Two letters on TV punctuate Las Vegas’ NFL reality

Until Thursday night, the 12th letter of the alphabet and the 22nd had never been used together in association with the National Football League, at least not in an official capacity with millions watching.

It happened for the first time when highlights and a bio of Jedrick Wills, an offensive tackle from Alabama and the Cleveland Browns’ first-round draft pick, appeared on television screens. This was the day before Bill Belichick’s dog became the star of a virtual draft made necessary by the mysterious and sometimes deadly coronavirus.

We have known this was coming for three years. Not the pandemic or Belichick’s Alaskan Klee Kai, but the Raiders relocating again — this time from Oakland to Southern Nevada (in general) and Las Vegas (in particular).

Still, can you believe it?

This seemed different than jumping on a Southwest flight to the Bay Area on a Sunday morning for a Raiders game and flipping your credential around so as not to be outed as a homewrecker by those wearing war paint and spiked shoulder pads in the tailgate areas.

When the TV screen was showing Wills destroying guys from Vanderbilt with pancake blocks, the LV designation appeared on a graphic in the left-hand corner, just above NYJ. Meaning the Jets would be on the clock next, and then the Raiders.

The LV Raiders.

Not OAK.

Not VGK.

LV.

Two letters. One dream.

At least among those who have lived here a long time, and never thought we’d see the day.

Life in football town

Because there’s less to do and less to see since doors were shuttered at T-Mobile Arena and all were sent home from the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament March 11, I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

I’ve found it takes one’s mind off things. This is especially true for one treading perilously close to the age where doctors Fauci and Birx say one should be extra cautious about venturing outside.

This week it was David Halberstam’s essays on sports.

The author, whose specialties were politics and the Vietnam War, professed a passion for pro football in a collection of his greatest sports hits. He recounted how literary and former college pals would congregate at one’s home or a tavern in Nashville, Tennessee, when he was headquartered there, to witness NFL games on television.

“Though I worked in many different cities over those years, there was always a tacit agreement among friends about Sunday,” wrote the Pulitzer Prize winner, who was killed not by a virus but a 2007 car crash en route to interviewing quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book about the iconic 1958 championship game between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts.

“Yes, we cared about the game, we knew who had the best local reception, we knew who would play on Sunday, and we would all show up.”

It reminded me of my own Sunday experience, when my father would load my brother and me into a Pontiac Tempest station wagon for a 20-minute ride to his Uncle John’s place in Hammond, Indiana. Uncle John had a TV antenna so tall that he could pull in Bears games at Wrigley Field via a signal from South Bend; it was the same setup the priests at my parish used to circumvent Notre Dame blackouts.

Watching the Bears play football in their dark jerseys was a thrill comparable to riding The Bobs, a diabolical wooden roller coaster at the Riverview amusement park that sometimes proved a welcome diversion from some of those middling Bears teams.

So when the letters went up on the draft graphic, indicating the Las Vegas Raiders were on the clock and pro football on the Strip is just around the corner (get to work Fauci and Birx), warm memories of brisk NFL Sundays bubbled over like a Gatorade shower.

Two letters. One dream.

A distant memory of a left-handed quarterback named Bobby Douglass overthrowing a wide-open receiver in the end zone, and the football thudding off a brick wall lacking for ivy.

To quote Halberstam, it was football. But it was never about football. It was about belonging.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.