Personally. I'd love to have the Raiders out here  

I know that will never happen, but seriously, Raider Nation is as die hard as Cardinal Nation. The new stadium is outdoors and on the river from looking at the plans. A good time would be had by all!

There is no Raider Nation anymore, Alz. Oh, there are a couple thousand idiots who dress up in their Halloween costumes and go to the stadium eight Sundays a year so they can try to get on television, but the people who started rooting for the Raiders because they were drawn to an organization that could give a middle finger to the establishment and get away with it are gone, driven away by three decades of a combination of an owner who became more concerned with winning in a court room than on a football field, and a vendetta first imposed by a commissioner whose ego far exceeded his intelligence and has been continued by his two equally-inept successors.
The best thing for Mark Davis to do after yet another all-too-predictable anal rape today is fold the team and save their fans - the ones who remember when the phrase "Commitment to Exellence" was a mantra instead of a punchline - from further humiliation.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (1/12/2016 10:48 pm)

artie_fufkin wrote:

There is no Raider Nation anymore, Alz. Oh, there are a couple thousand idiots who dress up in their Halloween costumes and go to the stadium eight Sundays a year so they can try to get on television, but the people who started rooting for the Raiders because they were drawn to an organization that could give a middle finger to the establishment and get away with it are gone, driven away by three decades of a combination of an owner who became more concerned with winning in a court room than on a football field, and a vendetta first imposed by a commissioner whose ego far exceeded his intelligence and has been continued by his two equally-inept successors.
The best thing for Mark Davis to do after yet another all-too-predictable anal rape today is fold the team and save their fans - the ones who remember when the phrase "Commitment to Exellence" was a mantra instead of a punchline - from further humiliation.

Speaking as a former Raiders fan who now considers the NFL just one more overhyped entertainment option - well said.

I think it's amazing how NFL owners are still sticking it to Al Davis, years after his death.

Yeah, but I bet Kroenke could never throw a pigskin a quarter-mile.

tkihshbt wrote:

I think it's amazing how NFL owners are still sticking it to Al Davis, years after his death.

 
The only thing that really bothered me was reading about how the others owners went out of their way to make sure Dean Spanos has a soft landing here.
Who the fuck is Dean Spanos? The son of a billionaire who has probably never lifted anything heavier than a golf club in his entire life. If it wasn't for people like Al Davis believing in the old AFL, there wouldn't have been a football team in San Diego for his daddy to buy and give to him as a plaything.

http://espn.go.com/blog/oakland-raiders/post/_/id/14091/the-late-al-davis-wanted-to-build-on-rams-inglewood-site-but-couldnt-agree-with-nfl

To his dying day in 2011, Al Davis insisted the Los Angeles market belonged to the Raiders. Silver and Black conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this one. Jan. 12, 2016 is the day the son paid for the father’s perceived sins ... the long-lasting feuds and court cases with then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle.“I really believe that Pete wanted the Los Angeles franchise for himself, yeah,” the elder Davis told Ice Cube in his last one-on-one interview for the ESPN Films 30 for 30 documentary “Straight Outta L.A.”

The NFL is worse off without having an Al Davis. Yes, he was a maniac and ran the team in an old-fashioned way, but the NFL doesn't have a single owner who will call the league out when it oversteps its bounds.

Last edited by tkihshbt (1/14/2016 12:15 pm)

I posted this on Facebook yesterday. Some of it duplicates what I wrote here the other night, but I felt the need for a wider-ranging catharsis:

Dear Mark,
I write to you today on behalf of Raider Nation … or what used to be Raider Nation. Those idiots who dress up in Halloween costumes and go to your stadium eight Sundays a year so they can try to get on TV don't represent me, you, your father's spirit or anyone else who was drawn to the Raiders because they liked the notion there was a football team that could give a middle finger to the establishment and get away with it.
I'm asking you … pleading, really … to sell the team. There's no place in the NFL for guys like your father anymore. And we'll get to that in a bit.
But you have to promise to sell to someone who will move the team from Oakland. San Antonio is a nice city, I hear. Or Las Vegas. It's the height of hypocrisy there's no professional sports franchise in Vegas, when all the leagues are jumping into the arms of gambling sites like Draft Kings and Fan Duel. Or St. Louis. Those nice Midwestern people deserved better than a fraud like Stan Kroenke. Or Fargo. I don't care.
And the new owner has to promise to retire the Raiders name forever. The Raiders haven't really been the Raiders for a long time, anyway. The decline probably started when your father traded Snake to Houston for Dan Pastorini. Snake was the only quarterback you wanted to have the ball when you needed a touchdown in the last two minutes. Pastorini was a guy who could throw a football through the hole of a tire from 50 yards during practice, but couldn't hit a wide open Ken Burrough on 3rd-and-10 when it mattered.
I suppose your dad's fatal mistake, ironically, was moving to Los Angeles. That soulless, gelatinous mound of a city was never going to understand or appreciate the Raiders. Sure, Plunkett and the best tandem of cornerbacks in the history of the league won you another championship in L.A., but it wasn't going to last. Rozelle was always going to win. His ego and capacity for vengeance far exceeded his intelligence and vision. No matter how many times your dad beat the league in court, Rozelle was ultimately going to bury him. That should have been clear when Rozelle wouldn't let him trade up with the Bears to draft Elway (how much fun would THAT have been?) in '83.
And your dad should have known it wasn't going to get any better when Rozelle was succeeded by a mannequin who measured the success of the league only by the width of his wallet. Now the league is run by an anvil-headed dolt who can't decide between paper and plastic at the grocery store.
Goodell and those 31 other people in that room last night weren't there to help you. They're not football guys, like your dad was. They made their money selling cardboard boxes or electronic billboards or wallpaper to old ladies. They only see a trough of cash in the second-largest market in the country.
So, please, Mark, sell the team. On behalf of all of us who remember when "Commitment to Excellence" was a mantra and not a punchline.
Oh, and as an aside, you might want to use all the dough you're going to get to pay more than $8 for your next haircut. The Bucky Larson look didn't work, even for Bucky Larson.