Amy Trask believes door not closed on Raiders shared stadium with 49ers

In a recent interview with Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle, Raiders owner Mark Davis said progress in talks of a new stadium in Oakland are not moving forward as he had hoped.

"We will play in the Coliseum next year. But there's been no progress," said Davis. "I had high hopes when Colony Capital came in. I still do have hopes, but they're not as high because I haven't really heard anything positive from either group. It's gone silent again. We have to get something done.

"This one-year extension is really based on the hope that Colony Capital can set something done. I don't want to call it a last-ditch effort, but it does seem to be the last chance that Oakland is going to get."

If not Oakland, then where could the Raiders play? The elephant in the room is of course Los Angeles where Davis could see a better chance at getting the shiny new stadium he desires. But there are other options that wouldn't involve uprooting the team completely from the Bay Area. One such option in sharing a stadium with the 49ers in their shiny new Santa Clara stadium.

That is an option Mark Davis has consistently said he doesn't want to explore. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is a complete non-option.

Raiders former CEO, Amy Trask spoke with Yahoo Sports this week. Few people would know more about the realities of Bay Area sports and the Raiders than she would and she sees the option of a shared stadium very much still in play.

"I don't think the door is closed," said Trask. "I don't think the door can be fully closed given the requirement that the stadium be built with another team sharing it in mind."

The big issues as Trask explains is the ability for the Bay Area to support the Raiders in a new stadium especially considering a team and its stadium rely heavily on corporate dollars.

"I think another hurdle is establishing whether this corporate, this business community will support roughly 2 billion dollars of new football infrastructure. And you add to that whatever the Warriors want to do and the A's want to do, that's a lot of infrastructure to support."

The bottom line is always the bottom line. It's for these reasons Trask sees a shared stadium as an option. It would fall into the league mandated 75 mile radius which would allow the team to remain the Oakland Raiders.

"Doors are never closed in business, they really aren't and they should never be fully closed. So, while it's not ideal for the Raiders, Mark has stated that, look there's going to be a brand new stadium, state of the art in every regard. That stadium is magnificent. What Jed York and Hanna Gordon and Larry McNeil have accomplished is phenomenal and it's only 32 miles away. So, if Oakland can't overcome its hurdles, it is within that 75 mile radius."

This time next year, the lease of the coliseum will be up and Mark Davis will have a decision to make. He won't put off that decision again with another one-year extension with the coliseum. At that time, if the Raiders are staying, Levi's Stadium (has a nice ring to it, if you ask me) must be considered a viable alternative to the team heading back to Los Angeles.

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