The words “Amy Trask Of Oakland Raiders Resigns” are ones I just can’t see as real. For 25 years Amy Trask has been the Oakland Raiders, and the Oakland Raiders have been Amy Trask. Yes, I can say I know Ms. Trask as kind of part of Oakland’s community furniture: people you see so much you feel like your kin to them in a way. That’s how it goes in a town like Oakland, and that’s how it was for me with Amy.
No, we were never buddy, buddy, and for a good, long time our relationship was defined by lawsuits between the City of Oakland and the Oakland Raiders. But there were times when Amy let her true, unarmored, self show – and its those times I will cherish.
There was the time Oakland developer and friend Phil Tagami and I were on the way to the NFL Experience during our Atlanta Super Bowl familiarization trip in 2000, and we ran into Amy and her husband. Rather than wax official, Trask said “You really have to go pet the baby goats.”
Then there was the 2003 Super Bowl where the Raiders were to take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in San Diegto. While all of the Raiders young staffers were down right rude to me before the game – acting like I had no business at the NFL Experience – Amy was very much not that way to me. She was warm and engaging.
For me, through the years, Amy went from being cold and dark to warm and fuzzy, but there was no mistaking her football business acumen, or that she was the Raiders brand through and through.
Amy Trask has been a true part of the City of Oakland. She’s someone you’d see at a restaurant in the Rockridge District, or at a coffee shop in the morning. And because of this, when Amy stopped wearing her Raiders black and white this year it became obvious. A friend told me about it at our local gym – said that Ms. Trask had ‘nothing good to say’ about the organization. A clear sign of rocky times ahead for the Raiders, and it seems, for her.
I’m not a fan of the new order of things, nor am I a fan of discarding people as if their past work had no value.
I hope Amy resurfaces, and soon, with another NFL team.
In fact, Jed York should make a place for her with the 49ers. That would show em.
Stay tuned.