Black Sunday: Oakland’s diehard Raiders fans say one last goodbye before Vegas
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The Oakland Raiders’ yearlong march into oblivion will end Sunday at the aging Coliseum.
The transition from gritty Oakland to glitzy Las Vegas becomes real as the second chapter of a colorful era closes in the East Bay. It comes with a mixed sense of nostalgia, grief and anticipation that has swept across the players, coaches and their costumed devotees who populate the Coliseum’s infamous “Black Hole.”
“We’re going from a rathole apartment into a luxury home,” said Richard Cervera, who has started a new Raiders’ fan club in Las Vegas called Los Villanos, or the Villians. “I can understand the loss and the gain.”
Owner Mark Davis has pushed all his chips into the southern Nevada desert, where the Raiders plan to open the 2020 NFL season in $1.9-billion Allegiant Stadium. The 65,000-seat monument to modern professional sports is located on 62 acres across I-15 from the casinos and resorts on the Las Vegas Strip.
As the gleaming structure rises from the desert floor — on time and within budget, according to a Las Vegas Stadium Authority official — it becomes another piece of the city’s “Glitter Gulch” image with grey tinted glass panels and a domed roof.
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The team also is building a $75 million campus that includes a three-story office headquarters and a practice facility with three outdoor grass fields in nearby Henderson. The compound, scheduled to open in June, is located about 15 miles from the stadium and minutes from McCarran International Airport.
“We’re excited about the future,” Raiders coach Jon Gruden said. “I don’t want to underestimate that either, but we’re also very respectful of where we come from.”
Las Vegas fans have welcomed the team with pride: Cars inch along the congested Spaghetti Bowl downtown traffic maze plastered in Raiders’ logos.
But as the transition takes hold some wonder how a team steeped in a renegade tradition will change inside a modern facility that also will house the University of Nevada, Las Vegas football team, the Pac-12 football championships and major concerts.
Some, in fact, anticipate a major shift in the fanbase.
“Like any other culture, they are accustomed to being a certain way and putting out a certain message,” Las Vegas community organizer Stanley Washington said of Raiders fans. “I’m not sure that is the message Las Vegans want to put out.”
Michael Green, an associate professor of history at UNLV, added, “I don’t know if this beautiful new stadium will be quite a ‘Black Hole’ or the Oakland Mausoleum, but there is a built-in Raiders fan base here.”
Raiders executives took a calculated risk that the move would not alienate the highly invested Bay Area fanbase while courting what Washington describes as a softer, more international audience that considers Las Vegas a tourist attraction.
“The growth is in the international flavor, and not the hardcore fan,” Washington said. “That was part of the appeal and lure of coming here.”
After playing host to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, the Raiders (6-7) end the 2019 regular season with games at Kansas City and Denver. Oakland will not appear in the NFL playoffs without a miraculous turn of events.
In other words, once the calendar turns to 2020, the Oakland Raiders will be something of the past. Just like when former owner Al Davis moved the team to Los Angeles in 1982 after 21 years in the Bay Area.
But Davis returned to Oakland in 1996 when East Bay officials struck a deal to expand the Coliseum’s capacity to 63,132 seats. The team could not attract enough fans to fill the oval. In 2013, the Raiders reduced the capacity to 53,250 seats, the smallest in the NFL.
Finally, Mark Davis, who had inherited the team after his father died in 2011, wanted out. The younger Davis first tried to relocate to Los Angeles in 2015 with a joint partnership with the San Diego Chargers. NFL owners blocked the plan but in 2017 approved the Las Vegas move.
The decision has left Davis and Las Vegans giddy. But it will not be the same when the Al Davis Memorial Torch is uprooted from the Coliseum and placed at the Raiders headquarters in Henderson. Since Al Davis’ death, fans and former players have participated in a tradition of lighting the torch before games.
It underscored how much the Raiders’ persona is deeply rooted in Oakland.
“A lot of people don’t understand that most of that culture comes from the Bay Area and the people in the parking lot that carry that vibe into the Coliseum,” said Omar Frias, who grew up a Raiders fan from Hayward.
Raiders quarterback Derek Carr attributed the outsized exuberance to the fans.
“You don’t go to any other stadium and see something like that,” Carr said. “People have tried to imitate it. It started here and it will always be the Raider Nation, and I think there’s that mystique about the Raiders.”
Frias, who said he planned to attend the finale Sunday, does not expect the colorful culture to transfer to Las Vegas. He gave up his season tickets last year after a decade because of the impending move. But he might take in a game in Las Vegas now and again, he said.
“I can’t imagine rooting for another football team, so I’ll still be a Raiders fan,” Frias said. “My feelings might change once they are gone.”
Jeremy Aguero, a Las Vegas Stadium Authority staff consultant, said he is not worried about losing the team’s extended fanbase.
“The Raiders have some of the best fans of any sport anywhere in the world,” Aguero said. “To have them come to Las Vegas, that history and legacy is a big part of all of that. Las Vegas will leverage some of that.”
Las Vegas journalist and author John Smith, added, “We do crazy pretty well here so they’ll fit right in.”
Cervera, the Los Villanos club booster, said he expects a new “Black Hole” to emerge on the stadium’s south side end zone. He said Oakland “Black Hole” denizens said they bought season tickets there. So did Cervera, who has followed the team since the 1980s.
But will it be similar to a black-clad, face-painted crowd of ruffians screaming their mask-covered heads off?
No one knows.
“Al Davis encouraged the idea of the Raiders as mavericks and bad guys and reveled in that,” said Green, the history professor. “Well, it’s a different time. And now it will be a different place.”