It didn't take former Oakland Raiders defensive lineman Terdell Sands long to form an opinion about this week's news that his old team is leaving the Bay Area for Las Vegas.
"I don't agree with it," said Sands, who prepped at Howard and played one season for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs. "Those are the most loyal fans in America."
In some ways, the legendary behavior of those fans is what makes this move seem almost perfect at first glance. The Raid-ahs have their Black Hole cheering section, whose inhabitants usually look and act like the street thugs in a Mad Max movie. Then there's Vegas itself, which is filled with casinos that are the ultimate black hole for most of their visitors' hard-earned money.
It's enough to make you hope and pray that Sin City's old marketing slogan - "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" - now also will apply to rebellious Raiders Nation.
Oakland Raiders fan Eric Allen watches a television broadcast at Ricky's Sports Theatre & Grill in San Leandro, Calif., as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announces the team's move to Las Vegas has been approved Monday, March 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
"I remember my mother going to the restroom one time during a game," Sands recalled Tuesday afternoon. "And these fans jumped another woman in there because she was wearing the wrong jersey. They don't play around out there."
And perhaps within that narrow context, this whole move by the Silver and Black - a move supported by 31 of 32 National Football League owners - is hard to argue with, since pro football and gambling are as inextricably tied to one another as peanut butter and jelly.
Come to think of it, even peanut butter has bananas as a viable second option. Pro football without gambling might reduce Super Bowl television viewing to those ratings earned by the recent World Baseball Classic.
But that doesn't mean all those folks in Oakland who've lustily cheered their Raid-ahs for 44 of the past 57 years - the team relocated to Los Angeles from 1982 through 1994 - don't have reason to rail against the monstrous machine that is the NFL.
Regardless of the condition of their stadium, or the financial profile of many of their fans, the Oakland Raiders are as much a part of NFL history and lore as the Washington Redskins, Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins, with whom they share the distinction of having won two Super Bowls each.
Indeed, the Raiders and Dolphins are sort of renegade royalty, since they came from the old American Football League with colorful owners (Al Davis for Oakland, Joe Robbie for Miami), colorful pasts and the ability to quickly turn the more staid NFL on its ear, each of them winning Super Bowls within the first seven years they entered the league.
And perhaps because of that, current Miami owner Stephen Ross cast the lone "no" vote regarding the move, later telling The Associated Press: "My position today was that we as owners and as a league owe it to the fans to do everything we can to stay in the communities that have supported us until all options have been exhausted."
Mark Davis, son of Al, will tell you they did all they could to stay. The Raiders brass believed a new stadium was needed, despite the city still being on the hook for more than $80 million for past renovations. Of course, the good taxpayers of Las Vegas are about to be strapped with more than $950 million worth of depth to build a new playpen for its new football team. Talk about your black holes.
"I'm sick to death that there will no longer be an Oakland Raiders brand," said ESPN Monday Night Football analyst and former Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who made a lot of Tennessee Volunteers fans sick to death when he backed away from the UT job in 2012, leaving the Big Orange to hire Butch Jones.
Noted Sands, who played six of his eight NFL seasons with the Raiders: "What made those fans different was that when we weren't winning, they were still coming to every game. We'd go to San Diego and it would be like a home game. No fan base is more loyal to their team than Raiders Nation."
What the NFL is saying with this move is that it's basically loyal to one thing: money. A league that has long banned its referees from setting foot in Vegas during the season for fear it might call into question the legitimacy of its games' outcomes, is now moving a franchise there.
It seems another gradual yet inexorable decline for the Shield in terms of decency and character and clean-cut image, all those traits called into question in recent years by its head-in-the-sand positions over brain traumas, domestic violence and performance-enhancing drugs.
And should you wish to dispute that, consider this story once the move was announced: Renowned brothel owner Dennis Hof - prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada - plans to open a sports-themed bordello called "Pirate's Booty Sports Brothel" in 2020, believed to be the first season the Raiders will call Vegas home.
Said Hof in a released statement: "The Raiders coming to Vegas will mean big business for me, so my next sex den will honor the 'Men in Black' and their 'Raider Nation.'"
Hof also said he plans to create a VIP section for players and that anyone playing or working for the Raiders would get a 50 percent discount. Gives a whole new meaning to "playing on Sunday," doesn't it?
Said Sands: "I just hope the Oakland Raiders can give their fans at least one more Super Bowl win before this happens."
It would be the only fair way to close the books on the Black Hole before the NFL's fast-fading positive image disappears for good into a bottomless black hole in Sin City.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.