Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf returned from her whirlwind trip to New York City, during which she met with NFL honchos, with her game face on.

On Thursday, which also happened to be her 50th birthday, Schaaf did her best to downplay the bad news that had deflated and infuriated East Bay Raider Nation fans desperate to keep the team in Oakland. That would be the public announcement — hours before the mayor’s presentation touting Oakland as the best market for the Raiders and the NFL — that the team’s ownership had brought on The Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger to lead their efforts to build a stadium with the San Diego Chargers in Carson. Some incensed Raiders fans took out their anger on poor Mickey Mouse. A cruel caricature on a Facebook fan page depicts the beloved Disney character face down in a mousetrap with the caption, “Time to snap the trap on this Rat!”

Schaaf, however, was unflappable when reporters at a City Hall news conference questioned her about the Iger announcement and its bad timing for Oakland. “I am staying focused on getting a deal done in Oakland,” Schaaf said. “I cannot let the Los Angeles story distract me from my goals.”

NFL Executive Vice President Eric Grubman had effusive praise for the Oakland mayor’s promotion of the East Bay as a booming market capable of supporting an NFL team. But the best PowerPoint in the world can’t close the $400 million gap between what Oakland needs for a proposed $900 million stadium and what it has. Nor does it alter Raiders owner Mark Davis’ latest push to get out of Dodge.

The pure and simple fact is, even if the Raiders wanted to stay in the East Bay, Oakland has no concrete stadium plan to put forward. City of Oakland and Alameda County officials spent more than a year on Coliseum City. That was the ambitious — or, depending on whom you asked, pie-in-the-sky — proposal to construct a new football stadium within the Coliseum Complex and redevelop 100 surrounding acres with homes, offices and shops. Neither the Raiders nor the A’s wanted any part of it. And in September, city and county officials dumped San Diego businessman Floyd Kephart, the person who was supposed to pull it all together.

Now, the clock is ticking. The NFL is expected to begin accepting applications from teams that want to move to another market Jan. 1. The league owners will then make their relocation decisions sometime next year.

To use a football analogy, it’s under the two-minute warning and Oakland is deep in its own backfield, praying for a Hail Mary.

The NFL has told Oakland to return with a real plan that demonstrates how the numbers for a new stadium will pencil out. Schaaf said she’s optimistic Oakland can still find a way to keep the Raiders.

But the reality is Oakland faces huge hurdles. Schaaf remains adamant — and many residents support her — that Oakland will not provide a direct public subsidy for a new stadium like some other cities desperate for a professional football team.

Oakland and Alameda County already have been down that treacherous road. Many taxpayers are fuming over the $22 million a year in public debt payments stemming from the expansion of the Coliseum and other sweeteners to lure the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995. That included the addition of Mount Davis, the 11,000-seat top deck that the team doesn’t even use. If the Raiders were to turn around and go back to Southern California, taxpayers will still be on the hook for that debt until 2026.

At her presentation before the NFL, Schaaf floated the idea of using lease-revenue bonds and other methods to finance the stadium that don’t involve an outright public subsidy. The city also has offered to spend $120 million on infrastructure upgrades around the Coliseum site, but that hasn’t been enough of an incentive for the team ownership.

Furthermore, the Los Angeles area is a far more lucrative market for football teams to sell luxury suites and personal seat licenses, which Oakland can do nothing about.

A recent Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce poll found that keeping the sports teams ranked the lowest priority among 16 issues facing Oakland voters. People were more concerned about reducing crime, building more housing, and creating better jobs, among other issues.

Oakland officials should try everything to keep the team, within reason. But they absolutely cannot allow the Raiders story to distract them from more pressing matters such as the public safety plan Schaaf promised before the end of the year.

Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Thursday and Sunday. Contact her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com, or follow her at Twitter.com/tammerlin.