The Oakland Raiders have begun their swan song with the city, and everyone who bled silver and black knows that this season will be a sad split between the two sides. However, local legend Marshawn Lynch has promised that professional football will not leave the city.
Lynch has co-founded and co-owns an indoor football team that will play at Oakland Arena (more known to Golden State Warriors fans as the Oracle Arena) in the coming spring.
The team is named the Oakland Panthers as a nod to the Oakland Black Panthers of the 1960s. They will join the Indoor Football League and is owned by Roy Choi.
Lynch shared how the entire thing got together; plenty of fans didn't see the running back as a man that will own an arena football team.
“Yeah, I went to go check my brother out and I kind of ran into them after the game,” Lynch said of Choi and team president Scot McKibben, per the Mercury News' Dieter Kurtenbach. “I had a good-ass time while I was at the game. When they said ‘We’re going to bring a team to Oakland’, I didn’t really believe that.”
“My whole intention was to come back and play with them until they left,” Lynch said. “[Arena football] wasn’t something I was looking at — not even a little bit. But when the opportunity presented itself — I’m a big dude on believing in timing and (stuff). This, at the time, really made sense.”
He believes that the football-crazy city deserves its own football team after the Raiders pack up. With this move, Marshawn Lynch ensures that the community will continue to get its football fix.
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