Raiders owner Mark Davis has good poker face if he’s using Las Vegas for leverage

Maybe we should be waiting for a sign of deeper significance. Maybe we should stand on those 42 acres near UNLV to see if anyone has built a small hovel with a chimney and watch for silver and black smoke rising upward as tribute to the Raiders and their reported deep interest in making Las Vegas home.

How much fire is behind it?

It’s a fair question, considering Mark Davis has played this get-out-of-Northern-California card more than once. But say this for the Oakland Raiders owner: If he is indeed using Las Vegas and a proposed $1.3 billion stadium in the Strip resort corridor as a way to land a palace to replace the ramshackle site that is O.co Coliseum, he sure is keeping a straight face about things.

There are a few hints, however, that point to Davis believing Las Vegas is a viable option for his NFL franchise should a stadium be built here.

For one, he keeps showing up.

Davis has visited the proposed stadium site and toured Sam Boyd Stadium to see if it could serve as a temporary home. As long as he doesn’t reach out to former UNLV football coach Mike Sanford for an opinion on the latter, there is a good chance he could find the home of Rebels football a suitable short-term option while a new stadium is built.

Hopefully, very short term.

Now, there is this: The Review-Journal reported Tuesday that Davis will appear at the April 28 meeting of the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee at UNLV, where he would address the stadium plan and potentially moving his team to Las Vegas.

Efforts to reach Davis for comment this week were unsuccessful.

Officials in Oakland seem to have neither the funds nor the desire to help Davis build a new stadium. Their hard-line stance against subsidizing such a venture to the tune of more than $400 million isn’t going to soften anytime soon. Apparently, the O.co Coliseum has endured sewage issues that make Cashman Field resemble the Palace of Versailles, and yet Oakland still hasn’t tiptoed through the muck to aid Davis.

“The (Oakland A’s) also want out of the coliseum, and they don’t get along with the Raiders at all,” said Joe Fortenbaugh, morning drive host on 95.7 The Game in the Bay Area, flagship station for, among others, the A’s and Raiders. “The city would much rather invest in a stadium that would offer 81 home baseball games and all the concerts and other events that would happen in it than two exhibition and eight regular-season NFL games. At the end of the day, the city of Oakland doesn’t give a damn about the Raiders.

“But the problem is, Mark Davis is notorious for shopping his team like this. He has done it with Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Diego, now Las Vegas. He has bluffed so many times.”

But if Oakland won’t bite on his threats to move and refuses to help finance a stadium, wouldn’t that eventually lead to Davis departing, and wouldn’t Las Vegas then become his primary target?

Maybe. First, the 65,000-seat stadium proposed by Las Vegas Sands Corp. through a public-private partnership would need to become reality. There is also Los Angeles and the NFL to consider.

If the Chargers are able to secure a new stadium in San Diego — although there are more issues with getting such a proposal passed by voters than there are fish tacos in the world — that would allow Davis to partner with the Rams in Los Angeles, where the Raiders played from 1982 to 1994 and still maintain a large fan base.

Also, how much should we read into NFL commissioner Roger Goodell last month giving what was seen as a soft go-ahead for Davis to continue exploring his interest in Las Vegas? The league has forever owned a non-Vegas stance because of Nevada’s legal sports betting, but it’s also true that a group of relatively new-age billionaire owners might see things differently and vote in favor of such relocation.

After all, how many times can they tell one of their own “no” — even a bottom-tiered member such as Davis?

So this is what we have: An owner (Davis) of a team (Raiders) set to play the 2016 season in a city (Oakland) that doesn’t seem interested at all in helping pay for a new stadium, and another city (Las Vegas) that is moving full-speed ahead on getting its proposal for one approved.

In this way, Las Vegas is ahead of the game.

But whether a second NFL team moves to Los Angeles, whether there are enough owners who would approve a Raiders move to Las Vegas, and whether Davis is completely serious about relocating here or is just playing the leverage card, only time will reveal.

Silver and black smoke is rising near the Strip, with national media reporting Davis’ interest in Las Vegas and his expected address here in two weeks. A lot of sources are suggesting this town is very much at the center of his long-term vision for the Raiders.

All we need now is the fire.

Well, and that small part about a stadium actually being built on those 42 acres near UNLV.

The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney