Comforting words for Raiders fans
The Oakland Raiders are leaving Oakland again. After the failure of their owner’s latest attempt to shake down Oakland taxpayers for a massive new stadium project, the Raiders are packing their bags and jetting off to Las Vegas, laughing at the jilted fans they’ve left behind.
They have no idea what they’re doing. They’re leaving behind the most passionate — and unforgiving — fans in the business.
I remember the first time I learned about the Raiders’ betrayal of their Bay Area fan base. I was a middle school student in San Jose, and we were instructed to welcome a new student from Los Angeles. Let’s call him Esteban.
Esteban decided it was a fine idea for him to wear a Los Angeles Raiders jacket to school.
This was in the early 1990s, toward the end of the Raiders’ tenure in Los Angeles. The sting of the Raiders’ 1982 decision to leave Oakland in the lurch should have settled down by this point.
The students at my middle school had no business carrying this particular grudge, anyway. Not one of us was old enough to remember the team being in Oakland in the first place.
So any grudges these students carried had to be atavistic — the true property of their fathers and uncles and older brothers. These men had lovingly passed on the stores of ardent fury they’d nurtured for the Raiders since the team had abandoned its loyal, salt-of-theearth Bay Area fan base in favor of Los Angeles’ palm trees and superstars. The grievances were secondhand at best. And yet. A few of the nicer children at my school mentioned to Esteban that he might want to wear a different jacket to school. He laughed them off. Several days later, Esteban was welcomed to my school by a few of the less-nice children. They beat him up during lunch hour.
I wish I could tell you that I swooped in for the rescue, but this was middle school, not a movie. I watched for a heartbreaking moment, shook my head, and turned in the direction of a nearby classroom like the 12-year-old tattletale I was.
I provided that room’s presiding adult with an anonymous tip that “something not good” was taking place outside. Then I strolled off to the library, contemplating the two crucial lessons I continue to carry with me to this day.
One: When you move to a new city, always listen to those natives who are generous enough to share their tips about appropriate behavior.
Two: There’s never any good reason to taunt Oakland Raiders fans.
Are you listening, Mark Davis?
Yes, I’m putting the blame on Raiders owner Davis — not Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. Many fans have grown so accustomed to the NFL’s bad behavior — the league operates like an organized-crime syndicate, not a business — that they’re angry at Schaaf for standing up to an extortion attempt, instead of Davis for his unabashed greed.
But if the first step in any healing process is awareness, then Raiders fans are going to have to sit with some honest hurt about how this happened and what it means for the Bay Area’s future.
How this happened is something for Raiders fans to feel good about. They should be proud Oakland’s mayor insisted on preserving tax money for that city’s schools and roads and services, instead of subsidizing the NFL —an organization that raked in $13 billion in 2016.
Every single mayor who stands up to the NFL diminishes the league’s power to engage in chicanery. In the long run, that’s good news for everyone.
But in the short run, this means pain.
To Bay Area fans, the Raiders were far more than a football team. The Raiders were the Bay Area’s besieged working class — their players denigrated by other teams as thugs and fighters, their legendary leader a bare-knuckled rule-breaker by the name of Al Davis.
Raider Nation has provided a home for those in the Bay Area who don’t have college degrees. For everyone who drinks Bud Light instead of $15 cocktails. The Raiders are the team for people who work too hard all week and want to dance at the club on Friday night, and these people have been under siege in the Bay Area for a long time.
For these fans, to watch the Raiders leave is to question whether the Bay Area still has any room for them.
The prognosis is dire, and the Raiders’ defection is just one more sign of the obvious. I wish I had better news for Raiders fans, but the truth is that even Oakland — with its shiny new condos and expensive pizzerias and hipster reputation — doesn’t have much room for them anymore.
If there’s a silver lining for Raiders fans, it’s that there are ways to preserve their spirits without a sports team.
Raider Nation is an incredible force of community and identity, so why not channel that energy into doing positive things together while Mark Davis chases rainbows in Las Vegas?
Vegas fans have nothing on you, and you know it. So take care of each other, and the Raiders might be back before you know it.