OAKLAND — Should the Raiders have to tell the world why they want to leave Oakland?

The NFL’s six-page relocation policy seems to say yes — in fact, it requires them to publish their reasons in local newspapers. Confronted with the policy, the St. Louis Rams released their relocation application Tuesday, and it contains plenty of discouraging words about St. Louis as a football market.

But so far, the Raiders have refused to follow suit, and the league is backing them up, saying its policy doesn’t say what it seems to say.

As a majority of NFL owners met Wednesday to discuss the fate of three franchises seeking to move to Los Angeles, the league’s refusal to disclose the relocation bids underscored just how much leeway owners are giving themselves in deciding the matter.

UC Berkeley Law School Professor Stephen Sugarman questioned the NFL’s interpretation of its rules but said that fans and cities such as Oakland had no legal standing to demand the Raiders release their reasons for seeking to leave town.

“The whole idea of having a sensible criteria set out in advance is … to avoid another antitrust battle between the league and the team seeking to relocate — as happened with the Raiders in the past,” he wrote in an email.

Sugarman also said the league had good reason to try to keep private the applications submitted by the Raiders and San Diego Chargers.

“It would be bad for (them) to trash their hometowns and then lose out to (the Rams) in the competition to move to Los Angeles,” he wrote.

The Raiders’ dissatisfaction with Oakland is hardly secret. Team owner Mark Davis has said he wants total control of the 120-acre stadium as a starting point for talks — a condition the city has said it can’t meet because it could imperil the Oakland A’s.

Whether the Raiders’ case for relocation has traction with league owners remains unclear.

After a full day of meetings in New York on Wednesday, the 17 owners making up the NFL’s Stadium, Finance and Los Angeles Opportunities committees said little other than the league will require the Rams, Chargers and Raiders to adhere to several stipulations, including a $550 million relocation fee, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

That is expected to set the stage for a final decision next week when all 32 NFL owners meet in Houston.

“I think everyone’s looking forward to a resolution to this whole process,” Chargers owner Dean Spanos told the Daily News. “(Hopefully), it’ll get done.”

Spanos also hasn’t released the Chargers’ relocation bid, even though the league’s relocation guidelines state that teams must publish notice of their intent to leave in local papers and that the notice “must be accompanied by a ‘statement of reasons’ in support of the move.”

Responding to a request by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Rams released their “statement of reasons” on Tuesday. The 28-page document argued that St. Louis was a subpar football market and that the team’s proposed $1.86 billion stadium in Inglewood would generate more money for the league than a competing Los Angeles-area stadium pitched by the Raiders and Chargers.

The Raiders did not respond to requests Wednesday for their statement, and NFL Executive Vice President Eric Grubman said the league interpreted its rules as only requiring a simple notice about relocation.

“It does not call for publication of the Statement of Reasons or supporting material,” Grubman wrote, declining to state the league’s legal rationale.

The protocols owners are following were established three decades ago and are enshrined in the league charter to put the NFL on better legal footing if a team uses antitrust laws to try to force its way to a new city — as the Raiders did successfully more than 30 years ago.

It sets up a clear process the league and its owners must follow in evaluating relocation bids and working with cities at risk of losing their teams. It allows the owners broad discretion in ruling on relocations. Among the 12 factors that “may” be considered are fan loyalty, the willingness of a city to help pay for a new stadium, and the degree to which a team has “engaged in good faith negotiations.”

And the owners must consider whether the “league’s collective interests” would be advanced by a team move.

That gives them grounds to turn down the $400 million in stadium subsidies being offered by St. Louis to keep the Rams, just as it does to ignore the Raiders’ strong fan support, said Robert Boland, an attorney and professor of sports law and economics at Ohio University.

“You could use this criteria to argue it anyway you want,” he said. “I think that’s by design.”

Contact Matthew Artz at 510-208-6435.