Let me be clear: I hate the Raiders.\u00a0 I have hated the Raiders ever since I was a small child, rooting for the Redskins who had, at the time, no discernible rivalry with the Raiders. I couldn’t stand the Cowboys, but if ever faced with my personal football Armageddon, I would have rooted for them to beat the Raiders in any Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

Yes, my AFC team was the Broncos (making the 1989 Super Bowl a bonanza), but then, I had relatively good feelings about pretty much every AFC West team.\u00a0 They were fun, free-wheeling old AFL teams.\u00a0 I knew of the Chiefs from the trickeration they used in Super Bowl IV.\u00a0 The Chargers had those cool, powder-blues, played in the sun, and were sunny, Southern California.\u00a0 The Broncos, of course, were the Wild West personified.<\/p>\n

Except the Raiders.\u00a0 I needn’t rehearse here the moral failings of the franchise or their owner.\u00a0 They wore black, embraced their own evil, and who was I to argue?<\/p>\n

So why am I rooting for them to win today?<\/p>\n

Because, at little-to-no-cost to the Chiefs, the Raiders can make history by winning every division game and failing to make the playoffs.\u00a0 They have taken care of the most basic of business – dominating their division – and even that will have bought them nothing.\u00a0 Outside the division, they have beaten only the woeful Rams and the Seahawks, which was probably just for old times’ sake.<\/p>\n

Football, with all its mythical story lines, rarely provides this sort of poetic opportunity.<\/p>\n

I will root for the Raiders to win, so that the failure of their season will be all the more exquisitely perfect.
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