Better to Reign in Hell

by Jim Miller

  Along with passionate identification with the team and its fan community usually comes hostility toward the other team and/or its fans. As Dunning notes, “It is easy to observe how frequently the very constitution of ‘we groups’ and their continuation over time seem to depend on the regular expression of hostility towards and even actual combat with members of ‘they groups.’” The result of this is that “patterns of conflict appear to arise regularly in conjunction with this basic form of human bonding.” In the vast majority of cases, the hostility of Raiders fans is limited to playful rivalry, heckling, and or some symbolic form of defamation. Fans in the Black Hole have been known to dress a blow-up doll in the jersey of a particularly loathed opposing player and pig roasting tailgaters at times robe the unfortunate swine in Broncos or 49ers wear.18

  In a small minority of cases, fan rivalry escalates into violence that, as we shall see in later chapters, is frequently tied to insults that speak to identity. For instance, at a 1997 Raiders–Chargers game we attended in San Diego, the verbal sparring in the cheap seats was rowdy, profane, but harmless (“Chargers suck!” “Fuck the Raiders,” etc.), until a Chargers fan sitting in front of six Raiders fans went from “fucking Raiders fans” to “low-class Mexican scum Raider fans.” That transgression earned him a brief flight down the stairs. Fortunately for the racist Bolts fan, he emerged bruised but otherwise intact and, amazingly, the security guard ejected him rather than the Raiders fan who had hurled him halfway down the view section. The man and his friends who tossed the Chargers rooter were not gang members or criminal deviants, but rather carpenters from San Jose. I had spoken with them before the game and learned that they traveled to nearly every Raiders road game in the western United States, spending a healthy chunk of their income to do so. Hence, insulting the Raiders, already an integral part of their self-identification, was bad, but adding the racial slur made it a total assault on their identity—enough to turn a man who had struck me as a pretty nice, even gracious guy to an act of fairly extreme violence. What the incident illustrates is how when deeply felt fan identity is mixed with other forms of identity (race, class, region), the result can be explosive. “Raiders suck,” can quickly get translated into “you suck,” and in some cases it is unwise to cross that line.

  It’s All about Al

  Raiders fans are beyond description, literally, in some cases. They are wild and crazy, with outrageous costumes. They are safe and sane, Dockers and polo shirt types who happen to follow one of the unique organizations of sport.... And, yes, most of them are employed, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford the costs.... I grew up in Oakland, a Raiders fan. It is different now, a different fan base and a different level of devotion. Most were ticked off when Al moved the team to L.A., but some drove south for the games. When the team returned, it had to rebuild the loyalty. Mistrust remains.

  Monte Poole, Oakland Tribune

  Just as imagined political communities transcend “actual inequality and exploitation,” Raider Nation manages to do so as well. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this is the relationship between the fans and the Raiders organization. How, as one Cleveland Browns fan asked me in the course of my research, can Raiders fans forgive Al Davis? “He screwed them in Oakland and Los Angeles and now he’s suing the city of Oakland. If [Cleveland owner] Art Modell had tried to come back to town along with the Browns, his life would have been in danger. Are Raiders fans just stupid or what?” The answer to this query is no, Raiders fans are no dumber than any other average sports fan who is willing to help further enrich millionaires who care more about luxury box revenues and their bottom line than about their fans or their host cities.

  A serious look at professional sports organizations would not find a single franchise that puts loyalty to community over profit. As sports journalist Mel Durslag put it, “These guys aren’t Eagle Scouts . . . You’re dealing with cutthroat guys.”19 Indeed, decades before the Raiders left Oakland, Walter O’Malley crushed Brooklyn Dodgers fans by moving the storied team to Los Angeles. Of the Bay Area teams, the Giants, Athletics, and Warriors were all “relocated” from the East Coast and the Midwest. While Davis’s heavily contested antitrust court victory and subsequent relocation are the most controversial example, numerous other National Football League teams have happily abandoned their hometowns as well (the St. Louis Cardinals for Phoenix, the Los Angeles Rams for Anaheim and then St. Louis, the Baltimore Colts for Indianapolis, the Cleveland Browns for Baltimore, the Houston Oilers for Tennessee, New York Giants for New Jersey, and the Dallas Cowboys for Irving, as well as a number of moves from old to new stadiums within the same city). As of this writing, even the Raiders’ bitter gridiron and courtroom archrivals, the San Diego Chargers, are using the threat of a move back to their original home in Los Angeles as leverage for a better deal from the city of San Diego. And it’s not just in the world of sports where loyal consumers and employees get screwed. In the new Gilded Age of Enron, there is hardly an area of American life where one’s activities as a consumer do not inspire some form of cognitive dissonance. Sport is simply another part of our increasingly “cutthroat” economy, but many fans cling to the illusion that, except for “bad apples” like Davis, our games are somehow free from the taint of ruthless commerce. Other fans react ambivalently, cynically, or contemplate rejecting sports altogether.

  Al Davis’s decision to move the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles in 1982 was a crushing blow to the city, and to hard-core Raiders fans in particular. The reaction was frequently angry. As John Matuszak remembered it:In Oakland, where the fans had embraced the team so warmly for so many years, it was an ugly time to be a Raider. People wore t-shirts that said FUCK THE RAIDERS and OAKLAND TRAITORS. The bolder ones shouted obscenities at us when they saw us on the street. Oakland fans turned on the Raiders and I don’t blame them. They had been the greatest fans in the world, and now they felt like their team was getting stolen from them.

  San Francisco Chronicle reporter Glenn Dickey recounts the remarkable fan protest at a December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day) Monday-night game where, “To protest the imminent move to Los Angeles, a large segment of the crowd—as much as a fourth of it—stayed out of the stadium for the first five minutes of the game. (One distraught fan brought a banner that read: WILL ROGERS NEVER MET AL DAVIS.)” Despite the large number of absent fans, Dickey notes that “the ABC-TV crew did not mention the fans’ protest, nor did the cameras pan over the empty seats in the stadium.” Former Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett also remembers the boycott and adds that “at the two-minute warnings, the fans held up signs which had been passed out: ‘Save Our Raiders.’ The entire stadium looked like one big card stunt.” Plunkett’s sympathy with the fans was lukewarm, however, as he surmised that “the Raider fans deserve a team—not necessarily the Raiders.” The Oakland Tribune’s Dave Newhouse, on the other hand, sided with the protesting fans, bemoaned Al Davis’s “homicidal heart” and fumed, “Kick Al Davis out of football for good.” In Raiders Forever, John Lombardo observes that “no one could have predicted that the team and the city would perfectly complement each other—a bond shattered when Al Davis dumped Oakland for Los Angeles in 1982, only to return in 1995.”20

  Lombardo, along with a good number of other Davis critics, argues that “Davis successfully sued the NFL for antitrust violations, winning the right to move the team to Los Angeles but tearing out the heart of the team’s image.” Davis’s true feelings on the matter remain a mystery. After winning the legal battle that cleared the way for the Raiders’ move to Los Angeles he said, “I don’t look at it as a victory. I’m not emotionally elated. I have a lot of love for the fans in Oakland. The people are excellent, the community is excellent. They [the Coliseum Board] just ruined it; they destroyed it.” Interestingly, a few years earlier in a bizarre Inside Sports interview, Davis’s thoughts about “love” were somewhat different, “I only want to be loved by certain people—my players, the people I live with. No, not by humanity.
I push it away because I don’t need it. Maybe everyone else should work at it, but we need a few people to lead and dominate and get things done. I feel the role of love belongs to other people.”21

  Despite a Super Bowl victory in 1984 and a handful of playoff appearances in subsequent years, Davis began squabbling with the city of Los Angeles and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum Commission about luxury boxes and the team failed to emerge as the city’s favorite. When rumors began to fly about the Raiders’ possible return to Oakland in 1990, a Los Angeles Times poll placed the Raiders fifth in popularity among L.A.’s pro teams, and a poll in the Oakland Tribune showed that only 17 percent of Oakland residents thought it was “very important” that the Raiders return to the city out of the 39 percent calling it important. All the legal and political wrangling had clearly taken a toll on fan support. After negotiations to return the team to Oakland failed, loyal fans held public burnings of Raiders memorabilia.22 When the team finally did return to Oakland in 1995 after the long-sought L.A. luxury boxes did not materialize, many observers were skeptical. In 2001, Lombardo noted the possibility of history repeating itself a third time:Once again Davis is disenchanted with Oakland. He is suing city officials for what he claims is lost season-ticket revenue and he wants to make more money through the already over-marketed NFL, catering now to the well-heeled fan willing to shell out big dollars for club seats, personal seat licenses, and luxury suites—all designed to make owners even richer. Raiders fans in Oakland haven’t responded. The city lacks a substantial corporate base to financially support the Raiders. Home games in the Coliseum don’t sell out, causing the Raiders to black-out local telecasts of their home games. The fans who’ve already been burned by Davis and face new threats that the team will relocate have put even more distance between themselves and the great teams of the 1970s.23

  Disillusioned with Oakland for a second time, Al Davis went to court to seek recompense from his betrayers for the sellout crowds that he claims were promised him. Davis’s testimony during the summer 2003 trial of the Raiders’ $1.1 billion fraud lawsuit against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Board, Dublin businessman Ed DeSilva, and accounting firm Arthur Andersen did little to reassure Oakland fans that he was not looking for a way out of the East Bay once again. The Oakland Tribune reported that the 73-year-old Davis, clad in a black suit with a silver tie, “glared around the packed courtroom” as he denied any prior knowledge of problems with ticket sales and made his case that the Raiders had been “conned” into signing the deal that brought them back to Oakland. Of the Raiders’ largesse toward the community he said, “I was signing to give the people of the East Bay a chance to see if they could do what they said they could do, and that is sell out the stadium . . . but it in no way bound me.”

  Indeed, the Raiders still claim that their 1989 $18 million settlement with the NFL gives them the rights to the Los Angeles market and are pursuing yet another new trial against the league for undermining their efforts to build a state-of-the-art stadium at Hollywood Park. Thus, as the Oakland Tribune reports, “The NFL may be faced with resolving the Raiders dispute through trial or settlement before being able to return a franchise to the nation’s No. 2 media market.” During his stay in Los Angeles, Davis felt conned by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission as well. After the commission couldn’t come up with the money to build luxury boxes in 1987, Raiders front office spokesman Irv Kaze claimed, “We question the Coliseum Commission’s credibility. They have violated all the previous agreements. They have misled us.”24

  Meanwhile, back in Oakland in 2003 the Raiders deal had cost East Bay taxpayers $20 million more in public subsidies, $173.5 million since the team returned to Oakland in 1995. As the Oakland Tribune reported in May of 2003, “The $20 million will be plucked directly from the general funds of the City of Oakland and Alameda County, delivering another blow to the public agencies, which both have staggering budget deficits of their own.” In the mid-nineties, East Bay taxpayers were told that the $350 million bonds floated by the city and county to revamp Oakland’s sports facilities would be paid for by Arena and Coliseum profits. Revenues have not covered the bonds, however, primarily because of the Raiders deal. The Raiders, who pay none of the $2 million post-9 /11 insurance premium costs or any of the $528,000 credit card fees for the sales of their tickets and personal seat licenses, cost the city and county $900,000 in legal fees for April 2003 alone. By the time Davis’s case against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Ed DeSilva, and Arthur Andersen went to the jury, it had already cost the public $6 million.25

  In late August 2003 the jury came back with a verdict that surprised many and pleased no one.26 By ruling that the coliseum had acted negligently, but that none of the defendants were guilty of intentionally defrauding the Raiders, the jury granted the Raiders $34.2 million of the up to $833 million that Davis was seeking. According to the Oakland Tribune, Raiders attorney Roger Dryer “placed his head in his hands as the judge gave a summary of the judgment” and initially said, “We’re disappointed with the verdict. We’re disappointed with the numbers.” Later the Raiders website quoted Dryer proclaiming, “It is a vindication and validation for the Raiders.” The San Francisco Chronicle, on the other hand, headed its article: “Jurors reject Raiders’ claims of fraud. $34.2 million award for negligence not what Davis wanted.” For their part, Coliseum Board lawyers were celebrating and vowing to “never pay a dime.” Clearly the spin and appeal cycle was kicking into overdrive.27

  Immediately after the verdict the San Francisco Chronicle reported “Raiders Fans Unsure if Verdict Means Their Team Won or Lost” and featured an interview with Mark “Spike” Shadinger, who characterized the whole affair as “millionaires suing millionaires.” The grocery store truck driver was not optimistic as he explained, “I think everyone is tired of the fights between Al Davis and the city of Oakland . . . I think everyone wants this thing settled so we don’t have our town suing our team. But the scary thing is, this won’t settle it. Davis will appeal, and it will just drag out.” Hoping against hope that the Raiders’ lawyers might take some time off their crusade against Oakland to “trademark him as the NFL’s first official fan,” Spike would be sadly disappointed as the lawyers for the Raiders and the Coliseum traded legal volleys for months to come until, in March 2004, Judge Richard K. Park of Sacramento put the parties in legal limbo. Ruling both that the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum board was “essentially defunct” and that the Raiders could not seek city or county taxpayer funds until the court ruled on a joint appeal, Park kept the legal battle going for at least another season. Outraged by the ruling, the Raiders’ attorneys pointed out that the award would be $6 million higher by 2005 because it earns 10 percent interest annually.28

  In the meantime, Ed DeSilva, who was cleared (at taxpayers’ expense) of any wrongdoing in the August 2003 verdict, sued the Port of Oakland over a business dispute. If that weren’t enough for the good people of the East Bay, they were treated to the news that the Oakland Athletics had hired a businessman from San Jose to look for a new home for the town’s baseball club. Oaklanders were then given the opportunity to watch yet another trial as the McGah family unsuccessfully sued their business partner, Al Davis, in an effort to remove him as the Raiders general partner for withholding financial records from them. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Ray Ratto put it after the initial ruling in the Raiders trial in August 2003, “All this begs the question, ‘Aren’t any of these people even slightly worried that there might be a hell?’”29

  Even before most of the 2003–2004 legal circus unfolded, longtime Oakland Tribune writer and Raiders observer Dave Newhouse had seen enough. When we interviewed him via e-mail in June 2003, we asked him for his impressions of the Raiders organization and its treatment of the fans and the community. His response was scathing:The Raider organization? It has learned how to win again, but it hasn’t learned how to stop lying. Pride, Poise, and Paranoia. That’s how I’d describe the organization. You
might admire Al Davis, but don’t ever trust him. Oakland rescued him from a deplorable situation in Los Angeles that he created, and now he’s suing us for $1.2 billion, possibly to return to Los Angeles since the NFL wants to put two teams in there. Some gratitude. For all his charity—Dr. Samuel Johnson said “Charity is the last act of a scoundrel”—and progressive thinking, Davis is the lowest of the low. He is as Pete Rozelle described him best, a charming rogue. Davis said he loves his fans; he turns his head at violence. Do for the community? How about trying to take his team out of here twice? What did Hunter Thompson say about Al Davis? Oh yes, “He makes Darth Vader look like a punk.” Getting the picture?