Perennial Problem: Season of Discontent in Raiders Box Office

A guy drops in from the Sandwich Islands and, inspecting the crowd at the Coliseum on Sunday of 87,560, asks idly:

“What’s the beef of the Raiders with Los Angeles? You don’t see crowds bigger than that anywhere else in pro football.”

The Raiders respond, “It is plain you don’t understand the mentality of the Los Angeles fan. He deals in torture. He lets us starve for the game with New England, fattens our confidence for the game with Denver, then returns us to bread and water next week for the game with Phoenix. Either we get out of here, or they arrange for us to play Denver eight times at home.”

When Denver sells out at home against everyone, as it has for the last 20 years, the Raiders grimace. Denver has everyone’s money by spring, meaning that if the team falls on its hairstyle, or the weather is ugly, or the opponent less attractive yet, Denver titters. It also guffaws.

It always plays with the suckers’ chips, as do others in the league.

This is the version one day of the Raiders. The cerebral purpose of operating a house game is defeated when all those bank notes are sitting out there and you can’t get your hands on them.

For a stadium accommodating 92,000, the Raiders this year sold only 32,000 or so season tickets. Why won’t fans in these precincts buy season tickets?

The answer is it is too hard in this town for the purchaser of tickets to give them away.

A board chairman asks his office boy, “Would you like to see the Raiders Sunday?”

The office boy replies, “Who are they playing?”

The board chairman fidgets, knowing he has a problem.

“They’re playing Phoenix,” he answers, apologetically.

“I’ll pass,” says the kid, “but let me know when they play Denver.”

The board chairman now has to worry where he’s going to lay off those ducats, and he drops his option on season tickets the following year.

Well, if free tickets can be a hard sell to Raider games, how will one unload seats for the expansion team the keen-witted Coliseum Commission aims to get?

You’re talking premiums, baby. Prospects will be told, “If you’ll take these tickets to Sunday’s game off my hands, I’ll throw in a 25-pound turkey.”

For all their crises, the Raiders retain a shot at a wild-card position in the postseason tournament, keeping their pulse with an overtime win over Denver on Sunday, 16-13.

But, at the end of 13 games this season, you ask in the afterglow if the work would have been this difficult if the Raiders had received quarterbacking a little more deft?

If you are any kind of man, you open discussions of a team by questioning the skills of the quarterback. Only a low-life would begin by putting the knock on the nose guard.

When Jim Plunkett departed, the Raiders tried Marc Wilson, followed by Rusty Hilger and Vince Evans.

Then enlisting Steve Beuerlein, the Raiders, in a fit of desperation, yielded valuable talent to Washington for Jay Schroeder.

Schroeder was soon on the bench and Beuerlein back on the field, with results sometimes good, but too often not good, as witnessed during the first three quarters of the Denver game.

Clearly out of rhythm, Beuerlein wasn’t able to get the Raiders generating, creating a depressing spectacle.

He then gathered himself, throwing straight enough for the Raiders to sneak away with the match, but the thought occurred it has been a long spell since consistency has been a Raider feature at quarterback.

Maybe Beuerlein will yet rise to slay dragons. But, along the way, he is imposing on viewers more worry than is mentally healthy.

If Sunday’s game was vital to the Raiders, it also was important to Denver for a reason you will readily understand.

Denver already has won its division but fosters a large ambition to snatch enough games to assure home field throughout the tournament.

And home field in Denver is not to be minimized. During the nine-year incumbency of Dan Reeves as head coach, the club shows the best home record in pro football--.794.

Since the arrival five years ago of John Elway, Denver’s home record glistens at .830.

So, in the playoffs, catching the enemy in Denver is a wide advantage to the Broncos, who cursed their luck Sunday, blowing a game that, for the most part, was theirs.

Dan Reeves, field leader of Denver, remains only one of two coaches in pro football today to wear a necktie on the sideline.

The other? Mike Ditka, who learned his football under two necktie wearers, George Halas and Tom Landry. Reeves also studied under Landry, who, like Halas, wore a hat on the sideline.

For a coach selecting sideline haberdashery, a hat is more practical than a tie, because when you get a bad call, it is harder to stomp a tie.

It’s like guys explaining why they learned to play the piano instead of the violin. You can’t set a beer down on a violin.

Halas was a distinguished hat stomper but, even in his darkest moods, never was known to jump a tie.