Homage to Raiders, pre-Davis

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The NFL owners' meetings in the Southern California luxury suburb Dana Point have produced a number of fascinating developments, but maybe the strangest of all is the potential for the glorious return of the Oakland Señors.

You probably missed all that with all the Jay Cutler non-news, didn't you? Yeah, that's what we thought.

But amidst the other news - the new NFL-DirecTV deal that actually pays the league $1 billion a year even in 2011 when there might be a strike or lockout, the Brady Rule and the end of wedge blocking on kickoffs - the news on the Raiders' place in the upcoming schedule sort of sneaks up on you.

And yet, there it is. The Raiders, owners of the fewest wins since 2002 - and, even before that, perpetual antagonists with anyone who happened to have something they want - suddenly are among the league's darlings.

Not only do they get a Thanksgiving Day game for the first time since 1970, they don't have to be ridiculed by being matched against the Lions. Instead, they will play in the Cowboys' new digs in Arlington, a perk of sorts as these things go.

Most intriguing of all is the way they were included as part of the first weekend's AFL 50th-anniversary retrospective, with New England, Buffalo and San Diego. And part of the news is that all four teams will wear throwback uniforms.

This is not normally news except in the case of the Raiders, who essentially have had the same uniforms since Al Davis swallowed the team in 1963. The only real innovation, if you want to call it that, was changing the white uniform's numerals from black with silver trim to silver with back trim in the early 1970s. Their throwback uniforms are their current uniforms, and their current uniforms look just as good on a black-and-white TV as they do in HD.

Unless ...

Chronicle columnist, Ray Ratto, stands for a photograph inside the studio on Tuesday Jan. 27, 2008 in San Francisco,Calif. Chronicle columnist, Ray Ratto, stands for a photograph inside the studio on Tuesday Jan. 27, 2008 in San Francisco,Calif. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Homage to Raiders, pre-Davis 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Unless the Raiders really are going to go full throwback and wear their true, original pre-Al duds. The plain black helmets. The gold trim rather than the silver. The rounded numbers and the three sleeve and stocking stripes. Maybe even the original logo, courtesy Remembertheafl.com, of the Raider with a mustache from the few days before the Raiders were the Raiders.

When they were the Oakland Señors.

This seems like such a small thing, but the idea that the Raiders might reference the dark ages before Davis is so radical that it makes the league's decision to notice the Raiders at all seem tepid by comparison.

Raiders history, after all, is Al history, and the first three years of Raiders history were supervised by one of Al's early enemies, Wayne Valley. They weren't good years, to be sure - nine wins in three years, three different coaches, and three different homes. Indeed, the franchise would not have existed at all had the NFL not decided to put an expansion team in Minneapolis. The AFL originally wanted to put the Raiders' franchise there, and turned to Oakland only after the Vikings were born.

But once Al was lured by Valley to save the team from the verge of extinction, the clock was restarted, and nothing that happened pre-Al ever existed, except when it could be used to gild the Davis lily.

Fair enough. The winners always write the history books, and the Davis Raiders did more than enough to get away with obscuring the early results by winning as often as they did. The gold vanished, the black helmets vanished, and the Señors never actually made it past the consideration stage.

In other words, the opener would be the perfect time to bring it all back. Having begun as dramatic agents of change, the Davis Raiders have been more resistant to it than any other franchise. Going to a throwback outfit that is the same as the standard duds is to waste a rare opportunity to show that the franchise is actually capable of a sense of humor.

And hey, if the original uniform was good enough for Jim Otto, how can it be wrong for the current crop of non-Hall of Famers?

We await developments. That is, if there are developments to await. We'd love to think the Raiders are willing to play along with the rest of the party, but it has been so long since they've gotten into the spirit of anything whimsical like throwback jerseys that this just might be one more view of the same old, same old. Two words that have been killing them for the last six years: "same" and "old."