It All Started for Raiders in Santa Cruz

The Las Vegas Raiders opened their 63rd training camp today at their home facility, the Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center in Henderson, Nev., with rookies reporting on July 18 and veterans two days later.

The Raiders are starting training camp earlier than most NFL teams because they will be playing their first pre-season game on Aug. 4 against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, a week before most teams play their first games.

While fans rarely were allowed on the practice field during training camp, that changed last year after the Coronavirus Pandemic when NFL teams held open practices, and the same is expected to happen this year.

The Raiders previously trained at Santa Cruz High School in Santa Cruz, Calif., from 1960-62, the El Rancho Tropicana Hotel in Santa Rosa, Calif, from 1963-84, the Oxnard Hilton in Oxnard, Calif., from 1985-86, the Radisson Hotel in Oxnard from 1987-95, and Redwood Middle School in Napa, Calif., from 1996-2019 before the team moved to Las Vegas.

Center Jim Otto and quarterback Tom Flores, both future Hall of Famers, were there on the first day in 1960, the inaugural season of the American Football League, when the Raiders stayed at the mid-level Miramar Hotel and in Santa Cruz, a seaside down which features a boardwalk that includes a rollercoaster known as “The Big Dipper.”

“We had a lot of guys out there,” said Otto, who started 210 consecutive games for the Raiders beginning that season before retiring in 1974, and was the only all-league center the AFL ever had. … It was, to a certain degree, a rag-tag bunch. But we had some pretty good guys. We all helped put that team together and we're kicking butt.

“I was a young guy, fresh out of college at the University of Miami in Florida. ‘Where is Santa Cruz?’ That’s the first thing you think.”

Said Flores, who is from Sanger in California’s Central Valley and played at College (now University) of the Pacific in Stockton, and later coached the Raiders to victories in Super Bowls XV and XVIII.  “Santa Cruz, 1960. That was a long time ago. I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has expired, so I can talk to you about it.

“I don’t remember many fans. Nobody knew who we were, nor did we care. We’d tell them, ‘Do you know where Oakland is? … OK, do you know where San Francisco is? Well, we’re right across the Bay Bridge.’

“Some of us were just out of college, some were out of the NFL and some were out of the Canadian Football League. There were football players of all ages. The love of football, we all had that in common. We had 11 quarterbacks the first day of camp. You couldn’t get them all in the same picture.”

Coach Eddie Erdelatz, who played end at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga outside of Oakland and later coached Navy from 1950-58, felt Santa Cruz's moderate coastal climate would be most conducive to maximizing conditioning, which helped that city earn the bid over Santa Rosa, Moraga, and Calistoga as the site for that first Raiders training camp.

Flores and his wife, Barbara, recently visited the Raiders’ $75-million facility in Henderson and were more than impressed.

“Oh man, their workout facility is friggin’ breathtaking,” Flores said.

The Raiders expect their entire roster to be ready to go upon arrival at the facility for training camp in the next few weeks.

Of course, they were already there for off-season minicamps.

“The message is to make continued progress,” General Manager Dave Ziegler said. “Don’t take a step back. What we’re not looking for is guys to return and they’ve digressed in their strength training or in their diet and nutrition or their conditioning. These are building blocks and the expectation is for those guys to come into camp ready to roll and made progress throughout this time off.

“And that’s what we’re going to be looking for. That tells a lot about their commitment to this team, their commitment to getting better, their commitment to winning—you can tell that by how people come into training camp and how ready they are to go

“Hopefully, everybody comes back (and) has that mindset, and comes back better than they were when they left.”

This all started for the Silver and Black in 1960 in little Santa Cruz.