No Place Like Home

I came to Oakland last weekend for two reasons, one to see my nephew from Texas compete Saturday morning in the national finals of the Punt, Pass and Kick competition, the other to gather information for a column on the notorious Raider fans as they assembled later that day for the first NFL playoff game in 20 years at what’s now known as Network Associates Coliseum.

I should not have been surprised when the two tangents intersected. Think of it as the “Little Giants” meet “Apocalypse Now.”

On Friday night, my sister told me about a list of instructions for the 32 youngsters from around the country who would represent NFL teams in the PP&K; competition. One was that they should take off their team jerseys while sitting in the stands for the game between the Raiders and Miami Dolphins and don white T-shirts so as not to incite Raider fans.

“Don’t worry,” I told my sister. Her son, Blake, hardly appears menacing even for a 9-year-old, and, besides, he was representing the Houston Texans. Raider fans, recently voted as the most stupid in the NFL in a Sports Illustrated poll of players, don’t know Houston has a team, I said.

Our conversation was overheard by Karen Guberman of Boca Raton, Fla., whose 14-year-old son, Jared, was representing the Dolphins. Raider fans, she said, do know that Miami has a team. She said she had been warned by three PP&K; officials not to allow her son to wear his jersey except when he and the other competitors were performing a halftime exhibition.

“I’m from New York,” she said. “I don’t back down from anybody. But we’ll take their advice. This sounds like a different kind of crowd.”

*

Welcome to the Raider Nation.

The Dark Side.

The Black Hole.

Hell.

Oakland’s Coliseum, where the Raiders meet the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday for the AFC championship, has reclaimed its title as the NFL’s most intimidating stadium for a visiting team and, apparently, that team’s fans.

The Raiders won Saturday, 27-0, improving their Coliseum playoff record since 1967 to 11-2 and their home record this season to 8-1, and Oakland Coach Jon Gruden afterward credited the fans. It’s a fact they were voted most stupid in the Sports Illustrated poll, but don’t underestimate them. They also were voted the scariest.

“I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Gruden said. “That place was rocking. Everything from the costumes to the music. It’s a pleasure to coach in that atmosphere.”

That hasn’t always been the case since the Raiders returned from Los Angeles in 1995. Until the second home game of this season, the team hadn’t sold enough tickets for the NFL to lift its local television blackout since the opening game of 1997. Even this season, the team ranked 26th among 31 teams in attendance and percentage of seats sold, with an average crowd of 57,814 in the 63,132-seat Coliseum. Several luxury suites were empty for Saturday’s game.

Would-be fans reportedly have been turned off by several factors: Personal seat licenses, costing from $250 to $4,000, that must be purchased in order to buy season tickets and require renewal after 10 years; a tab of $108 million by the end of this year for Alameda County taxpayers because the PSLs that were supposed to pay for promises made to the Raiders upon their return didn’t sell as anticipated; five ongoing lawsuits involving the Raiders and either the city and county or the NFL; persistent rumors that the team is eager to return to Los Angeles and its larger, more lucrative market.

Did I mention that the team was also losing, having failed to advance to the playoffs in its first five seasons after returning?

But the Raiders finished this regular season with a 12-4 record, won the AFC West title and earned a home playoff berth for the first time in Oakland since 1980. (The Raiders were 5-2 at home in the playoffs while they were in Los Angeles.)

Suddenly, six years after the team came back, an Oakland Tribune headline last Friday trumpeted, “They’re back!”

The fans too.

The sellout for the game against Miami was the Raiders’ fourth this season.

“This is what Al Davis envisioned when he came back to Oakland,” one player agent said during Saturday’s game. “Forget the money. All he ever really wanted was a home-field advantage.”

*

The PP&K; competition started at 7:30 a.m. Because that was more than five hours before the 1 p.m. kickoff, I figured--wrongly--that I could arrive a few minutes before, park close to the stadium and walk in to watch with my sister and brother-in-law.

When I exited the 880 freeway, all lanes leading to the Coliseum were jammed. I audibled, driving to the airport, parking there and taking a taxi to the stadium. The cab driver told me the cars had started lining up at 4:30 a.m. He couldn’t get closer than a mile.

I walked the rest of the way, among the thousands of fans--almost all dressed in black--waiting for the gates to the parking lot to open at 8 o’clock. Some were tailgating in the road.

A couple of hours later, still three hours before game time, the parking lot was filled. Everyone who had been part of the PP&K; competition was asked to leave the spectator section and wait outside so that it could be cleaned. That section was the south end zone, known during games as the Black Hole because it is where the allegedly loudest, meanest and smelliest fans congregate. Would any of them notice that the litter had been removed?

All of the PP&K; kids dutifully removed their jerseys.

But not all of the fans lining up to get inside the stadium had been forewarned.

One wore a Dolphin jersey.

Talking to a policeman, my brother-in-law asked about the fan’s life expectancy.

“He’ll probably be OK,” said Sgt. Paul Figueroa of the Oakland Police Department. “He’ll be heckled, but he probably won’t be harmed, unless the Dolphins are winning. Then he’d better cover up and go home. There’s not much of a rivalry here with Miami. But if he was wearing a Denver or Kansas City jersey, he’d already be bloodied.”

Time for me to go to work. I kissed my relatives goodbye and told them I was headed for the parking lot to interview Raider fans. My sister told me to eat some barbecue. The tantalizing smell had been wafting around the stadium for hours. But I could tell she was concerned, as if I was going into the mosh pit at an AC/DC concert or something.

*

I mention AC/DC because “Hells Bells” was playing full blast from the boom box near the first group of fans I visited. The smell of barbecue wasn’t the only aroma wafting from that area.

“Looks like a Hell’s Angels convention out here,” I mentioned to a man standing nearby.

“There you go,” Art Gallegos said. “Hell’s Angels, lowriders, Raider fans--we all get a bad rap. One or two people get rowdy and it makes us all look bad. Most of us out here, we own homes, we pay taxes, we go to work in the morning.”

Gallegos is a San Jose letter carrier.

The more I investigated, the more I found out that his perception was correct. Some Raider fans no doubt are as tough as they look, but most aren’t. I talked to one man dressed like the grim reaper who is an accountant from Los Angeles. Another man who had his face painted black and silver and was wearing a hard hat is a carpenter from Santa Maria.

“We’re just trying to have a good time and spread Raider love,” said Robert Ambrosetti, a lettuce shipper from Santa Maria. He was standing in front of a banner that read, “Woody’s and Sue’s Barbecue,” and was doing most of the barbecuing.

When two policemen walked through the area, I asked Ambrosetti what they might be seeking.

“Free barbecue,” he said.

Ambrosetti said he and his friends from Santa Maria used to go to Raider games in Los Angeles and felt considerably more endangered there.

“There was a gang element you don’t find here,” he said. “This is more like Halloween.”

A little boy, not much older than my nephew, interrupted.

“Want to buy this sign for a dollar?” he asked.

The sign said something obscene about the Dolphins.

Ambrosetti chased him away.

“Support the homeless,” the boy protested.

Turns out the signs were being given away in another area of the parking lot by a radio station.

I approached a man wearing a “Black Hole” T-shirt who assured me that anyone venturing into that section who didn’t belong would be torn limb from limb.

His wife, Michelene Ramos from Livermore, rolled her eyes.

“People bring their kids in there,” she said. “It’s not dangerous at all.”

“Yes, it is,” snarled her husband, Hector.

When I caught up later with Figueroa, the Oakland policeman, he confirmed that the image of the Coliseum crowd is mostly media hype. (I suppose I should confess here that NFL PP&K; officials said they issue the same warning to contestants about jerseys in every stadium, not only Oakland’s.)

“The large majority of our arrests are for drunk and disorderly,” Figueroa said. “We had more problems the first year the Raiders were back here with fans throwing things, but we’ve corrected that with a larger police presence.”

“How about the Black Hole?” I asked.

“They’re loud,” he said. “But that’s all.”

Some fans in the Black Hole, such as Hector Ramos, won’t want to hear that. But their cover was blown when Gruden’s mother came to a game this season and sat among them.

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.

*

MIKE PENNER

The NFL playoffs have taught us one thing: Greed is good. D8

*

COVERAGE

Wade Phillips was fired as coach of the Buffalo Bills. D8