See...... Have fun with this thread......
A familiar videotape will roll Saturday night at an annual gathering of diehard Kansas City Chiefs fans, or rather, diehard Raider Haters.
They'll see a large Raiders helmet -- made out of Styrofoam -- get blown to smithereens in the Iraq desert last year by the 169th Corps Support Battalion, a Kansas Army National Guard unit.
Operation Raider Hater was a success.
"They blasted the hell out of that helmet," said Chiefs fan/Raider hater Mike Eberle, 48, of Cambridge, Neb. "They'll be at our (Saturday night) Festivus, and they'll play the video over and over and get people pumped up."
Pumped up for Sunday's visit to Arrowhead Stadium by the Raiders, who've endured last-minute losses there each of the past three seasons.
Of course, the Raiders have endured much other misery since their 2002 run to the Super Bowl. Raider Haters offer no sympathy, and their hatred has infested the Internet, an outlet that didn't exist when the Raiders began battling the Chiefs and other rivals in the 1960s.
"Those of us who proudly call ourselves 'Raider Haters' are able to converse with many more than we previously could, and we do our best to keep that wonderful feeling alive and well," said David Kelley, 47, of Fort Smith, Ark. "The Internet can be a tremendous tool for converting others to our beliefs and is extremely useful for spreading the message of Raider Hate."
Kelley helps preach that gospel on chiefswarpath.com, a site C.J. Korf launched in 2000 to counter pro-Raiders propaganda spewed by one of his friends.
"When the site first started, that was the main part to it," Korf, 31, said of the anti-Raiders section. "It's evolved since then. I still get e-mails about it all the time."
Most e-mails are profanity-laced tirades by Raiders loyalists, and they have a similar theme to this G-rated comment posted by Raider Ryan: "The Raider-Hater stuff is awesome. We all know it's born out of fear."
Korf, who lives in Abilene, Kan., disagrees, saying Raiders' hatred stems from "a fun rivalry."
"That's the fun of the NFL," he said.
Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer got reminded about his team's rivalry with the Raiders before Sunday's 17-13 win in Oakland, and we're not just talking about the eggs thrown at the Broncos' team buses.
"You hear it all the time out in public, 'Beat the Raiders. Beat the Raiders,' " Plummer said last week. "So it's in your head that, 'Hey, we've got to beat these guys.' ... When we beat them, our fans are happy."
Do a Google search of "Raider Hater" and you'll be surprised at how many fans have sites dissing da Raiders. Or not surprised, considering the Raiders' storied role as the NFL's villains.
"If you spend time on the Web, look at forums, the blogs, myspace.com, it's amazing. It's universal," San Diego Chargers booster Tommie "Charger Tom" Vaughn said. "You've got Raider fans, you've got Raider Haters, and there's a huge chasm in the middle."
Click on urbandictionary.com and you can find 11 slang definitions of Raider Hater.
Click on Charger Tom's site and you're greeted by "Welcome To The Official Raider Haters Universe." Pictures, cartoons, jokes, logos and commentary are seemingly endless. A world map lets visitors pinpoint their locations -- West Africa, Saudi Arabia, England and Hawaii are among those pinned.
"(His site) has 135,000 hits on it. It's rated No. 1 on every search engine," Vaughn, 64, said. "It's so big I've had e-mail from the NFL to make sure I'm not making any money off their product."
What Vaughn's doing is having fun mocking the team he's hated since the Navy stationed him in San Diego in 1961. Now living in Texas (he's keeping his hometown anonymous for safety reasons), Vaughn says his hatred isn't reserved for the Raiders as much as it is their fans.
"If you look at the Web site, it's humor, it's funny," he said. "But Raider fans have no sense of humor, which leads to why you hate the Raiders and their fans."
Vaughn says he feels "a lot of satisfaction" rather than sympathy for the Raiders' recent woes. They've lost their past 11 AFC West games and 19 of 21 division games since their 2002 run to the Super Bowl. They're an NFL-worst 15-42 since 2003, including 2-7 this season. They're also still despised by Raider Haters.
"I'm an old-school guy, and I've hated since the '60s, with a passion. It's like you were born with it," added Eberle, a loyal surfer of chiefscoalition.com. "They could go 0-16, and I wouldn't feel sorry for those guys. You just can't."
Perhaps the Raiders' skid the past 31/2 years can be traced to one particular moment at Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego. Perhaps a spell, or curse, was cast by one outlandish Raider Hater.
As Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly documented, "during the halftime show, he had sprinted to an open area of the field in nothing but a black Victoria's Secret bra, thong and these words painted large on his chest: raider nation sucks!"
Reilly identified him as a 21-year-old Richard Craig, who was arrested for the act. Could he be the ultimate Raider Hater, the man who's cursed the Team of the Decades?
"It's like the Cubs' goat," Eberle said. "If you find the guy, let me know and I'll flip him a twenty (dollar bill)."
Raider Haters everywhere likely would be willing to do the same, at least in between their time on Internet discussion boards and Web sites.
