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Consumer Alert for Area Football Fans

Just finished watching the NFL Network's "America's Game" series on Super Bowl champs, an hour devoted to the 1976 Raiders.

Fans have rights. One right is to have the occasional sordid fling with a team you didn't grow up rooting for. The Raiders of the '70s were my such fling. I lived in Oakland for a year plus in the early '70s, when God knows the Eagles weren't making any noise except death rattles. I KNEW some Oakland Raiders. Seldom does fact match legend, but for these guys it did.

NFL Films got the facts and the legend just right. The three narrators were John Madden, Ken Stabler, and Phil Villapiano. All three were perfect Raider narrators. Villapiano basically confessed to war crimes. So did Madden. Stabler was his sly, twisted persona to the max. Fabulous stuff. Note to Patriots fans: The Hamilton call was chickenshit by the standards of that era. Today, it'd have been a 60-yard penalty. The tuck rule leaves history even, OK?

But service rules even blog journalism. Tomorrow night's team is the 2004 Patriots, and all New England fans are urged to watch, if their cable system gets NFL Network, that is.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:06 PM