Motivation Quote by Jim Otto

There is a whole civic argument packed into Otto's choice of "always": not just admiration for the fan base, but a claim of permanence that Oakland sports has rarely been granted by the people who control the teams. Jim Otto isn't speaking as a detached brand ambassador; he's a Raiders lifer, a living artifact from the franchise's rough-edged Oakland mythology. When he says "great and loyal", he's flattering the crowd, yes, but he's also quietly testifying: these fans did their part, even when the organization didn't.

The subtext reads like a rebuttal to the convenient story owners tell when they leave town: that the market couldn't support them, that the stadium was the real villain, that relocation is just "business". Otto's line shifts blame away from the stands and onto the decision-makers. "We" matters, too. It's a communal pronoun that blurs player, franchise, and city into one identity - the exact identity that relocations fracture. Coming from a figure associated with toughness and continuity, it lands less like PR and more like a eulogy for a relationship repeatedly interrupted.

The context is Oakland's long pattern of being loved for its attitude and exploited for its leverage - a city that provides culture, noise, and authenticity, then gets told it's not profitable enough. Otto's sentence is short because it doesn't need to litigate the details; it offers the simplest ledger: devotion was never the problem.