First In Ten
Stop the presses. The Oakland Raiduhs have finally won their first game of the year. To some teams, this is not that big of a deal, but this is the Raiduhs. They had been 0 and 10. They had been incredibly close to running the table and losing them all. But they played at home, they played a familiar, rivalry team and everyone knows that rivalry teams know how to beat the teams they play all the time. So, the Raiduhs are 1 and 10.
Okay, about the title. So it wasn’t their first win in ten games, it was their first in eleven. Doesn’t sound as good as first in ten, does it?
One win in eleven games is not a reflection on the players, of course. It is about the failure of ownership to do THEIR job right. General managers and meddling owners are the ones who determine what talent the team ends up putting on the field and the Raiduhs at one and ten ARE the result of several drafts supervised by Al Davis where the team’s management ended up getting near worthless talent with several high draft choices when they should have been getting players that should have been the cornerstone of the team.
Each high draft pick (QB Jamarcus Russell for one, Wide Receiver Darius Heyward-Bey for another) that doesn’t pan out sets a team back a couple of years. Not only are you getting a stiff of a player when you should have got a solid starter, you also have to pay high salaries to those high draft picks, and that doesn’t leave enough salary cap to pay for the rest of the team. And you still don’t have the quarterback you need to compete with the Peyton Mannings, Tom Bradys, Aaron Rodgers, etc. of the league at the most important position on the field.
This is still Al Davis’ team. It will always be his team, even though he has been gone for a few years. The Raiduhs can only win when his philosophy is completely gone from the picture. Football experts know this, but the owner that succeeded Al Davis was his son, so you can guess what the results of THAT continuity plan are going to be.
It’s too bad, though. Raiduh fans, with all of their Darth Raiduh costumes and their collective passion for their team, deserve better than the crap their ownership is putting on the field.
It is one of the saddest things in sports. The decisions of who plays for your home teams are often made by people who don’t know what they are doing. Owners hire personnel people who are supposed to be “good football people,” but who actually end up not really knowing how to evaluate good talent. And the other teams always seem to win, because their smarter general managers end up putting together the better teams.
And the fans end up getting embarrassed by their teams through no fault of their own.
Oh well, for one night, the phrase “every dog has its day” came true. The Raiduhs won a game.
But they’d better not do this too often, or they’ll screw up getting the number one draft pick.
