A Site for Sore Eyes : The L.A. Raiders Trained the Past 3 Years in Santa Rosa But Now Have Found an Oasis in Oxnard

So maybe the Raiders aren’t America’s Team. California is another matter. You can make a case for them despite sizable pockets of resistance in San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County and even Thousand Oaks.

The Raiders are gradually winning over legions of fans in Los Angeles, evidenced by a few 90,000-plus crowds at the Coliseum last season. And even though the Raiders abandoned Oakland three years ago, the team is very popular there, as attested by high TV ratings when the Raiders are broadcast in the Bay Area.

The fertile San Joaquin Valley, where the team played several exhibition games in the early years, has been Raider territory since the 1960s--when quarterbacks Tom Flores of Sanger and Daryle Lamonica of Clovis led the team in the old American Football League. That support is stronger than ever with Flores now the head coach.

The Raiders also have built a strong following in Santa Rosa, where the team trained the past 22 years. However, the Raiders ended that association recently in an effort to cement their move to Southern California.

The site they chose is Oxnard, 60 miles north of Los Angeles on Route 101, and that city is more than ready to fall into line in the Raider brigade.

“Everybody is very excited about the Raiders coming here, not just in Oxnard but in the surrounding communities,” said Stan Greene, assistant city manager in Oxnard, which is bordered by Ventura and Camarillo. Santa Barbara and Carpenteria are just a bit to the north. The San Fernando, Simi and Santa Clarita valleys are just over the Santa Susanna Mountains.

“I haven’t been contacted by any other communities that might want to piggyback, but I know the interest is there,” Greene said. “Just the other day I was in a store in Ventura someone brought up the subject of the Raiders being here.

“I know a lot of people have bought season tickets since the announcement that the Raiders were coming here. We had a stack of season-ticket applications in our office, and they all disappeared.

“Having the Raiders here should do a number of things. Economically, it will help stimulate business when they are here. It will get our name out to the rest of the world on a positive note. It can’t help but enhance our image.”

It seems that Oxnard has had problems with its image. People there believe that everybody looks upon their city as the ugly duckling of Ventura County.

Apparently this inferiority complex starts with the name, Oxnard. Hoping to show that a name does not a city make, city fathers have produced slogans that are found on bumper stickers and promotional signs around the city.

“Oxnard, more than just a pretty name,” reads one. Another says, “Oxnard, only our name keeps us humble.” That’s better than some of the cracks Oxnarders used to hear, such as, “How do you get rid of an Oxnard?”

“For the city, this is just one more major factor to help turn around our image,” said Dana Young, Oxnard’s director of economic development. “There was a great editorial in the Camarillo paper saying people will have to find another city to kick around.

“People aren’t asking what’s an Oxnard or where is it anymore. We have a great location, great weather, a beautiful harbor and now we have the Raiders for a couple months a year.

“I know Santa Rosa is sorry to lose the Raiders, but we’re glad to have them.”

The Raiders commuted from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles during the preseason the past three years. Managing General Partner Al Davis disliked that situation almost as much as he deplored the way the National Football League and the city of Oakland have dragged him through the courts.

Before deciding to find a permanent training-camp location in the Southland, Davis considered holding camp temporarily at the Raiders’ practice facility in El Segundo until the team’s presence in Southern California is assured.

“But I decided we would go ahead (at Oxnard) because I felt establishing a permanent training site in Southern California would give our fans, our coaching staff, our players and everyone in our organization confidence that we’re here permanently. It’s a morale booster for them.

“It’s also important to start to establish ourselves in Ventura County and the Valley, where we expect Raider football to become a way of life.”

So Davis dispatched Senior Administrator John Herrera into the wilds of Southern California last January to look for a suitable site for training camp.

Herrera, just returned from a two-year stint as general manager for Saskatchewan of the Canadian Football League, is very familiar with the Raiders from two previous stints with the team. He began his career with them as a teen-ager in Oakland.

However, his knowledge of the state’s geography ended somewhere south of San Jose.

“It was a little scary,” Herrera admitted, “but it was a great way to learn the area. I didn’t go too far south (of the Raiders’ headquarters in El Segundo), but mostly east and north.

“I must have looked at 150 sites, and Oxnard is the best by far. Basically it’s exactly what we were looking for.”

More exactly, what Davis was looking for. Davis felt the Raiders were comfortable at El Rancho Motel in Santa Rosa, which became permanently flawed when he moved the team to Los Angeles.

Davis told Herrera he wanted a site that closely approximated the Santa Rosa complex. That is: a facility within 90 minutes of Raider headquarters and Los Angeles International Airport, a warm climate, and a hotel with enough adjacent empty land for the Raiders to build their own practice facility.

“There were some other places I liked, such as College of the Canyons in Valencia and a site next to a hotel in Palmdale,” Herrera said. “But the dormitory situation wasn’t good in Valencia, and it’s just too hot in those places during July and August.

“Santa Rosa was very, very good for us and the El Rancho was always accommodating. We found a lot of similarities in Oxnard.”

Herrera went back to Davis and said he’d found a spot--actually two of them--in Oxnard.

This year, the Raiders will train at a temporary facility just completed adjacent to the Oxnard Hilton Inn. When camp is over, a just-finished 5,500-square-foot clubhouse will be moved to a permanent site adjacent to River Ridge Golf Course, the city’s nearly completed championship course.

“We’re looking into picking the building up with a helicopter and moving it,” Herrera said. “I’m not so sure it can be done, but the people involved say it can, so we’ll try it.

“Otherwise, we’ll move it by flatbed truck.”

The land next to the Hilton actually is a holding place until a resort hotel is built next to the golf course approximately 1 1/2 miles away.

The Raiders have spent $350,000 for the training facility at the Hilton, where two complete practice fields are surrounded by a covered chain-link fence. Even the fence and much of the sod will be moved to the new site.

The new resort hotel won’t be ready until July, 1987, but at least 70 rooms are expected to be ready for the Raiders’ 1986 training camp.

“That will be ideal when we get over there,” Herrera said, “but I’m more concerned about ’85 right now. We’re right on schedule and we’d better be, because we don’t have any room for error.

“We started pulling building permits the day after we reached an agreement with the city (April 9). We had a bulldozer and tractors in the next week. We had it all finished by July 1, except for only odds and ends.”

Raider rookies reporting to camp today will find the two new practice fields and the modular all-purpose building--which includes a locker room, training room, film lab, meeting rooms and weight room--ready for use barely three months after the start of construction.

The people of Oxnard can’t wait for them to get there, but the place really ought to go bonkers when the veterans arrive next Wednesday.

“We’re gearing up,” said Carol Thomas, general manager of the Hilton. “Getting the Raiders to stay here is about the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me professionally. Considering that they looked at over 100 sites, it says a lot that we got them.

“I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and I’ve always been a Raider fan. I had season tickets when they were in Oakland and I’ve had them the last two years in L.A. So when John Herrera walked in here and said what he had in mind, I said, ‘Go for it.’ ”

A large sign above the front entrance of the Hilton proclaims the hotel the “Summer Home of the L.A. Raiders,” and there are others signs and even placemats in the hotel that bear the Raiders’ pirate emblem. Outside the practice field is an 80-foot sign that reads, “The Financial Plaza and the City of Oxnard Welcome the Los Angeles Raiders.”

They held Raider Week early in July at Esplanade Mall, across Vineyard Avenue from the Hilton. The entire shopping center was dressed up in silver and black, and the locals got their first look at some of the Raiders--linebacker Rod Martin and safety Vann McElroy, who were on hand one day to mingle and sign autographs.

“It’s really been crazy around here,” said Herrera, who has taken a room at the Hilton to keep tabs on progress of the Oxnard operation. “We’re virtually selling season tickets by the busload. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“We’ve got promotions and personal appearances going all over town. I’ve never made so many myself. We’re right near the water and I’ve never been on so many boats in my life. The interest is really phenomenal. . . . I’m so behind answering phone calls that I don’t know when I’ll catch up.”

Herrera and Martin, the Raiders’ All-Pro linebacker, appeared on the cover of the July/August issue of Ventura County magazine. The story inside told how Herrera at age 15 walked up to Al Davis and asked, “What can I do for you?”

Davis waited 24 years before giving him his biggest project.

While putting the finishing touches on Oxnard, Herrera also has been starting on his next assignment from Davis--getting a strong promotional campaign going in the sprawling San Fernando Valley.

Herrera put together six Raider Weeks at shopping malls in West L.A., the Valley and Ventura County. There have been two in Oxnard.

“I’ve been in the area eight years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Sally Hayes, who owns and operates a liquor store at the Hilton. “People are coming in and calling every day since they announced the Raiders are coming.”

Herrera figured that Davis would take one look at the office building and blow Oxnard right out of the water. The Raiders’ reputation for practice-field secrecy makes the so-called “Hoya Paranoia” of Georgetown University basketball Coach John Thompson look like an open-door policy.

Davis has a long memory and in the early days of the American Football League, spying supposedly was as much a part of the operation as the waiver wire and weekly statistics. But when Davis looked over the Oxnard Hilton site and saw the building overlooking the land in which the fields now stand, he said, “That doesn’t bother me.”

When a reporter suggested that rival teams rent suites in the high-rise building, Herrera quipped: “Yeah, the Broncos are on the fourth floor, the Seahawks on the sixth and the Chargers on the eighth.”

The Raiders have informed Oxnard officials that they won’t alter their policy of closing practices to the public.

The team is reviving its annual Family Day on Aug. 3 at Oxnard High, however. Family Day was a popular summer feature at Santa Rosa Junior College. Fans would come for the one day the Raiders would work out in front of their fans. It was not held the past three years following the move to Los Angeles.

“We’ve made it clear to the community that between the hours of 8 and 11 in the morning and 2 and 5 in the afternoon, the Raiders will be behind the fence,” Greene said.

“Before and after, they’ll be available for autographs and pictures, to meet with and talk to the fans.”

The Raiders’ practice field in Oakland was right next door to the old Oakland Airport, and the standing joke when private planes would fly over was, “There goes (former San Diego Charger Coach) Sid Gilman.” Or Hank Stram of Kansas City or Weeb Ewbank of the New York Jets, or whomever the Raiders were playing that week.

Although the Raiders’ secrecy grew out of those days when spies where known to be hiding in the trees, that’s not the reason for the closed practices, Herrera said.

“It’s not to be secretive,” Herrera said. “If there are fans around, it takes away from the focus. This is the business part for the players, and spectators can be a distraction.

“The Oxnard people have been good about understanding that in our talks.”

Just so they get to call the team the Oxnard Raiders for a couple of months a year.