Raider Nation "wins" another meaningless bracket challenge

Every year about this time the "Greatest ____ of all time" brackets come out. The most recent bracket was for best logo and it was a Twitter drive from the NFL Network morning show, NFL AM. Not surprisingly it was the Raiders logo which took the title. The Raiders logo was a 13 seed and somehow managed to "upset" all challengers to take the title.

Does this prove the Raiders indeed have the best logo in football? Absolutely not. Don't get me wrong, it's possible a completely objective panel may have come to the same conclusion. But this "contest" doesn't prove that.

What "winning" this challenge does prove is that which has been proven time and time again -- the Raiders have the most active, vast, and passionate fans. While that can be important, it isn't exactly a news flash. If anything it's more of an update.

Last year it was NFL.com putting out a bracket for "Greatest Team of All Time". The 1976 Raiders took the title in that bracket even though Al Davis said himself that the Raiders' '83 championship team was the greatest.

The '76 Raiders came in as a five seed and "beat" the '08 Steelers, '93 Cowboys, '78 Steelers, '99 Rams, '85 Bears and '00 Ravens. But truth be told, the Raiders would have beaten any team they were up against because Raider Nation was mobilized. And when that happens, no other fanbase can match it. All conditions normal.

It's the same vigor with which they went after DeSean Jackson and in doing so, held a top three trending spot on Twitter for nearly a week and tweeted #DJaxToOakland well over 100,000 times. In the end, it served about as much purpose as a petition which is to say Reggie McKenzie may have been listening but DeSean Jackson himself couldn't have cared less. Move along, nothing to see here.

A couple years ago Van Heusen and the Pro Football Hall of Fame supposedly "teamed up" to have what turned out to be an equally pointless fan vote. And what do you know but three of the top five vote-getters and five of the top ten were former Raiders players. Those Raiders were Jerry Rice (1), Ray Guy (3), Tim Brown (5), Lester Hayes (9), and Cliff Branch (10) -- of whom only no-brainer-first-ballot-hall-of-famer Jerry Rice was inducted. Proving once again the power of the Dark Side as well as how meaningless these votes really are.

Go ahead an brag about the Raiders having the best logo if you want -- you earned that right. But, what you really should brag about is yet another domination by Raider Nation. It's gotta be discouraging for other fan bases to know they may as well not even bother. You flex your fan muscles and these sites and TV programs get viewership and ad revenue. A win-win.

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