LAS VEGAS -- The private jet had just taken off from Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport when Mark Davis took a glance out the window to his left.
Down below, directly across the street from the airport on Tropicana Avenue in the middle of this gambling mecca, the Oakland Raiders owner spied the 42-acre plot of empty desert that could hold the answer to his franchise’s perilous future.
Davis was silent before closing the window shade, sitting back and taking a deep breath.
Flirtation with Las Vegas as a new home for the Raiders had turned into a full-blown romance a few hours earlier -- during a meeting of the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee on April 28 -- when Davis pledged to give $500 million toward the construction of a $1.