Saturday, September 26, 2009

Then the Raiders slammed the phone down and pouted and wrote "I HATE RICH GANNON" in big letters on their notebook

This is why the Raiders are so lame:

Team officials told CBS Sports they did not want Gannon to attend Saturday's television production meetings in advance of Sunday's Raiders-Broncos game, The Chronicle has learned, citing his public criticism of the organization in recent years.

"Rich Gannon is not welcome here," Raiders executive John Herrera said Friday when asked about the ban. "We told CBS we did not want him in our building, we did not want him to be part of our production meeting, and that's where it sits."

Oh God. "Richie hurt our feewings, so we don't want him come ovah!" The Raiders have meticulously cultivated an image as the Bad Boys of the NFL, dangerous scrappers who you'd want to avoid. Now we know the truth: their feelings get hurt when someone is mean to them. Why don't you and the rest of your Girl Scout troop go up to your room and play with Princess Sparkle Pony if you don't want to see Mean Old Rich Gannon, Raiders?

But wait, there's more:

Herrera quoted Gannon as saying in several interviews they should just "blow up the building and start over" in Oakland. Team officials took that as literally as they did figuratively, and told Gannon as much before last season's home game against the Chiefs.

"We think in a post 9/11 world, that's not a very proper thing to say," Herrera said. "It's uncalled for. He seems to be a guy who can't get over the fact that he played the worst Super Bowl game in the history of the game and he wants to blame everybody but himself.

Yes, when Rich Gannon said that the Raiders should "blow up the building and start over," he meant that the Raiders should actually place a number of high explosive charges around the team facility in Alameda and detonate them, killing everyone inside and reducing the structure to a smoking pile of rubble. That's the impression I got, anyway. In a post-9/11 world.

Then Herrera caps it off with a cheap shot about Gannon's Super Bowl performance. The Raiders should be slobberingly grateful that they were ever in the same parking lot as a Super Bowl. This is why they're the laughingstock of the NFL.

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