Tom Hanks is intent on ignoring the NFL when the Raiders set up shop in Vegas. The Hollywood star was at a charity event in San Francisco on Monday night and spoke out about the Oakland Raiders and their plans to move to Las Vegas in two years. Hanks’ solution to Oakland losing its football team? Stop watching the league that let it happen.
“When the Raiders leave, I am going on an NFL moratorium for two years.
“You cannot take the Silver and Black, put them in an air-conditioned dome in the desert, make them play on artificial turf within a stone’s throw of the fountains of Caesar’s Palace, and call them the Raiders.
Hanks also revealed that he’s stadium financing woke, which means he also finds it ridiculous that rich people ask ordinary folks for a handout to build billion-dollar palaces to football.
“Here’s the thing I don’t quite understand. And I’m not trying to — this isn’t one of the (many) causes I’m fighting for. I’m just thinking as a fan: It’s a billion-dollar industry, they have billion-dollar TV contracts. All the owners are billionaires. And yet when they want to build a stadium they’re going to use for 10 weeks out of the year, they expect the city taxpayers to buy the building.
It’s clear that Larry Crowne over here is right about a lot of things in this rant, and the next two years in Oakland are going to be very interesting. Perhaps Marshawn Lynch’s return to football covers some of the awkwardness up, and many think Raiders fans are unlikely to abandon the team once they move into the desert. But Hanks is right to be upset about a bad haircut moving his inheritance out of town because he couldn’t bilk taxpayers as thoroughly as he’d have liked.
Hanks was full of Bay Area pride at the event this week. He even got in a crack about the former Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley, the “bastard” who pushed for the American League to add the designated hitter. Hanks said the one (not so) silver lining to losing the Raiders is that the Athletics may finally get a new stadium, but I bet he won’t be happy if taxpayers foot the bill for most of that, either.
(Via Bleacher Report)
