The Raiders Disaster: A Silicon Valley Perspective

I realized while reading a rant this afternoon between RaiderCardAddict and RaiderSteve that I've seen this before, although not in football. But first, a little background:

We Raider fans are learning that there is a big difference between not performing and imploding. The Bugel years we didn't perform.  Watching Jeff George as our QB was an exercise in non-performance. Loosing Gannon started a skid of subpar performances that has culminated in what can be viewed as little short of disaster. 

But in non-performance, there is always hope.

Over the years we've had Woodson, Brown, Garner, Wheatley, and some of the most dominant offensive lines in the game.  And we've had the much maligned Al Davis who, for all his flaws, remains one of the premier coaching talent evaluators in football history (SB winners Tom Flores, John Madden, Mike Shannahan, and John Gruden are all Davis hires). 

True, he's as good (better, even) at firing premier coaches than finding premier coaches, but he was our man and our leader, and we were with him.

A few years ago, about when the Raiders were starting down the path of one of the longest Super Bowl hangovers in history, I was learning in the professional world what happens when you lose faith in the vision of your leader. 

We were the normal (boring at this point) Silicon Valley story; a few of us, fueled by the passion and vision of our CEO, set out to do something amazing despite the odds of success. We had good days, and bad days, setbacks and progress, good months and bad, but we knew where we were going and were ready to fight for every bloody yard, regardless of the score.

It wasn’t the bad years or the good years that mattered, it was the end zone.

Things broke for us, not when our competitors beat us to the market or when the market changed a little or when our expectations were not what we wanted them to be—we could always overcome that. 

Things broke when suddenly we changed our strategy to get to the end zone.  We had to adjust, make the mental shift, and try to rebuild the emotion.  Our leader had wavered, and we needed to find a new core to rally on.  So we did (we are stubborn, if anything). 

Then he changed the strategy again.

When you don’t have leadership, everyone becomes a leader, which is the same thing as no one becoming a leader.  We all started stabbing each other in the back, telling each of us that they were not holding the line. Some people left and joined the competition; others continued the in-fighting.

Many turned off and went through the motions like robots.  As a company we were stuck, not moving in any direction, with equal forces fighting to pull is in opposite directions. 

Just before the end, and when only disaster seemed an option, a wonderful woman saved it all. She suggested that our plan had failed, our strategy was broken, but we are not lost.

It’s not that different than this other strategy, and wouldn’t it be nice if we all decided that we'd give it a go, and fight, blood and tears and sweat and dreams for this strategy, and who cares if it’s not perfect or exactly right, we are going to fight for it anyway, and we are going to win.

We got together and told our leader this, and he turned out to be a better man than we expected.  He embraced it, even to his own loss. He brought in new managers specialized for our new strategy, even at his own loss of equity and salary. 

The next day, nothing was different, but everything was different. Nobody backstabbed, nobody argued, we just put our nosed down and drove it home.  Two years later, with a totally different strategy, we crossed into that end zone. 

That great, but even if we hadn’t, the best part of that experience wasn’t the end zone, it was when we got our @#@#$ together and started fighting together to get there.

Raiders: Our organization is broken, and we are stabbing each other in the back. I say no more. It’s not about whether we watch games live or via satellite in Dubai. It’s not about whether we like Al Davis or Hate Al Davis, whether our old history brings us pride, or our current history brings us shame.

It’s not about Kiffin, or Gruden, or Hall, or Shannahan, or even Al Davis. What it’s about is beating the tights off of the Bronco's, the Chiefs, and the Chargers every single year, and always being a contender for the postseason. 

And it’s about us, as fans, the real force behind the Oakland Raiders, demanding leadership and organization. We want a general manager acting as a general manager, and a strategy to win football games that goes beyond individual players.

We still have the best fanbase on earth; we still have one of the best coaching evaluators in the history of the game; and we still have our history. 

If we stop fighting with each other, and start fighting—in whatever way we think is right—for decent management, we'll be kicking the panties off of the Bronco's in no time. 

This is something worth fighting for.