Staring blankly at the TV, I sat with the remote control in my hand. It was a few days after the Raiders lost the AFC Championship to the eventual Superbowl winner, Baltimore. It happened so quickly, and waiting sixteen years for a world championship, the defeat was bitter and frustrating.
“What’s wrong, hun?” my wife said, entering the living room to do some reading. She has been through this drill before, but she seemed to detect something darker on this particular Oakland season failure.
I mumbled a superficially pleasant reply and continued to glare as the Raiders lost again before my eyes on videotape. A thousand ugly thoughts raced through my mind as I watched, for the third time, the Ravens flaunt the conference title trophy in the faces of thousands of Raider fans. Soon after, a near-tearful Jon Gruden congratulated Baltimore for a game well-played, concluding Oakland’s brief hope of glory.
The screen went blue suddenly, which indicated that I had reached the end of the tape. It was to be the beginning of a long wait for the opening day, 2001. This ritual of despair would repeat the following year, after Oakland was robbed of a second trip to the AFC Championship game.
I was a difficult person to live with for those few days. My wife, Valarie, tried her best to diffuse my dismal mood. We would go out to dinner, shop for new accessories for my computer, and other things to keep my mind off of the bitterly disappointing end to football season. She assumed the unenviable position of cheering up her husband after the Raiders season was over.
“We were so close!” I complained at our favorite Chinese restaurant one evening. Immediately I continued yet another heated monologue of football jargon while Val nodded her head uncomfortably to humor me. After a few minutes, however, she could take no more.
“Honey, how can you stand to live like this?” She asked sharply. “You’re normally such a happy person, and it’s hard for me to see you like this every year.”
I knew she was right….and it hadn’t occurred to me how unpleasant these last three days were to her. When we first started dating, Valarie joined me for every Raider game on television. She cheerfully rooted for my favorite team, but as the years passed on, she became more and more reluctant to sit next to me on Sundays. According to her, the only “f-bombs” she has ever heard from my customarily mild-mannered mouth were uttered during Raider games.
“I’m sorry.” I said, suddenly conscious of my behavior. At last, I was conspicuously aware of a ritual during the Raiders weeks. When they won, I was smiles and sunshine. When they lost, it ruined my entire day...sometimes my entire week. Needless to say, for the last nineteen years or so, the months from September to (sometimes) January were an emotional roller coaster.
Searching my memory banks, I found that I was not alone. Several local friends of mine that loved the Raiders were also fiercely perturbed after a Raider loss. They would snarl at being reminded of how we were robbed of a playoff victory or Superbowl berth.
My most Raider-loyal of friends, Bryan was perhaps the finest example of a normally lovable person becoming a ticking time bomb. Bryan is a whisper of a man, physically unimposing, and a shining alter of courtesy. He attended church regularly and frequently liked to engage in religious discussions. He never drank a drop of alcohol in his life and is perhaps the most wholesome gent I have ever been associated with.
“What’d you think of that playoff game?” I asked him, weeks after The Snowjob.
His answer was sudden, abrupt, and almost terrifying. There, in the local Blockbuster Video store, he spewed the filthiest 2-minute-long dictionary of profanity I ever heard. His eyes were red with fury, his glasses shook on his face, and his knuckles were a bloodless white on his angrily shaking fist. Finally, it was over, and people gawked in outrage. Whether they wanted it or not, everyone in the store heard his opinion. My wife, who stood beside me, stared in disbelief.
“I apologize,” Bryan said after regaining his composure, “but it feels as if I’ve been stood up at the alter in each of the last nineteen years.” Compared to his previously foul speech, this last tidbit meant much to me in context of the last two years. That’s exactly how I felt. It felt as if Al Davis and the Raiders organization had promised the world to Raider fans. We’ve been waiting quite a long time to be vindicated for years of abuse from the media and our fellow football fans. It seemed as if our last two trips to the post season had the promise for a wonder payoff…just to result in an anticlimactic ending.
So, where does that leave us now? I admit that when I watched the Raider-Rams fiasco two weeks ago, I laughed at how ridiculous and surreal it all seemed. With forty-five seconds to play in a tie game against the Chargers, I smirked.
“They’ll find some way to screw this one up.” Just like Marty says.
By now, you’ve probably deduced how cynical a football fan can become in times like these. I call it “The Raider Fan Syndrome”. It’s an ailment that isn’t exclusive to Oakland fans, but it’s the unhappy wait for the “other shoe to drop”. It’s the agonizing wait to see if a talented team will be the last one standing, or join the other 30 in pro-football oblivion.
Ironically, the 1996-1999 seasons were much happier for myself, overall. In these years, they were a terrible team and made no bones about it. I watched the Raider games with a hope that they would topple the team as an underdog…or spoil a playoff contender’s chances to enter the post season. It’s the successful campaigns that are all the more painful.
The 2002 Oakland Raiders have been to the league’s top in a flash…and may sink to the bottom that much more rapidly. Injuries, penalties, poor execution: It’s a blueprint for disaster. Hopefully, the Raiders will pull themselves out of this senseless funk and rise to the occasion. Being a life-long Raider fan, I’m forever bounded to their fate on an emotional level. There’s only one cure for The Raider Fan Syndrome: A championship.
To paraphrase my dear friend, Bryan: The 2002 Oakland Raiders should relieve themselves or desist reclining in the lavatory.
-Eastbay