Yardbarker
x
The Raiders will forever belong to Oakland
Raiders' head coach John Madden celebrates in the Oakland 32-14 win over the Vikings at the Super Bowl XI game of the Oakland Raiders vs the Minnesota Vikings played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California on January 9, 1977.  Dennis Desprois/Getty Images

The Raiders will forever belong to Oakland


An Oakland Raiders fan displays a sign asking the team to stay in Oakland during their game against the Denver Broncos at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on November 6, 2016. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

The Oakland Raiders will not be the Oakland Raiders forever, this much we know. While the move will remove the Raiders from their home for the second time in the team’s history, the move doesn’t necessarily mean that the franchise’s identity is altered in any way. The Raiders are as much a product of the essence of Oakland as they are a football team, and the team’s cultural identity will remain intact unless there is a holistic rebranding from everything to the team name and the menacing silver and black. To remove Oakland from the Raiders is to eliminate every tie to the team’s past. The Autumn Wind will move to Nevada in the next half decade, but Oakland will remain the heart of who or what the Raiders will continue to represent moving forward.

There are few American cities that have an identity as viscerally tangible as Oakland. There is a fluidity to the city that exists in and of itself. I reached out to a few friends about what makes Oakland so unique, and every answer was simultaneously different and the same. Oakland can transform into anything you want it to be, and for decades the Raiders allowed its players to explore themselves in the spirit of Oakland’s metamorphic culture.

When we think about the essence of the Oakland Raiders, we’re really thinking about those teams from the '70s. Ben Davidson, a defensive end during the decade, described Oakland as, the “home of the Hells Angels, Black Panthers, and Oakland Raiders – sometimes all three in the same person.” Head Coach John Madden never implemented a dress code during road trips hoping that the team would see themselves as renegades. The culture in the Oakland clubhouse was in part designed by the anti-authoritarian Madden and in part adopted by the anti-authoritarian city. As much as the people in the city have pushed back against the discriminatory laws that subjected marginalized groups to anything less than equal rights, the Raiders broke any rule they didn’t agree with and bent any rule they didn’t completely break.

There’s an edge to the city that feels like the silver and black the Raiders suit up in every Sunday, and those colors help us understand some of the philosophical questions that come with change and identity. How can one being or institution stay the same after so much change? From Oakland to Los Angeles to Oakland again and it’s the same Silver and Black, the same shield, the same swords and the same eye patch. The team never stopped looking like the essence of the city they were born in, and a move to Las Vegas likely won’t change that, either.

What they will leave behind, though, is the mythos of the city, and the ability to redefine tradition. The Raiders’ of Oakland were a team you could fall in love with if you were an outcast in any way. They won football games more often than any other team in the NFL from 1960 through 2002, and when that faucet stopped, they remained endearing for those who wanted a deeper connection to their football team than touchdowns and field goals. There is a lore that exists in the Oakland Coliseum that most sports franchises will never experience. The Autumn Wind is a Raider, but there are no autumn winds in Las Vegas, just a collection of fans trying to recreate a breeze that’s so natural in Oakland.

In an essay titled The Shape Of Experience, Jerome Bruner tells us that, “it’s not easy to create myth and emulate it at the same time,” and this idea is essentially going to be the biggest disconnect between who the Raiders are now and who they’ll be in the relatively near future. Either the Raiders in Vegas will work to form their own identity, or they will try to carry on the “Commitment to Excellence” ethos fans are accustomed to. No matter what, the identity of the Raiders moving forward will be packaged in the same way as the identity as the other 31 teams in the NFL, and this is the biggest travesty of the move. Because Oakland is anything but a packaged city, and the Raiders were never a packaged football team while in the city.

There was Oakland Raiders football, and there was a time when everyone understood what that implied – and if you were a fan of Oakland Raiders football, you denied the idea that any other brand of football mattered. With the move from Oakland a second time, they will still look like the Raiders, they will still feel like the Raiders, but Las Vegas Raiders football will not convey the same implications of Oakland Raiders football because it’s simply impossible for a team so embedded into the culture of a city as unique as Oakland to leave for Vegas and maintain old sensibilities in a city that is the antithesis of what Oakland represents.

The Raiders are the most culturally relevant football team because of Oakland. Because of the diversity. The Food. The people. The language. The laid back lifestyle. The ability to escape. The music. The pride. The cultural relevancy isn’t likely to change, but the cultural currency is going to lose a few cents on the dollar. There is nothing inherently cool about Las Vegas, a city that desperately wants to be cool and will never be because of it. It’s a new era for the NFL and for the Raiders, and it’s no better or worse for either party. But the city of Oakland deserved better for creating one of the NFL’s legacy properties.

More must-reads:

Customize Your Newsletter

+

Get the latest news and rumors, customized to your favorite sports and teams. Emailed daily. Always free!

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.