The Stadium Ruined By Compromises - Oakland Coliseum

Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum is the aging home to the MLB’s Oakland Athletics and the former home of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders. The stadium opened on September 18, 1966 with an Oakland Raiders football game. The Raider’s roommates, the Oakland Athletics, would move in beginning in the 1968 season.
The complex itself was built for both an NFL team and an MLB from the beginning. As early as 1961 the American League indicated that Oakland was a prime contender for an expansion team. The Raiders were also founded around this time in 1960 and had no permanent home. While they were temporarily playing in various stadiums in the area, plans for the coliseum were pushed ahead to insure the team had a venue up to modern standards for features and capacity. $25 million dollars was set aside for the project, when adjusted for inflation this is an absolutely massive $230 million dollars.
Construction would soon start in the spring of 1962, and things did not go smoothly. Various legal battles around the stadium and other construction delays caused the original design to be simplified to stay in budget. The opening day capacity was set at around 54,000 seats. For baseball the capacity dropped to 50,000 seats. The stadium initially had a positive reception, but only 20 years later tragedy would strike.
In 1982 after years of demands to upgrade the then 20 year old Coliseum, the Raiders left for Los Angeles leaving the Athletics as the only professional team playing in the Coliseum. The connection between Oakland and the Raiders wasn’t completely severed, as they would move back 13 years later when Oakland city leaders finally agreed to update the aging facility. Part of these upgrades was to add a massive upper deck to the stadium that would soon be lovingly nicknamed Mount Davis after the late team owner Al Davis. The Mount Davis addition destroyed any notion of the stadium even pretending to look like a baseball stadium, with Athletics fans decrying the addition. The massive addition cost $500 million dollars, and was not paid off until 2015. This sum is incredible when you think the stadium had only cost $25 million dollars to build only 30 years prior at that point. Adding to the criticism, the city of Oakland even had to lay off police officers in order to help pay for the construction.
The Athletics and Raiders seemed to regret the addition of Mount Davis as they were both soon covering the seats with tarps to artificially reduce capacity and avoid local TV blackouts.
Although the stadium was well received initially, well enough to lure an MLB team from Kansas City to Oakland anyway, the problems in later years soon began to arise. When you build a stadium for both football and baseball there are going to be compromises. These compromises became apparent very quickly. Whether it was the large foul areas for the Athletics games, or the NFL’s least number of seats in later years, the criticism started to mount. One sports writer even noted that “the Coliseum is baseball’s last dive bar”. Oakland Coliseum was the stadium people loved to hate.
By the 2010s, the lack of investment in Oakland Stadium was not only becoming an issue for both teams, but also a safety issue to the general public. On June 16, 2013 a large sewage backup occurred with the backup causing puddles of sewage to leak into offices, team showers, and even the training rooms. The Athletics and Mariners teams were forced to share the Raiders football locker room, which luckily was spared from the issue. Food service areas also experienced issues related to the sewage backup, sparking concerns of possible E. coli in food.
In 2014 the stadium authority finally agreed to upgrade the Coliseum with new scoreboards to be installed in both outfields, and new updated ribbon information boards. Other additions came in 2016 when the Athletics built a new plaza for food trucks and lawn games called Championship Plaza. Although the Athletics were working to make the Coliseum viable, the Raiders had other plans.
After initially announcing plans to move back to Los Angeles in a shared stadium with the Chargers, the Raiders eventually landed on a plan to move to Las Vegas. This story is covered in the Allegiant Stadium episode of the Archive of Everything. The Raiders final game at the Coliseum was a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. As the Raiders stepped off the field for the last time, they were booed by their former home fans. The Athletics continue to remain committed to Oakland, although they are working with the city for a replacement for the Coliseum.
Oakland Coliseum is truly an interesting story. Its a story of compromises, botched renovations, but at the heart of it a glowing fan base that was known for their passion and animosity towards visiting teams.
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