Football in California carries a very large weight. The bragging rights that are earned with a win make for lots of taunting fun. This is specifically true in the battles of the Bay Area football teams. The Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers,although only separated by a division and a bridge, are two very different teams, specifically, their fans. The Raiders have been dubbed the bad-boy team with the out-of-control fans. With each home game, tales, be they truth or myth, of mad mayhem in the Oakland Coliseum grow.

Everyone has a story to tell about someone they know who knows someone else, who has gotten beaten up at a Raider game for wearing the opposing team’s gear or even worse, 49er gear. That silver and black mystique has been said to carry on even off-the-field and also has lead to accusations of great proportions. Raider fans are band wagon, they’re hoodlums, they’re trouble makers and they don’t sell out, are just some of the things that people, usually Niner fans, have said about Raiders and their fans.

Then there are the 49ers. The team that prides itself on five Superbowl wins, having class and even serving wine at their games. This of course, is fair game for a Raider fan. The 49ers are nicknamed the forty whiners and called soft because of these very things. Their home games always sell out, their fans are ‘civilized’, and half the time, they are too busy on their cell phones to be upset about people wearing another team’s gear. They are so ‘nice’ that they don’t even care if people wear Raider gear to their games. How sweet.

The differences in these two teams, well, at least their fans, are quite evident. This being the case, I have to ask, why is being rough and tough in football a bad thing? It really isn’t. This is a sport that glorifies hitting the hell out of people. Being bad in football is good! Maybe I am just another crazy Raider fan, yeah, I am, but that is beside the point. I don’t want to go to a football game and drink wine.

Hello, it’s football!! I also like the rivalry and believe it is disrespectful to wear another team’s gear to my stadium. Of course, it’s a free country so one can wear whatever they want but just be prepared to catch some flack. Football is not a sport for the weak at heart or the sensitive, it’s a sport that conjures up aggression, competitiveness and yeah, even mayhem. Definitely not class. Raider fans should be idolized. They are true football fans. It’s not about bandwagon; this team has not won a championship since 1984. Bandwagon means jumping on as a fan because your team is winning and jumping off when they lose. This is surely not the case with Raider fans.

Okay, whiner-I mean Niner- fans, don’t get your panties in a bunch. You did win the most recent battle of bay. Being that the Raiders had beaten the 49ers 6 out of 9 of the last prior meetings, they had to make it fun by letting them win at least one more. Okay, that was mean, but all in good fun, just like football. Go Raiders!