Monte Poole: Everyone staying away from Raiders

The vacancies evident today inside the Coliseum are not a reaction to the events of last Sunday, when the Raiders were spanked in Tennessee.
Nor are they a direct response to 2009, when the Raiders submitted yet another season in which they averaged at least two losses for every win.
The exodus began with competent men removing themselves nfl throwback jerseys
from consideration as head coach, starting with Sean Payton in 2004 and including Ken Whisenhunt a couple years later.
The pattern soon became apparent on the field, too, with the aging of great players like Tim Brown and Steve Wisniewski, with those whose bodies had betrayed them, like Rich Gannon and Lincoln Kennedy, and those who later arrived with a glimmer of hope before concluding conditions were not conducive to prosperity.
Like, most famously, Randy Moss.
Even some of the retired Raiders, noble servants when Al Davis was king, started peeling away, feeling unappreciated or, worse, as if their input was unwanted.
Suddenly, nobody wanted to be here.
Who, then, is left by now but the most devoted fans? Those who waved Raiders flags when the team was in Los Angeles, bought new ones when the team returned to Oakland, were rewarded three consecutive postseason appearances only to witness in the aftermath seven seasons of witless deconstruction.
They may bleed Silver and Black. They may be passionate soldiers devoted to everything it means to maintain membership in the Raider Nation. But how much are they supposed to take? It was a matter of time before they, too, began abandoning Al and whatever it is he is trying to accomplish.
Oh, they fought the good fight. They continued to worship at the Church of Al, defending absurd personnel decisions, staying loyal through preposterous draft picks and carefully swallowing the wildest offseason spending spree in franchise history. They withstood serial losing and league-wide ridicule. They even tolerated, with some embarrassment, the most bizarre news conference in NFL history.
But thousands began declining the Raiderade last season. They put down the cups and walked away, fleeing en masse.
And today, when the Raiders step onto the field for their home opener aMinnesota Vikings jersey
gainst St. Louis, the once-fearsome Coliseum and its Black Hole will be a rumor of its former self. Too many finally have taken a cue from Payton and Whisenhunt and Sarkisian.
The game did not sell out or even come close to selling out. This will be the eighth of nine home games blacked out on local TV because not enough tickets were sold. The 63,000-seat facility will have thousands of empty seats for a game in which the Raiders are favored.
Part of this can be blamed on the battered economy, which has saved its most destructive work for California. Part of it can be attributed to the depth of sports and entertainment alternatives in the Bay Area. Nationally ranked Stanford played Saturday night. The Giants, in the final weeks of a hot pennant race, are home today. The 49ers on Monday play host to defending champion New Orleans at Candlestick Park.
There are lots of options, and the Raiders happen to be among the least appealing.
And most of the empties today are an indictment of the sorry state of franchise operations. As if losing 84 of 113 games isn't bad enough, Davis continues to be stubbornly stubborn about seeking real solutions.
Such arrogance can be tolerated while triumphant, as the Raiders once were. And defiance, one of the few characteristics where Al has lost nothing, can be intriguing when you're the charismatic maverick, back-handing a league of stuffy conformists.
But when your team is losing at a rate the league has never known, arrogance and defiance are just plain pathetic.
Raiders fans don't always agree; when some dared to put up a billboard urging Davis to replace himself as general manager, others distanced themselves from the movement. There is unanimity, though, in that no fan worth their Silver and Black blood wants to embrace pathetic.
The franchise has fallen so far that Jon Gruden, the former Raiders coach in town with the Monday Night Football crew, could hold an "I'm coming back to the Raiders" rally at Oracle Arena today and there would be higher demand for tickets.
Is this a case of mass apathy? No, because too many still care.
Is it mass surrender? No, because too many still are willing to root.
It's a mass passive-aggressive protest, because these fans don't have many Indianapolis Colts jersey
remaining options that might be heard.
Though a victory today would be help, it would not be a solution. The issue is much bigger than one game or even a single season. Only one man can address this. If he weren't so busy believing it's not broken, he might notice the silence.