OAKLAND, Calif.— No resident of apountry is ever supposed to admit this, but we love the Raiders, all the way to the soul of the stinking Black Hole. We love that Oakland’s franchise has risen from the dead after the deaths of Dirty Al and the Snake.
Football is way more fun when we can define the rivalry with the Raid-uhs in a single word: hate.
“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Broncos coach Gary Kubiak, refusing to concede there’s real hate between Denver and Oakland. “You play everybody in this league. Thatap a strong word.”
But whatap wrong with two NFL teams that really don’t like each other, especially when the league is searching for explanations for a 10 percent decline in television ratings? I would argue the primary reason for growing dissatisfaction with the product runs deeper than Colin Kaepernick’s controversial national anthem protest, the short-attention span of a social-media generation, team loyalty divided by fantasy football and the obvious fact the Chicago Cubs are way more lovable as World Series winners than the Cleveland Browns will ever be as perennial losers.
What the No Fun League needs is more Black Hole and less Roger Goodell, the commissioner who has slowly ripped the soul out of the game America loves best.
“The league isn’t fun anymore,” Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman declared last week, in a rant that reverberated throughout NFL nation. “Every other league, you see the players have a good time. Itap a game. This isn’t politics. This isn’t justice. This is entertainment. And they’re no longer allowing the players to entertain. They’re no longer allowing players to show any kind of personality, any kind of uniqueness, any individuality. They want to control the product.”
The NFL is played for the benefit of the corporate suits that ante up for big-money sponsorships and the club-level folks who seem to have a difficult time pulling themselves away from the beef-carving table to actually go out in the stadium and cheer.
The NFL is now a brand rather than a game. I get it. The NFL wants to be Starbucks. But I drink my latte for the caffeine, and I watch football for the violence. When San Diego safety Dwight Lowery backed off Emmanuel Sanders instead of knocking his block off as the Denver receiver made a spectacular, 37-yard diving catch, I could hear late Raiders owner Al Davis cursing from the Great Beyond. The league has gone soft.
Yes, the Oakland Coliseum is a dump. But the Black Hole is the best dive bar in the NFL. It is kicking up dust in the infield dirt and the ghost of Ken Stabler flipping the bird. Itap the smell of stale beer and fans that wear costumes straight out of a “Mad Max” movie.
I love the Black Hole because it doesn’t try to be Disneyland. The NFL is all about keeping your jersey tucked in. Jesta Raider, a die-hard Oakland fan who shows up to games dressed like the joker from a goth deck of cards, is all about dancing like nobody’s watching.
Please, don’t let the Raiders bolt Oakland for all the money in Las Vegas.
Maybe the move sounds good in theory. But don’t tell me the roots will run as deep in the Nevada desert as they do in Oakland, a city that really needs the NFL. If Cowboys owner Jerry Jones likes the idea of moving the Raiders, count me out. Jones is all about the money. The Raiders in Vegas, however, would feel plastic, as fake as everything on the strip from that hokey Eiffel Tower replica to a showgirl’s outrageously oversized eyelashes.
Can the NFL stop counting its money long enough to preserve its soul?
Save the Black Hole.
