Brown Retains Love for L.A.

SAN DIEGO —  Tim Brown isn’t just a Raider, he’s a Los Angeles Raider.

Every time I see him I think of that black No. 81 jersey at the Coliseum -- the Los Angeles Coliseum -- hauling in passes on third down.

That’s all that’s left of the NFL in Los Angeles -- memories and tie-ins. We have to grab whatever we can and sew a few patches into a flag to wave on Super Bowl Sunday.

We hosted the first Super Bowl in 1967 and crowned the only undefeated NFL champion at the Coliseum six years later in Super Bowl VII. The Rose Bowl hosted five Super Bowls after that, before the Raiders and Rams left in 1995 and the NFL crossed L.A. off the list for its annual party.

Since 1993, San Diego has been as close as the Super Bowl gets, a couple-hour drive down the coast.

Tim Brown is the only Raider from the Los Angeles days who still plays for the Raiders. Wide receiver James Jett is on the roster, but he was inactive for all but one game this season.

Brown is just as classy as ever. At 36, 15 years into his career, he hasn’t lost his ability to get open in the secondary. And eight seasons after leaving Los Angeles, he hasn’t lost his love for the city.

“I still have cousins down there, aunts and uncles down there,” Brown said. “I still have people who are still hoping the Raiders are coming back to L.A. L.A. is where I started. A part of me will always be in L.A. That’s where I got my start.”

Since then he has traveled 14,167 yards on the field, and this season he became the third receiver in NFL history with 1,000 receptions for his career, joining Cris Carter and teammate Jerry Rice in the exclusive club.

The only thing that hasn’t changed about him is the logo on his helmet. Now, even that’s in a new, unfamiliar place.

“When I drove up and saw the Raider emblem on the Super Bowl banner, I told [running back] Randy Jordan, ‘I’m tripping a little bit,’ ” Brown said. “I shook my head and smiled. I don’t know how to explain it. I come to the Super Bowl every year and see the Ravens’ banner, the Patriots’ banner, see the Broncos’ banner, and all of a sudden to see the Raiders’ banner up there, it was very special.”

To make it even more special, his wife is expecting twins, due any day.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Brown said. “For all this to happen, everybody looks at it as stressful. I don’t. I look at it as, I could win the championship on Sunday and have twins on Monday. I don’t know if I could ask for anything more.”

The only problem is, if Brown wins, Al Davis wins. It’s hard to cheer for the man who took the Raiders from a fling in L.A. and back to their wife, Oakland.

Even Brown found it tough to root for Davis at times -- and he played for him.

“My relationship with Al didn’t start out as well as I liked, for some reason,” Brown said. “I was always looked at as a guy who wanted to be a superstar, for some reason. I think I was misunderstood, and I misunderstood him to some degree.”

After the team had been in Oakland for a year, Brown got a call from his agent, who told him: “The guy thinks you’re a real Raider now.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Brown said. “I didn’t change anything then, I haven’t changed anything since.

“I think he started to believe and understand that I just wanted to play football. Since then, we’ve been peaches and cream. It’s been pretty good. It’s not like we go out to dinner. We can sit down and have a conversation and leave each other on good terms.”

There’s a strain of fans -- a whole colony, actually -- who never left the Raiders even when the Raiders left them. Take the guy hanging outside the media center Tuesday. He had a Raider jersey with spikes through the shoulders and black and silver paint covering his face. His security pass said Orlando Mabry, but he said: “I don’t use Orlando. Wayne or Violator.”

When a man’s forearms are covered with spikes, I’ll call him whatever he wants. And he wants it known that he’s still a die-hard Raider fan.

“Why stick with them?” Violator said. “Why not? Loyalty and dedication. It comes with the territory.

“Not so much territory, it’s just the colors. He could move to Tokyo and I’d still be loyal. That’s just economic, business moves. That ain’t what the fans are about.”

For Violator and all of the other silver and black clad fans who fill airplanes and clog the highways going to Raider games on Sundays, just know that Brown appreciates it.

“We think the guys who cause the most fights are from L.A.,” he said, jokingly. “We know we have great fans in L.A. We know that part of our success is the guys who have come up from L.A.”

Jett insisted that the essence of the team remains the same.

“The bottom line is, it’s the Raiders,” he said. “Oakland Raiders, L.A. Raiders, it’s fine.”

It’s hard for me to accept that. Moving to Oakland didn’t solve all of Davis’ problems; it prompted him only to file more lawsuits. And his claim to the L.A. marketplace didn’t exactly expedite the NFL’s return here.

But Brown always represented pro football in Los Angeles well. In my mind, he still does.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected].