Scott McKibben is a friend of mine and a good man. Let’s get that out of the way. In fact, he’s better than some people who have written negative things about him, including one person who once drunkenly approached me at The Alley Cat Bar in Oakland when I was with my friend, and angrily and stupidly asked “Does she know you’re making a video of her?”, as I was vlogging her singing so wonderfully.
The white male reporter who did that really just had an issue with the fact that she was white and me, black. That’s your media, Oakland – at least those who aren’t me. Anyway, it’s types like that who delighted in Scott’s brief fall from grace.
The fact of the matter is that Scott McKibben remains the best executive the Coliseum Joint Powers Authority ever had. On top of getting the Oakland Raiders to agree to a record level of rent payments after decades of paying comparatively next to nothing, and putting the JPA from the financial red to the financial black, the former head of The Rose Bowl managed to save football in Oakland, after the Silver and Black relocated to Las Vegas.
And let’s get this out of the way, before we go there: Scott McKibben was accused of a crime of violating an obscure conflict of interest law that he was never told about by the Coliseum JPA Board, and would not have ran up against had the Coliseum JPA Board not encouraged and approved his action in landing the $4 million Ring Central naming rights deal.
Scott figured that since the Coliseum JPA normally paid out a fee to its marketing consultants, and he was a contract consultant to the JPA, he deserved one too. Indeed, that deal was much better than any one had a right to expect to get with two professional sports teams on the way out of the door. Now, Scott should have taken the matter to the JPA rather than Ring Central, but one thing’s clear: neither party was a friend to him. Scott never got a dime of the $50,000 he sought but he did get a lot of headaches. The JPA could have kept the matter in-house, but they did not, and the rest is another sad tale of how Oakland never seems to handle its sports business the right way.
One would think that stopped Scott from moving forward in Oakland, but it did not. In trying to get the Indoor Football League to bring a team to the Coliseum, Scott found himself without his job at the Coliseum. But he so impressed Roi Choi and former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch, the owners of the Oakland Franchise, that he wound up being the organization’s president.
As Oakland Panthers President, Scott was in the perfect position to make sure the team played in Oakland, and at the Oakland Coliseum. And that’s what he did. The only thing slowing the Oakland Panthers debut at the Coliseum Arena was a little thing called The Pandemic. But when the Oakland Panthers do get their chance to have a full season in 2022, and at the Coliseum Arena, do not forget that football will be back in Oakland.
And unless you have this idea that the Oakland Panthers could not play anywhere else, look, the team was courted by the San Jose SAP Center Indoor Arena. But Scott did not budge: the Oakland Panthers are in Oakland. You should thank Scott McKibben,
Stay tuned.