The Raiders have always been my favorite team growing up. I have so many fond memories of the team, not just when they were winning, but also when they have been down in the dumps.

I am a die-hard fan, not one of those bandwagon followers who claim to be fans of a team just because they are good.

Mark Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders, who has been rumored for a few years to be looking to relocate the team, and Alex Spanos, the owner of the San Diego Chargers as well as Stan Kroenke, owner of the Rams filed for relocation to Los Angeles in January.

According to multiple reports, including from ESPN, NFL owners voted during a meeting on Jan. 12 to approve the Rams relocation to LA but denied the requests made by the Raiders and the Chargers.

As a result, Davis and the owners of the Oakland Coliseum recently finalized a one-year lease for the team to stay in Oakland for the 2016 season, according to reports by the NFL’s official website, but that hasn’t prevented Davis from continuing to search for other places to relocate the team.

He has said in the past that he would prefer to stay in Oakland, but only if he could get the financing. The problem is that he wants the financing done by the taxpayers of Oakland, and he is threatening to move the team if he doesn’t get it.

Think about how absurd it is for the fans to have to shoulder the burden of a new stadium. Other types of businesses, like car dealerships or grocery stores for example, do not ask the city to pay for their facilities where they conduct business, so why should fans have to pay for a new sports stadium?

I really would love to have the team stay in Oakland permanently, but I also understand that professional sports is a business, and business involves negotiations, and with that comes different negotiation tactics.

Threatening to take away a team from its loyal fans is going too far. Oakland Raiders fans have been through very much over the last 12 years. Ever since the Raiders lost Super Bowl 37 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team has been a moribund franchise.

They haven’t registered a single winning season since that Super Bowl loss, their best finish being two 8-8 seasons in 2010 and 2011. Yet the fans have supported the Raiders as if they were a very good team.

Owners  can’t cry financial hardship as a reason for not being able to finance their own stadium. CNN Money reports that the NFL generated over $12 billion dollars in revenue during the 2014-15 season, and that revenue is shared amongst all owners in the league.

Despite state-of-the-art sports complexes costing exorbitant amounts of money, there is no doubt that any NFL team could build their own stadium. That is very unlikely to happen because there are precedents where cities have been threatened into building stadiums, but there has to be a fair middle ground between Oakland and the Raiders.

If that doesn’t happen, it will lead to more teams filing for relocation and doing it more often, and that is bad for the fans. After all, the fans are what make the game; they are the ones who put support the teams.