A football player with an eye patch, overlaid on two crossed swords. Silver and black. Simple, intimidating and classic. The Oakland Raiders’ iconic look has remained for half a century for a reason: It’s a uniform that brings to mind a fearful tradition of pillaging foes. The Raiders were infamous for their aggressive play through the 1970s and ’80s, a tradition co-opted by a fan base known for wearing over-the-top, Halloween-like costumes. All in the name of Raider Nation. Of course, marauding is a common theme for sports teams. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates are nautical cousins of the Oakland Raiders. But where Tampa and Pittsburgh resort to a cartoonish Jack Sparrowization of the plundering tradition, the Raiders have stuck with an unembellished logo—a warning sign of destruction, as effective and unmistakable as the Jolly Roger.
The Raiders were originally to be known as the Oakland Senors when the team was born in 1960, becoming the AFL’s eighth franchise. The Senors took top spot in an Oakland paper’s naming contest. It stuck through a few days of heckling before the team decided (quite rightly) that “The Raiders,” which reportedly finished third, was a more marketable name for a football team. Senors was canned and the Raiders set sail—originally in gold and black, before a switch in 1963 to the silver that’s still around today. As for the pirate wearing a football helmet, something about it just works—it feels believable (until you think about it). There’s no distraction. It’s just a dude with an eye patch and headgear… and… CRUNCH—you’re on your ass trying to catch your breath beneath a 300-lb. defensive end. Effective.
According to Raiders legend Jim Otto, the origins of the logo are dubious. In his book The Pain of Glory, the Hall of Fame centre recalls a high school teacher’s claim that the Raiders asked him to have his students come up with a logo for the team as an assignment. The teacher said the team took one of his student’s efforts. But, says Otto, a man from Hawaii also laid claim to the design, saying he drew it to look like the 1940s actor Randolph Scott. Either way, the Raiders wore the patch-eye logo through their rise to relevance in the 1970s under owner Al Davis and head coach John Madden, and through a move to Los Angeles in the 1980s—an era of Raiders dominance that landed them three Super Bowls. Sure, for the past decade the team has sailed a ghost ship in Oakland. The jersey still looks tough, at least. Sometimes that’s enough.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.