Barber: Oakland will be just fine without Raiders

OAKLAND - Sunday ended in the worst, most Raider-y way possible, with the home team squandering a solid lead and losing 20-16 to the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Raiders' final game in Oakland, followed by a shower of bottles and cups and hats - and one football-shaped bowl of cheese dip - hurled onto the field by a frustrated Black Hole.

The afternoon started pretty sad, too, at least for me. Maybe the contact high in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot was making me maudlin. Or maybe I had slipped back into fandom, just a little, just for a moment.

It doesn't happen often these days. When you cover sports for a living, you turn off that part of your brain. What's surprising is not that you lose the ability to invest emotion in a team's fortunes. It's how quickly and effortlessly it happens.

I've covered close to 150 Raiders games at the Coliseum since The Press Democrat hired me in 2003 - all with the snarky detachment of the objective observer.

It wasn't always that way for me, not with this team. I began rooting for the Raiders in 1972, when I was 8 years old. I had become an A's fan earlier that year, lured by Reggie Jackson's magnetic charm and the mustachioed flair of that whole team. That A's team was on its way to the first of three consecutive World Series championships. I noticed that the Raiders and A's shared a first name, Oakland, and now I had a football team, too.

I cried when the Steelers beat the Raiders on the Immaculate Reception in the 1972 playoffs. I reenacted plays in my living room as the Raiders clobbered the Vikings to win Super Bowl 11 four years later. I rode with some friends from our Sacramento Valley cow town to a Monday-night game against the hated Steelers in 1981. On the way home, everyone fell asleep except the driver, my friend Junior; the rest of us woke up to find we were hopelessly lost in the foothills in a night shrouded in Tule fog.

Months later, the Raiders were gone. Al Davis had been battling the city of Oakland and Alameda County for ages, but I was a dumb high school kid. It never seemed possible that the Raiders would actually abandon the East Bay. When they did, it felt like a kidney punch. And a wakeup call.

Certain things happen over the course of lifetime that make cynicism a reasonable tactic. The Raiders' first move was one of them.

My response was to travel right along with them. I graduated from high school in 1982 and enrolled at UCLA. Two years later I started working part-time for the NFL's publishing division in Los Angeles. One perk: tickets to every Raiders or Rams game at the LA Coliseum.

I remained an unabashed Raiders dude in SoCal. My office colleagues couldn't understand it. They rolled their eyes at the spikes and plastic cutlasses and greasepaint that invaded that other coliseum on Sundays. They were repulsed by the menacing vibe Raiders fans sought to create, at the fights that would inevitably break it out in the stands of South-Central LA, as we called it then.

But I got it. These were my people.

I still get it, even if it's been a long time since I cared whether Derek Carr had a good game or the Raiders were able to mount a pass rush.

Sunday, I sort of cared again. Not for myself, but for the wild, glorious Raiders fans packing the Coliseum Complex pavement for one last ride. These people deserve better. They deserve a commitment to more than fictional excellence. They deserve a football team that plays here in Oakland, where it has always belonged.

I often take a walk through Tailgate City before Raiders games. Sunday, I spent a while out there. And like I said, it was melancholy to see all these families and couples and groups of friends, some of them Sunday neighbors for many years, now meeting for the last time at their shared home.

But the fans weren't sad. It was the biggest party I've ever been to. There was a feeling of celebration that bore little relation to the bittersweet occasion.

And what a celebration it was. In just one section of tailgating between 66th Avenue and the Coliseum, I counted five multi-piece banda or norteño bands. Your pregame party doesn't include a pulsating tuba? Can't relate.

And can I just say something about the food? I know, I know, every NFL team has its serious foodie fans. But I took a close look at what was being served up in Oakland, and it was incredible. Guys were putting the meat thermometer to their tri-tip to ensure perfection. There were pork ribs that smelled like hillbilly heaven, carnitas awash in magical orange oil. There was lumpia and long tubes of bulk sausage. One woman was cooking in the biggest paella pan I've ever seen, the shrimp keeping warm and cozy off to the side.

And everyone kept offering me goodies. I wasn't even really trying to talk to people. Just taking in the scene. And time after time, it was, hey, want a bite? Want a beer? Want a shot? Want a puff? I turned down so much food, booze and weed that my 22-year-old self appeared beside me and stared at me gravely, shaking his head in disappointment.

When I spoke to former Raiders for a story I wrote last week, they kept talking about Raider Nation being a family. I know they meant it, but it sounded like mere words after a while. Sunday, I saw what they were talking about: the warmth, the acceptance, the camaraderie.

By the end of the day, even after the Raiders had coughed up one final, horrible team loss, and the most frustrated fans had turned ugly and scuffled with security, I was feeling a lot better about the whole relocation thing.

Yeah, it sucks that there will never be another Raiders pregame bacchanal here, sucks that many of these fans won't get to see their team play in person anymore. But they will find another outlet for their joy, and their energy, and their occasional indignation. There was too much life in that parking lot to believe it will evaporate just because a football team leaves town.

I don't know how Las Vegas will treat the Raiders. They might thrive, pulling in more fans than they lose in transition. They might struggle to fill their $1.9 billion stadium. They might one day regret their decision.

But I'm not worried about Oakland. It will do just fine without the Raiders.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.