score at least 20 points in eight of their past nine games dating to last season, and offense is his specialty.

Perhaps just as damaging was the public displeasure some of his players have shown. Star wide receiver Davante Adams, in particular, has been vocal since the offseason about his concerns regarding the direction of the franchise. Running back Josh Jacobs when asked after Monday night’s loss to the Detroit Lions about what might spark the offense, said, “I don’t know, that ain’t my job.”

McDaniels was hired following the 2021 season when Davis opted not to keep interim coach Rich Bisaccia on for the full-time job even after he led the team to a surprising playoff run.

McDaniels and Ziegler were aggressive in their first offseason, trading first and second-round picks for Adams, giving a big free agent contract to defensive end Chandler Jones and extending the contracts of Derek Carr, Maxx Crosby, Darren Waller and Hunter Renfrow.

But those moves didn’t lead to positive results on the field as McDaniels never was able to build the high-powered offense Davis expected when he hired him and struggled to win games.

The Raiders lost a record-tying five games after taking double-digit leads, including blowing a 20-0 halftime lead in his home debut against Arizona for the biggest collapse in franchise history. Las Vegas lost to Indianapolis in the Colts’ first game with Jeff Saturday as interim coach after he had never coached above high school level and then lost to Baker Mayfield and the Rams two days after Mayfield joined his new team.

McDaniels benched Carr late last season and eventually cut him in the offseason, giving the Raiders no return for a starting quarterback who ended up getting a $150 million contract from New Orleans.

McDaniels brought in his former pupil in New England, Jimmy Garoppolo, as the new starting quarterback and the offense severely regressed, becoming the first team since 2009 to score less than 20 points on offense in each of the first eight games of the season.

The last two weeks were particularly humbling as Las Vegas lost 30-12 to Chicago and undrafted rookie former Division II quarterback Tyson Bagent and then looked completely inept in a 26-14 loss at Detroit on Monday night.

McDaniels finished his tenure with the third-worst record of any Raiders coach with at least 25 games.

ESPN reported Champ Kelly, who was an assistant GM under Ziegler since 2022, will be named the interim general manager. Prior to joining the Raiders, Kelly worked in the Chicago Bears front office for seven seasons, where he was the assistant director of player personnel from 2017-21 after two years as the team’s director of scouting.

AP Pro Football Writer Josh Dubow contributed to this report.

The legal complaint filed this month ensnares one of the six partner organizations in the African-American Sports and Entertainment Group. Two of the eight members within the flagship entity are alleging their equity shares in the project were unfairly diluted.

None of the parties involved in the complaint — filed in the Alameda County court — agreed to be interviewed on the record, but documents and video evidence obtained from the group paint a starkly different picture than the one presented in the complaint, calling its central claims into question.

The group ultimately plans to acquire Oakland’s share of the Coliseum property for $115 million, and earlier this year it unsuccessfully tried to buy the site’s other half-ownership share, which belongs to the likely departing A’s.

Last month, it whiffed on one of its most prominent goals: securing a long-anticipated WNBA expansion franchise. The league instead opted to partner with the Warriors and establish a women’s basketball team in San Francisco.

But the whole legal ordeal could strain AASEG’s commitment to a locally driven, community-based project, one that remains rooted among Oakland residents and keeps outside corporate interests at the door.

It could also pose another hurdle to AASEG as it gears up to meet key deliverables in an agreement with the city to convert the A’s ballpark, Oakland arena and intervening parking space into new restaurants, nightlife, retail shops, hotels and housing.

“We will fully participate in the legal process and will show the complaint to be without merit,” cofounder Ray Bobbitt said in a statement responding to the complaint. “In the meantime, the AASEG is hyperfocused on the tremendous task, responsibility and commitment we have to our community to redevelop and revitalize East Oakland and the Coliseum Site.”

The dispute is contained within AASEG’s flagship group, which is comprised of eight Oakland natives who collectively did not have much prior real-estate experience before they became involved in one of the East Bay’s largest commercial redevelopments.

The other partners include billion-dollar Black-owned investment firm Loop Capital, prominent sports agent Bill Duffy and a business-consulting group run by former Oakland city manager Robert Bobb.

The origins of AASEG trace back to Bobbitt, a local businessman, and Levant Ogbulie, an education administrator, who began looking into how major professional sports could return to Oakland following the departures of the Warriors and Raiders.

Among the other founding members they recruited were fellow grieving Raiders fans Brien Dixon and Karim Muhammad — the two men who are now threatening to sue Bobbitt, Ogbulie and the larger consortium for damages.

Dixon and Muhammad allege their shares in AASEG were wrongfully diluted when Bobbitt brought four new members into the fold without their approval.

The eight members, including Bobbitt and Ogbulie, equally own 12.5% of the flagship entity, which itself may hold as little as 5% of the overall development once outside pre-capital investments arrive ahead of construction.

Still, the complainants accuse Bobbitt of unfairly designating himself the project’s lead decision-maker and “deceptively” creating separate LLCs in Delaware that could be interchanged with the official AASEG branding — part of a larger effort to consolidate power.

“Not only is this a patent violation of Bobbitt’s obligations to AASEG and the other three members, it usurps a business opportunity from AASEG and could also be considered as an act of fraud committed against the City of Oakland,” the complaint states.

Documents reviewed by this news organization rebut this point: An email sent to Dixon and Muhammad in late 2021, for instance, specifically outlines how those various LLCs would interact and streamline future investments, contradicting the notion that Bobbitt established the other companies secretly.

The complaint alleges that Muhammad only learned during a late 2021 company retreat that four new members — Samantha Wise, John Jones III, Jonathan Jones and LaNiece Jones — had been promised equity in AASEG by Bobbitt and that he eventually muscled them into the group by overruling the complainants.

All of the four members are Oakland residents, and perhaps the most prominent is Jones III, a violence prevention advocate in the community.

Video of a December 2021 team meeting — which took place two months after their addition — paints a different picture. In it, Dixon and Muhammad offer high praise for Bobbitt’s work on the project, reflecting positively on a more recent company retreat.

The eight members took votes together with no apparent objections, and Bobbitt is listed on the meeting’s agenda as AASEG’s “managing member,” a title that the complaint alleges he assigned himself months later in an operating agreement.

Whatever the outcome of the legal complaint, it marks a divide within the flagship group, which has spent several years building relationships with Oakland’s leaders, helping AASEG to secure the Coliseum redevelopment among tough competition from other bidders.

AASEG is also in negotiations with the Roots and Soul, upstart men’s and women’s soccer franchises that want to build a temporary stadium by 2025 in one of the Coliseum’s parking lots. Those discussions alone created tension within AASEG’s flagship entity as not everyone was on board.

It is yet another sign that in its quest to complete one of the largest-scale commercial redevelopments in recent East Bay history, AASEG — originally a group of fellow grieving Raiders fans who decided to start a business together — must also reckon with its small-town origins.

That could spell trouble for Oakland, where officials are expecting the sale to yield millions of dollars by next year. The revenue would help patch up what city leaders call the largest budget deficit in Oakland’s history.

After an auction in the summer saw zero bidders step forward, officials in Alameda County and the city of Oakland — the agencies that jointly own the property — won’t disclose much about their plans, saying only that they are “discussing next steps.”

The compound sits on 16 acres divided into two parcels on Alameda’s Bay Farm Island, a stone’s throw from the coast and a few miles from the Oakland Airport.

It includes a slick athletics training facility, some offices that once served as the Raiders headquarters, multiple turf soccer fields and vast concrete parking space — all set against the scenic backdrop of the flatland that leads to the ocean harbor.

After the Raiders ditched Oakland for Las Vegas, upstart soccer franchise Oakland Roots SC moved into the compound in 2021, paying rent to use the facility as a practice grounds and headquarters, but the planned sale may jeopardize their stay.

The team’s lease ends this year, but Roots representatives said the franchise is in talks with the city to be granted an extension. Buying the site isn’t a priority for the Roots, not when the minimum bid at the county’s auction in the summer was just under $36 million.

Oakland expects to take in nearly half of that — over $17 million — and put it toward a $360 million deficit that earlier this year led the city to squeeze some of its departments and leave job positions unfilled.

“It seems like they were desperate to generate as much revenue as they could,” said Dan Lindheim, the former Oakland city administrator who is now a professor at UC Berkeley, said of the city’s inclusion of the Raiders facility sale in its budget. “You’d expect there would now be some designation that they’re no longer assuming that revenue.”

Why hasn’t the property been sold? It has been popular among sports franchises, including European soccer clubs that have used it to train during the winter months, during the Roots’ offseason.

Oakland is rapidly losing its professional sports teams, but the property isn’t dedicated to athletics; after Candlestick Park changed hands, the San Francisco ballpark was razed because its new owners cared more about the land underneath it.

Alameda currently designates the Raiders training facility land for “commercial manufacturing,” or light industrial uses — an intuitive fit in an area populated mostly by warehouses, factory labs and a few airport hotels.

The problem, though, is that potential bidders in the Bay Area aren’t concerned with sports or industrial properties as much as they are with housing.

“It would be a very difficult proposition to get your money back if you bought it and leased it out,” said Spencer Hsu, a Bay Area real-estate expert. “The fact is, if they can’t sell as commercial, they should really explore the opportunity to do so as residential.”

The shooting was reported the evening of May 17, 2022 at Jack Ferrell Park, involving several men opening fire with several bystanders on scene. Four men were hit; one of them, Ralph Fields Jr. — a cousin of Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver and East Palo Alto native Davante Adams — died at the hospital.

Early on, East Palo Alto police emphasized that the shooting was not random, and tallied 33 shots fired between three rounds of gunfire. A week after the shooting, police announced that two people had been arrested.

Police said an investigation, which came to involve the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, Atherton police and the U.S. Marshals Service, eventually identified four suspects: East Palo Alto residents Miguel Bracamontes, 21, and Luis Mariscal, 38; Michael McNack, 20, of Union City; and Bobby Williams, 49, of San Francisco.

District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the shooting appeared to be the result of a chance encounter at the park between two groups with an existing conflict. Police added that Bracamontes, Mariscal and McNack were on one side and exchanged gunfire with Williams, who was wounded in the battle.

On Wednesday, authorities announced that the four men were indicted by a criminal grand jury Aug. 4 on multiple charges related to the shooting, including assault with a deadly weapon and discharge of a firearm with gross negligence. By the time the indictment was issued, all of the suspects other than McNack were already in jail custody for unrelated charges. Marshals arrested McNack at his home Tuesday.

Absent from the indictment are any homicide-related charges directly related to the death of Fields. Wagstaffe said prosecutors evaluated the case for potential murder and manslaughter charges, but concluded that the rapid unfolding of the shootout prevented them from gathering sufficient evidence to prove criminal responsibility in Fields’ death.

“We cannot discern from witness statements and the limited video, and cannot prove that people were not acting in self defense, one way or another. It was really a chaotic scene,” Wagstaffe said, adding that the evidence “did support people carrying weapons they were not supposed to be carrying, and the other charges.”

The four defendants were scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in a Redwood City courtroom. East Palo Alto Police Chief Jeff Liu lauded the investigative effort and its “mission to hold every gunman accountable for their decision to fire guns in a park full of kids.”

Brown’s wife, Cecelia, said her husband died peacefully at a rehabilitation center surrounded by family and friends. Brown, enshrined in the Hall in 2004 by his son, Robert Jr., was admitted to the center after he suffered a stroke in April.

“On the field, he was as fierce an opponent as any defensive lineman or linebacker ever faced. He used every tactic and technique – and sometimes brute force – to crush the will of the person across the line from him. And took great pride in doing so,” Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter said in a statement. “Yet off the field, he demonstrated a quiet, soft-spoken, and caring nature.

“The Hall extends its thoughts and prayers to CeeCee and Robert Jr. for their loss.”

Brown, an All-American guard at Nebraska who was voted college football’s lineman of the year in 1963, was drafted in the first round in 1964 by both the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and the AFL’s Denver Broncos. Brown chose the Eagles and played in Philadelphia from 1964 to 1968, a time in which he was selected to the Pro Bowl and was named First-Team All-Pro three times.

Nicknamed “The Boomer,” Brown’s philosophy was simple. “I beat on people from the opening kickoff. I want to see results in the fourth quarter,” he once said. “I don’t want them to have as much left. I want them to not be sure they want to keep coming. I try to take a toll on them.”

An aggressive blocker, the 6-4, 280-pound Cleveland, Ohio, native was named All-NFL seven of his 10 seasons, as he went on to play for the Los Angeles Rams from 1969 to 1970, and the Oakland Raiders from 1971 to 1973. Named the NFL/NFC offensive lineman of the year three times, Brown was also chosen to play in six Pro Bowls – three with the Eagles, two with the Rams, and one final time with the Raiders.

In 1969, after five consecutive all-league seasons with the Eagles, Brown was traded to Los Angeles. That year, the Rams’ offensive line set an NFL record for protecting the passer.

“At his best, no one was better than big Bob Brown,” former Rams coach and fellow Hall of Famer George Allen once said.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced that its flag in Canton, Ohio will be flown at half-staff in his honor.

The Brown family said details about a memorial service would be announced later.