Inglewood, CA — Las Vegas has been an embarrassing 2-7 against the LA teams since 2016. The year the Rams relocated back to Los Angeles from St. Louis. Chargers, meanwhile, moved from their home in San Diego the following year and have bested the "ratas," as Chargers fan Jose Orgullo calls them, four times in a row at Sofi Stadium. "Raiders are like fast fashion clothing at H&M, janky stuff that falls apart in 3 months, says Orgullo. They've moved what? Three times in the last 30 years? The handful alive that remember their 1983 Super Bowl are all locked up." Raiders still have a large following in Southern California, but since they left in 1994, they've gone an embarrassing 201-283 with only four playoff wins. That's an average of 1.3 playoff wins per decade.
Al Davis, who was once a Chargers assistant coach, left to be the Head Coach of the then-Oakland Raiders and copied the shield design from the Chargers' 1960s era. The Chargers were good and became the 1963 AFL champs. Davis wanted to give the Raiders that winning edge.
"The Raiders of the late seventies and early eighties were significant, says Dominic Mucciacito. After that, they just became a fashion trend with that famous copied shield. There was a Super Bowl appearance in 2001, where they were humiliated by the same head coach Al Davis decided to trade away. He got kooky in his older years, and his teams paid for it." Despite his questionable haircut, his son Mark Davis did the right thing in moving to Las Vegas after an unsuccessful bid to pair up with the Chargers in Carson, CA. Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas is affectionately known as the black Roomba—State-the-art with a DJ and bottle service. But Vegas is obviously a destination city. "Opposing fans take over that stadium regularly. Mucciacito says, even random hack franchises that have no name. The Commodores? Comanches? Whatever that team in Washington is called now. They talk about beating our backup quarterback by 42 points, but that did us a favor by helping us get rid of the sad regime that put us in a position to lose to them like that. They hilariously hired that GM! You can't make this up! It's like the ghost of Al Davis is still pulling the strings."
Mervyn Cole is a comedian and die-hard Chargers fan based in Los Angeles, CA.
For more of his work, check out www.ramblingronnie.com
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