In today’s FOX Sports Insider with Martin Rogers: The Raiders have a history in Las Vegas that predates their current location … The Seahawks chose the youngest coach in the NFL to lead their team, but was it the right move? … and more! Super Bowl LVIII is just around the corner, and its arrival in Las Vegas next week will provide confirmation of what we’ve known for a while: pro football in Sin City is having quite the moment. Approaching four years after the Raiders relocated from Oakland, football’s influence on Vegas still feels fresh. Allegiant Stadium exudes its blackened gleam and this year’s Super Bowl has the unique feel that comes whenever the big game touches down in a new city for the first time. Yet while the common perception holds that football and Vegas are recent bedfellows, that’s not the full story. Sure, the National Football League steered clear of the Nevada desert for generations, in keeping with the thinking of the other major sports leagues, mostly on account of fears regarding association with the gambling industry. However, football — and the Raiders themselves — have connections with Vegas that date back further than even many of their fans realize. Nearly 60 years ago, legendary Raiders owner Al Davis set his sights on Vegas as an ideal spot for some gridiron action. Davis enjoyed coming to Vegas for entertainment, and on one trip, the 34-year-old head coach and entrepreneur shared dinner with Ron Amos, a writer and executive attached to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. Amos convinced Davis that the town’s growing population and increasing popularity made it a solid fit for at least a one-off football game. Davis, ever the innovator, was intrigued and ultimately decided to stage a preseason game against the Houston Oilers in August 1964, with the contest billed as a charity exhibition, likely to deflect criticism related to playing in a gambling-centric destination. “The thing to remember at the time was that the Raiders were part of an outlaw league, the American Football League,” Michael Green, an associate professor of history at UNLV and a respected local historian, told me via telephone. “And in an outlaw league, the biggest outlaw, the guy who would never be afraid to try something new, was always going to be Al Davis.”
