Why a Raider Win Would Be Reasonable

Fifty reasons why the Raiders should beat the Cincinnati Bengals today or regret it for the rest of their lives:

1. A chance for an all-expense-paid trip to beautiful Buffalo, N.Y., without for once having to pay out of their own pockets for Club Med vacations there.

2. A chance to be like John Madden and experience the joys of bus travel, since no airplanes will be entering or leaving Buffalo until sometime in March.

3. A chance to banish more people from Cincinnati, in keeping with a tradition established days ago by the Hall of Fame baseball committee.

4. A chance to play in another Tampa Bay Super Bowl, where the Raiders are one for one.

5. A chance for Al Davis to scout Eastern locations, just in case he changes his mind again about moving the team.

6. A chance to sit around the hotel swimming pool and watch Buffalo women skate.

7. A chance to save Bo Jackson some money--since, if the Raiders got stuck playing another game at home, Bo would have to buy all the available tickets so we could watch it on TV.

8. A chance for Bo to play at Rich Stadium, which was named after him.

9. A chance to save Sam Wyche some money--since, if he is out of the playoffs, Sam can’t say anything else outrageous to increase his ever-growing National Football League debt.

10. A chance to save Cincinnati fans some money--since they seem to enjoy paying off good-neighbor Sam’s debts.

11. A chance for Greg Bell to renew friendships and rekindle memories from back when he was known as Buffalo Bell.

12. A chance for Jay Schroeder to quarterback a Super Bowl team, the way he almost did in Washington before Doug Williams got his job.

13. A chance for a Buffalo public-address announcer to introduce “Steve Wisniewski� and a referee to say: “Gesundheit.�

14. A chance for Marcus Allen to check out the field where O.J. Simpson became frozen O.J.

15. A chance to sneak into a Super Bowl while Joe Montana is out somewhere street-hiking.

16. A chance for pathologically shy Bob Golic to continue participating in the playoffs and perhaps to eventually come out of his shell.

17. A chance for the Raiders to dump a pail of liquid on Coach Art Shell and see if it can freeze before it hits his cap.

18. A chance for Greg Townsend to go buy a wig from Sy Sperling to wear under his helmet to keep warm.

19. A chance for New York native Bill Pickel to give his teammates a brief but expert survival course.

20. A chance for Eddie Anderson to be close to Rochester.

21. A chance for the Raiders to bring their Raiderettes along for support and watch them freeze their mufflers off.

22. A chance to ask Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas if they can borrow some Thurmal underwear.

23. A chance for Rory Graves to light a fire on the sidelines so his teammates can keep warm in front of a Rory fire.

24. A chance for Mervyn Fernandez to pretend he’s back in Canada.

XXV. A chance to give the AFC an actual chance of winning a Super Bowl, seeing as how Cincinnati or Denver wouldn’t be in it.

26. A chance for Steve Smith to bump into Bruce Smith, but not often, he hopes.

27. A chance to keep American football from being totally Buffaloed, what with Colorado already having won the college championship.

28. A chance for a couple hundred Raider fans to be in a stadium with about 80,000 Buffalo fans, which seems like a fair fight.

29. A chance to give the AFC an actual chance of winning a Super Bowl, seeing as how Cincinnati or Denver wouldn’t be in it. (It’s worth repeating.)

30. A chance for Thurman Thomas to run into Howie Long so we can see if Buffalo can convert on Thurman-Long.

31. A chance to see if, in a blinding blizzard, Jeff Jaeger needs to see the uprights to kick a football through them.

32. A chance to go from Los Angeles, where TV games are blacked out, to Buffalo, where TV games are whited out.

33. A chance to go from the Coliseum’s Black Bottom field to Buffalo’s White Bottom field.

34. A chance to give rusty Willie Gault that much-needed bobsled workout.

35. A chance for Los Angeles to have two teams in black-and-silver who play on ice.

36. A chance for frostbitten fans to ask that Schroeder be replaced at quarterback by B rrrrrr lein.

37. A chance to see if Schroeder can learn anything from watching Dan Marino play Saturday, including whether to wear gloves.

38. A chance to once again question the mental capabilities of kickers who go barefoot.

39. A chance to remind Max Montoya that there was a reason he left Cincinnati.

40. A chance to remind Anthony Munoz that there is a reason to leave Cincinnati.

41. A chance to deny Americans that third San Francisco 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl they’ve all been bad-dreaming about.

42. A chance to keep that Ickey dance thing from catching on again.

43. A chance for Mervyn Fernandez and Marv Levy to spend hours going over every single golden moment from those spine-tingling games between the British Columbia Lions and Montreal Alouettes.

44. A chance to give Bo something to keep himself occupied until spring training.

45. A chance for Shell to take his team to the Super Bowl and show those voters how absolutely brilliant they were in naming Jimmy Johnson the NFL coach of the year.

46. A chance for Wyche to get fired with a winning record, which would qualify him for the Philadelphia job.

47. A chance for Boomer Esiason to melt in California again.

48. A chance to let Cleveland save face, because Cincinnatians during baseball season were unsufferable enough.

49. A chance for Schroeder and Esiason to hold off the possible impending challenge of Todd Marinovich.

50. A chance for the Raiders to remind our men and women in the Persian Gulf: Just win, baby.