silver and black jerseys

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that football-wise, I'm all about the 49ers... yeah, Niners! Growing up here in the Bay Area, I found myself naturally cheering for both local teams. However, in the 1970's, it was the Raiders that were televised more often (they were the more successful team, not coincidentally). So although I rooted for and cared about the Niners, I lived and died more by how the Raiders did and have many more memories of them from back then.

Then they moved to Los Angeles. Ouch! And around the same time, the 49ers got real good with Bill Walsh as head coach. The Raiders moving down to L.A. was a tough pill to swallow - that's Dodger country. And they were the Los Angeles Raiders when they won one of their Super Bowls, defeating the Washington Redskins. I never did bond with players such as Howie Long and Marcus Allen.

Now with the Raiders back in Oakland, I'm sort of interested, happy when they win but not terribly upset when they lose. Anyway, I'd like to talk about... retiring jersey numbers. The 49er organization has retired several numbers and as far as I know, the Raiders none. Some have complained about it, that with as many great players as the Raiders have had, many numbers are worthy of being permanently retired. But I think they're on the right track here - after all, so many of the same numbers have been worn by important Raider players, for example: #12 was worn by both Ken Stabler and Rich Gannon; #16 by both George Blanda and Jim Plunkett; #32 - Jack Tatum and Marcus Allen; #21 - Cliff Branch and currently Nnamdi Asomugha; #83 - Ben Davidson and Ted Hendricks; my point being, it's rather too late for the Raiders to start retiring jersey numbers now. Besides, at some point in the future for a great team that retires numbers, there won't be any jersey numbers left to choose!