For Raider Game, Atlanta Was a Mile Low City

Seating capacity: About 60,000. Tickets sold: 44,712. Total in the house: 20,585.

Sunday at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, the no-shows outnumbered the attendance.

The Raiders looked around during their 34-24 win over the Falcons and saw a ghost park. “The Coliseum holds 100,000 and sometimes we’ve only drawn 50,000, so we’ve seen empty seats,” linebacker Matt Millen said. “But this was a little different. Some days, I can’t hear the guy standing next to me. Today, I was holding conversations with the sidelines.”

“Hey,” Raider teammate Howie Long said, “the Falcons are 2-11, it’s pouring rain out--where would you be? I know I’d rather be sitting at home in front of the Curtis-Mathes drinking a Miller Lite and eating Crunchman potato chips than sitting out here watching football.”

We interrupt this commercial message to bring the Raiders a few previews of next week’s show.

Denver will be nothing like this.

What a contrast Sunday’s “crowd” was to what the Raiders will be facing in their next game. Sunday a mile high, there could be rain or snow or a swarm of killer bees, but nothing that would keep the Broncos from drawing a full house for their AFC Western Division clash with the Raiders.

Both teams are 9-4, and no team in the conference has a record any better. It will be the biggest game of the season to date for the Raiders and Broncos, so no-shows will be counted on fingers. The Raiders will put on their snowball-protection gear and be ready.

“I’d rather play in front of 80,000 angry people any day than play in front of empty seats,” Long said. “I like not being liked.”

Atlanta’s stadium looked like a high school game. The few people who did show up in the rain spent much of their time cheering for the Raiders. One spectator was able to run across the field near the end of the game, seeing as how massive security measures were not required.

“Heck, our high school stadium back in Allentown (Pa.) held 17,000,” Millen said. “Even those crowds were as big as this.”

Long was asked when he last played football before such a small audience. “Villanova,” he said. “We had a capacity of 12,000 and sometimes only drew 1,500 or 2,000. I loved Villanova, but when I was there, everybody learned to just ignore the football team. Everybody was outside the stadium having a hot dog instead of coming in. I would have been outside, too. We stunk.”

No matter how many people do show up, the players have to play. The Raiders could not ignore the Falcons just because the Falcons’ record was poor and their following was small. The Raiders’ had to take them seriously.

“The Falcons were not the sort of team that was just going to play out the season,” Raider Coach Tom Flores said. “I knew they were going to come at us with everything they had.”

That included Gerald Riggs, one of the league’s top running backs, who handles practically all the ball-carrying for Atlanta these days. Except for six rushes credited to the quarterback and two to backup back Joe Washington, Riggs did all the running Sunday, making 25 trips for 95 yards.

The Raiders were duly impressed. “The guy’s the ’86 model in diesel,” said Long, who always has something colorful to say about something. “(John) Riggins used to call himself an old diesel who had a hard time finding parts. Well, Riggs is the young diesel now. He still has all his original parts.”

Riggs, however, was outdone by Marcus Allen of the Raiders, who picked up 156 yards rushing and got Long started talking about Ferraris as compared to diesels, which is too much trouble to go into in depth.

Allen was too much for the Falcon defense, which could not afford to key on him because Raider quarterback Marc Wilson was also busy throwing three passes for touchdowns. Atlanta actually was leading, 17-13, at halftime, until Allen turned things around in the third period with a four-yard pass reception for a touchdown.

“It was a combination in the third quarter of not being able to stop Allen and not doing anything with the ball when we had it,” Falcon Coach Dan Henning said.

The losers were full of kind words for their guests.

“It’s true that they obviously had a lot more to play for than just pride, which is pretty much what we were doing out there,” 17-year veteran center Jeff Van Note said. “But that aside, the Raiders just plain had better personnel than us. They were like the Bears last week. We could give it our all against them, but their overall talent is just going to wear us down.”

“Those guys are definitely as good as the Bears,” Falcon quarterback David Archer said of the Raiders.

As for Atlanta’s fans, they probably were impressed, too.

But their car got away before anybody could ask.