Listen Up, Raiders Haters

If you are a Raiders fan, you have probably been told that you are living in the past. You have been told that the Raiders of yesteryear are irrelevant to the Raiders of today. You have been told that the mystique is gone, and that you should get over it.

Well, tough nuts, folks, because we won’t get over it. The past happened, and it was wild, outrageous, innovative and unprecedented—and it yielded three Super Bowl titles. Around here, “the past” is called roots, heritage and legacy, all of which are woven into the fabric of the Raider Nation, then and now.

But that’s not the end of the argument. The insinuation is that Raiders fans are too dumb to notice that free agency, rules changes, political correctness and other developments have inevitably changed the game of football. The implication is that Raiders fans don’t just rightfully celebrate the 1970s, but are in fact naively waiting for the second coming of the 1970s.

Consider this quote from an article on the Raiders published a few days ago in USA Today: “These are hardly the same Raiders who used to dominate the AFC West and, in some years, the entire league…The so-called Raider mystique is a forgotten memory, like some pop hit from the '70s.”

Am I missing something? Didn’t the Raiders just dominate the AFC West for three straight seasons, culminating in a Super Bowl berth in 2003? When is the last time the Chiefs, Chargers or Broncos went to the Super Bowl? Give me a moment to find an archaeologist and I’ll get you an answer.

It’s a favorite anti-Raiders tactic, this denial of the 2000s, as if it didn’t happen. Then, once you point out that it did happen, whether they like it or not, they resort to their last gasp of propaganda: that Al Davis had nothing to do with it, that it was all the result of a renegade Chucky working outside the reach of Mr. Davis.

Hey, since when does a leader get all of the blame and none of the credit? Who hired Gruden? Who signed and paid Gannon and Rice? Who drafted Brown and Porter? Who are you to criticize Mr. Davis for the bad years and then deny him his great ones?

This is all one thing coming from a Broncos or 49ers fan. After all, consider the source. But it is particularly vile coming from media types who, when they’re not repeating lazy biased takes against the Raiders, are bleating about their own so-called objectivity and inquisitiveness.

Listen up, Raiders haters: The mystique remains. The man upstairs is still dressed in brilliant white. He has engineered five Super Bowl berths in four of the past five decades. As Raiders fans, our roots run deep, but we are more than ready for the future.