Was Oakland / Las Vegas Raiders Spy On Zennie Abraham At NFL Draft 2007 NYC Marc Badain?
ONN – Was Oakland / Las Vegas Raiders Spy On Zennie Abraham At NFL Draft 2007 NYC Marc Badain?
What you’re about to read is history. It happened on April 26th 2007, and today is April 26th 2020. Its worth re-posting because I never received an answer from the Raiders as to who was filming me, or why? Yes, it was a long time ago, and Mark Badain is now the team president, but I can’t help but wonder what this was all about?
I am sure someone has a complete bullcrap reason.
Anyway, the NFL held its annual NFL Draft Media Luncheon at Chelsea Piers on Thursday, April 26th 2007.
As part of the process of interviews and photo-ops, the players — JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, Adrian Peterson, Calvin Johnson, and Gaines Adams – went outside. — All except Mr. Peterson, who stayed in doors for some reason.
While this is supposed to be a function where the media can point their cameras at these future stars, one person who I know but will not name with the Oakland Raiders felt it necessary to point his Leica video-camera at me.
Twice.
The first time he did it was at the JaMarcus Russell interview. All of the cameras are pointed at JaMarcus, except his. I happen to have a good feel for this, so I spotted him and was on alert for the next time he did it.
I was determined to catch him in the act – and I did.
The second time the Raiders videographer did it was outside on the deck, and I used my camcorder to bait him and catch him red-handed (or should I say “Silver-and-Black” handed?) filming me instead of the players!!
It’s in the video. Look for yourself!!
Once the Raiders guy sees me point back at him, he walks off like a scared rabbit. It was one of the craziest events I’ve ever seen in my life.
Why me? I’ve had a long history with the Oakland Raiders, now the Las Vegas Raiders. In 1996, after the team returned to Oakland, Al LoCasale, the executive assistant to Al Davis, tabbed me (as the Mayor of Oakland Elihu Harris’ economic advisor) to help restart the 49ers / Raiders preseason games.
This places me in a category that’s rare — people spied on by the Oakland Raiders. It reminds me of those stories of the late New York Jets Coach Weeb Eubank who was once rumored to have screamed at a light bulb “Al Davis, I know you’re up there!”
It caused me to recall when my friend Sports Illustrated writer Michael Silver was banned from Oakland training camp for writing critical articles about the organization.
For what reason, I don’t know. It could be linked to my open criticism of the Raiders habit of running to court to sue either the NFL or Oakland as a way of raising revenue.
But they’re a big firm and such opinions are mine to have, regardless of whether the Raiders like them or not.
The Raiders don’t understand that it’s impossible to control a message in today’s society — let the lesson begin.
They don’t know what the alternative course of actions are. I do.
But was pretty tired of that and other actions by the organization with respect to me to that date, and continuing on.
As far as I’m concerned the Raiders should have given me a medal for form the bid to bring the 2005 Super Bowl to Oakland, in the face of their lawsuits against both the City of Oakland and the NFL. Moreover, has we won, the 2005 Super Bowl would have made the Raiders the host team, and the controller of 10,000 tickets with a street value of around $9 million. As LoCasale once told me “Super Bowl tickets are like gold. You can use them to trade for contractor work, or whatever.”
I put Oakland on the map as a possible Super Bowl host city, nearly give the organization a handsome reward in the process of $9 million in Super Bowl tickets that they would control as the “host team” via the NFL, and this is the thanks I get?
Thanks!
Note from Zennie62Media and Oakland News Now: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.