A look at how Raider Nation took over San Diego
As some of you may know, I live down in San Diego and, when I’m not getting bossed around by James or Terry, I’m the Public Relations Officer for the South Bay Raiders Booster Club. For the second year in a row, we teamed up with the Original Raiders Fan Club of San Diego to welcome Raider Nation to San Diego when the Oakland Raiders came down to take on the Chargers.
Now, this Black Out San Diego event has been taking place for more than a decade down here, but it’s really only been the last two years that the two clubs have teamed up in order to keep Raider Nation together.
As all of Raider Nation knows, the running joke is that the San Diego game is the ninth home game but this season, it really stopped being a joke. Everyone is still talking about how Raider Nation rolled into San Diego and just took it over. It was truly an epic and memorable weekend!
Last season, when the clubs had first teamed up for the Black Out San Diego party at the Handlery Hotel, we had a feeling it would be big but conservatively estimated an attendance of maybe 200-300 people just based off of past attendance at our separate parties the years before. Raider Nation blew us away and the final headcount was over 800. Not to mention the fact that, when I called to thank the hotel and the catering manager, they let me know that Raider Nation drank all the beer in the hotel.
Well, I take that back, there was still some craft beers from Ballast Point leftover…
For this season, we estimated maybe 1200-1500 would attend and the final headcount for 2016 was over 1600 and again, Raider Nation drank all the beer. Raider Legends Lincoln Kennedy and Cliff Branch were on hand signing autographs. There were a multitude of vendors with all kinds of Raiders items and the clubs had raffles going as well. The clubs added food to the event this year and, in addition to having 4Dub perform, live band Tierra Chicana performed. DJs Beto Perez and Raymond T from local radio station Magic 92.5 were also on hand in between 4Dub’s sets.
On behalf of the South Bay Raiders Booster Club, I was able to bring the Raider Nation Princess up onstage to present her with the donation that we were able to raise through our fundraisers. She wanted to ride her bicycle from Los Angeles to San Diego in order to raise money for the cancer program at the Children’s Hospital of LA. Being that she’s only 11, it probably wasn’t the safest idea but she still set herself a goal to raise $5K before the year is out.
Hopefully, the Chargers will stay put. I would hate for Raider Nation to miss out on their ninth home game. It’s always such a blast and we all get the pleasure of meeting so many other Raiders fans!
So much time and effort went into pulling this off and now that it’s over, I’m relieved and yet want to do it all over again. Special thanks to every single one of the board members on the party planning committee and to all the vendors who showed up with a ton of hustle to take care of Raider Nation. A very special thanks to Raiders legends Kennedy and Branch and to Lincoln, I’d just like to say, “Yes!!! The flash is on!”
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