Oakland as a World Cup Host? Oakland must act like a team, first.

Oakland as World Cup host? I've received a couple of emails and even wrote a blog post trying to help unblock SMG (Stadium Management Group, which manages the Coliseum for the Oakland / Alameda County Coliseum Authority) from keeping drawings of the Coliseum Complex from the Oakland Redevelopment Agency so they could form a good bid to get the World Cup, but as the person who headed the effort to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland, I've got to give the City of Oakland a kick in the tail for this common, half-hearted effort, starting with Councilmember Larry Reid and working my way down from him.

I think Larry's a great guy and an excellent representative of his district. But on the matter of going after the World Cup, I would think he learned some lessons from our Super Bowl effort, but I guess not. Here's a reminder:

1) Form a sports commission. I still have the rights to the now dormant Oakland Alameda County Sports Commission, which would serve as the staff and contractual home of the sports bid effort. As far as I'm concerned, since I'm not interested in running a sports commission, the City of Oakland can have it and place it in the Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau. But Larry or someone should have called me about it.

2) The Oakland Chamber of Commerce is the worst place to have as the seat of a bid for a sports event. What the heck are they doing in that roll, and not, say, helping the Oakland CVB or an Oakland Sports Commission? The Oakland Chamber has got to stop trying to be the home for events and learn to better partner with other organizations to move the City forward. There's no "I" in team, but the Chamber seems to forget that.

3) Where's the website home for the effort? When I started the Super Bowl: Oakland project, I built - on my own - a website and a giant email chain and that was way back in 1999. Here it is ten years later and the City of Oakland's pitching for an event without a website home? I can't believe it. This is an outrage.

4) Why are only "certain people" involved in this and not an "all hands" effort as is done in other cities and what I tried to do with the Super Bowl? I'm going to write this and the City of Oakland's not going to like it, but if you want to be a winner you've got to learn to talk to everyone, not just some people. The City government is so full of people who have small, silly issues with each other that banding together to accomplish anything large is almost impossible. If they change, Oakland wins.

5) Where's the statement of support from Mayor Dellums? What about a logo? What about a slogan?

I could go on as there's a legion of things not done or done improperly. I'm through giving free advice because even if I did the people on the other end don't know how to implement what I say and are by my experience too prideful to ask beyond an initial contact. 50,000 signatures is very possible, but not the way they're doing going about it and the clock's ticking. Fast.

Oakland has to transform from being a loser city to a winner city. But in order to do that the City of Oakland has to change its culture. A good start would be to not react defensively to my blog post.

Let's see if that's possible.