Best AFC West Rivalry

Bill Williamson says Donkeys vs. Raiders.

I would probably agree, but his Denver prejudice shows a little bit at the end:

Wear a Bronco shirt in Oakland and you risk being hit by garbage. In Denver, one of the best selling clothing items is a "Raider hater" shirt.

Ooh, scary, evil Raiders fans throw "garbage," while the civilized, decent, hardworking fans of the Denver Broncos wear angry t-shirts.

This is a difficult dilemma for me. On the one hand, it's kind of cool that everyone is scared of the Raiders fans. We dress up in skulls and gorilla costumes and biker gear and people are terrified. It's fun to dress up like a pirate. Halloween comes eight times in the Fall.

But on the other hand, it's become the conventional wisdom that if you are a fan of another team visiting the coliseum, you be physically attacked. I know that's not the same as having garbage thrown at you, but "garbage" could be an empty bottle (although, if that's what Williamson meant, maybe he'd have written "risk being hit by recycling"), or a battery, or an old knife that the meth-addled Raiders fan meant to throw away.

This is way overblown. I was at the Denver game last year. I spoke with a family of Broncos fans, originally from Colorado, who had driven down from Santa Rosa or Petaluma for the game. We had a pleasant conversation. They people were talking some trash, but nothing threatening or intimidating. Maybe they could do without some of the cursing, but for the most part people were being cool. They hadn't been hit by any garbage, nobody'd poor a beer on them.

I told them to enjoy the game, and I hoped they had a good time, but that their team lost. They shook my hand, wished me the same, and walked away.

I mean, to read Williamson tell it, you'd think we were Christian Motorcycle Gang, instead of just plain old football fans.

Gig 'Em!

So we're in College Station, TX, home of Texas A&M. We ate dinner tonight at a Mexican Restaurant called Los Norteños. Luckily, we made it through dinner without being attacked by Sureños.

So far, we're having a wonderful time here in the Great State of Texas. The last time I was here--in 1999--I spent three days in Galveston at my uncle's house, an antebellum mansion that he and his psycho wife ran as a bed and breakfast.

That was easily the weirdest three days of my life. My uncle's wife introduced me to her daughter by saying "YOU BETTER NOT FUCK HER, JOHN. She's your COUSIN."

I should point out that this was shocking on a couple of levels. First, it was a surprise that she was my cousin, since my uncle was on his third wife and he had a habit of marrying with women with at least three children. There was never any "It's a Girl!" announcement cards, or baptism invitations, or anything like that. Second, she was thirteen.

Anyway, my aunt also pulled an AR-15 on Mike Shepherd, with whom I was traveling. She ranted at me because the rest of the family in California "ignored" them. We went out to dinner at a Benihana-style Japanese restaurant, where my uncle got shit-faced drunk and started saying the only phrase he knew in Japanese, which translated roughly to "Remember the Big One."

Good times.

So anyway, on this trip, people have been nothing but pleasant. The flight was totally smooth, and one of the stewardesses said to me as we were exiting the plane in Houston, "I hope your Raiders start playing better." I told her I was going to hold my breath. The weather's great, we have plenty of beer, and tomorrow we're hooking up with Dan's brother to smoke a brisket and watch some football. Sunday we're going to a sportsbar so we can watch the Raiders, because we're masochists.