The Oakland Coliseum gets a lot of flak and most of it is unwarranted. Yes, the cool thing to do these days is rip on old things that aren’t as good as new things. But it’s not like we are talking about the difference between using a Gateway PC from 1995 versus owning a present-day MacBook Pro.
The difference between watching a game from the Oakland Coliseum and, let’s say, Levi’s Stadium is minimal. If you’ve been to both, you most likely prefer the former. Sure, it has lots of faults. But those are charming in their own, unique way.
If you can move past the fact it’s kind of a dump, there are quite a few things you probably don’t remember about the Oakland Coliseum.
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Things you may not remember about the Oakland Coliseum
It takes time and money to convert
You may think the conversion process would be cheap given how often the Oakland Coliseum needed to be converted from baseball to football and back again. On the contrary, it cost US$250,000 to do this each time and took up to 20 hours to complete. The process is mesmerizing to watch, so that’s something.
However, time made the conversion more expensive with much of the process still being manually done. The Raiders leaving means it can stay in baseball form from here on out. But anyone who visited Candlestick Park during its last days knows this isn’t always a good thing.
The star of Angels in the Outfield
So, star may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the Oakland Coliseum was used to film most of the baseball scenes in Angels in the Outfield. The Jumbotron at Anaheim Stadium, home to the then California Angels, collapsed during the 1994 Northridge earthquake which meant filming for the movie was shifted to the Oakland A’s facility.
It is pretty obvious when you watch the film that it was shot at the Oakland Coliseum. I was able to spot this even as a kid. There is one egregious wide shot that completely gives away the Coliseum as the true location of “Anaheim Stadium” in Angels in the Outfield. It blows my mind not a single person caught that in the editing process.
Called every name in the book
Stadiums do change names, but most naming rights partnerships span a decade or more. In Oakland, you got a few years at most. There has been a never-ending stream of official monikers for Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum since 1998. At various points it has been known as Network Associates Coliseum, McAfee Coliseum, Overstock.com Coliseum, O.co Coliseum and RingCentral Coliseum. Three times between 1998-2020, it revered back to its original names as well.
Online trolls show up in real life
The Oakland Coliseum just may be the only place in the world where online trolls show up in real life. Well, I don’t know if these people even have access to the internet, but there always seems to be random people trolling at the stadium.
My personal favorite was during a Thursday Night Football amid the Raiders’ last season in Oakland. For some reason, this dude rocking a Joe Montana 49ers jersey was there just walking around the upper deck talking shit to fans. He literally did a lap to troll Raiders fans and left. He bought a ticket for the sole purpose of trolling. You don’t get that anywhere else in the world.
Thizz Dance
There are no better moments at the Oakland Coliseum than when either Thizz Dance by Mac Dre or Blow the Whistle by Too Short start playing on the loudspeakers. The Raiders could return to Oakland and win the Super Bowl there and the crowd reaction wouldn’t match what happens when either of two songs play.
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