I’ll be dressing up this Halloween. As I enter my 20s, fewer and fewer people around me celebrate the holiday. I’m not a partygoer or daring enough to go trick-or-treating at my age, but I still love the tradition of wearing something I wouldn’t have the boldness to wear any other day. It’s rare to find a group of adults willing to go out in public dressed up in ridiculous makeup and costumes. It’s even harder to find a community willing to do that outside the month of October. But fans of the Las Vegas Raiders do that every Sunday afternoon.
Raiders fans embody the spirit we’re missing in Halloween. Fans dress up in costumes — pirate outfits, skeleton suits and silver and black facepaint — and fill stadiums at both home and away games. In my lifetime, the Raiders only had a winning record twice — in 2016 and 2021. They’ve been historically bad for a historically long time. But even after years of terrible management and a rotating roster of bad quarterbacks, fans still don silver and black every week.
I personally couldn’t choose any other team. When I was born, I was christened into the church of John Madden and became a diehard fan of the previously Oakland and currently Las Vegas Raiders. I’ve spent my life waiting with baited breath for everything to fall into place and all the years of suffering to pay off in a Super Bowl victory, but such a moment never comes.
On a rainy and windy November afternoon in 2019, I saw the Raiders play against the Jets. As I walked into MetLife Stadium wearing a modest sweater and Raiders beanie, I saw a sea of silver and black pirates gearing up for the game.
I was unfortunately seated in a section full of Jets fans, but there were a few characters dressed up from head to toe in Raiders-inspired attire. A man two rows in front of me was wearing a Raiders uniform with skulls on the shoulder pads and a face full of silver makeup. His significant other was wearing a silver and black pirate outfit with a dress that looked handmade. Despite the poor weather and even poorer performance by the team, they didn’t sit down the entire game. The couple stood defiantly in a sea of green.
Timothy Dwight College’s Halloween costume contest takes place in the dining hall on Friday night, and I am participating. I am not sure who else will be in costume. Standing defiantly in a sea of what will probably be everyday outfits, I’ll look to see who still has the boldness and the spirit of the season in mind. While most of us won’t be dressing up as a swashbuckling Raiders fanatic, I hope the spirit of those fans who dress up every Sunday, rain or shine, will possess us.