National Football League players get very little time off during the year, perhaps taking a short break after the regular season before going into individual off-season workouts that lead to team functions including minicamps.

Then come training camps, which are about to start for 2022, and things really get busy.

There are two practices a day, weight-lifting leading into other exercises before and after the start of workouts, which usually end with wind sprints, and then the day often winds up with one-on-one drills before individual position meetings at night. The next morning, it starts all over again.

Training camps are much shorter these days, but during the 1970s, the Oakland Raiders spent the entire preseason about 60 miles north of Oakland in Santa Rosa, for a total of eight weeks, in addition to holding minicamps and rookie camps there as well during the year.

“We were in Santa Rosa three months out of the year," Hall of Fame Coach John Madden recalled a few years ago. “You think of that, and how we practiced then, and they’d probably throw us in jail today.

“I figured weather that’s good for growing grapes is good for training camp. Cool in the morning, hot in the afternoon, cool at night.”

Those Raiders added fun and games in training camp at the El Rancho Tropicana Motel in Santa Rosa, and Pro Bowl linebacker Phil Villapiano was one of the ringleaders.

“Every year, when I was packing for training camp, I would tell my wife how much I hated it,” linebacker Phil Villapiano said. “But actually I loved it, because we had to much fun, and I just couldn’t wait to get there.

“We loved everything about it, including the football. Coach John Madden really worked us hard, with two practices a day, and all the other things we had to do in order to get into tip-top shape. But when the football was over, we all got along and just had a lot of fun together.”

Villapiano was known as “The Commissioner,” because he was in charge of the many games those Raiders had going, including the Machine Bowling Tournament, the Air Hockey Tournament, and the Foosball Tournament.

Much of the action took place at The Bamboo Room, a bar next door to the El Rancho, where many of the players would go right after practice “to replenish our fluids” before dinner was served in a rear dining room at the hotel.

After dinner came the meetings, but when they were over, the Raiders had a few hours before bed check and many of the players would head out into town and onto what running back Pete Banaszak named “The Circuit,” a series of nightclubs and bars across the Santa Rosa area.

“We’d hit five bars in two hours,” Banaszak recalled. “In addition to the Bamboo Room, there were The Music Box, Melendy’s, the Hilltopper, and the Hofbrau.

“ … Madden worked the piss out of us in training camp. These guys today go out in their underwear and baseball caps and sunglasses and don’t put pads on. We practiced twice a day in pads. Then we were on our own and took part in activities that created team bonding.”

Said quarterback Kenny “Snake” Stabler, who was noted for enjoying a good time: “We couldn’t wait to get out of meetings and hit ‘The Circuit.’ … It was just kids having fun and life being good. We couldn’t wait to get to training camp, to get away from wives and girlfriends, play some football, have a few drinks at night. And do that for eight weeks.”

Curfew was at 11 p.m., and a few minutes before the hour, Santa Rosa Avenue in front of the El Rancho and the long driveway that ran to the back of the hotel where the players lived resembled the final lap of the Indy 500.

But, of course, that didn’t keep some of the Raiders from going back out after curfew.

The El Rancho Tropicana is long gone, but Hall of Fame wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff said of the good, old days in Santa Rosa: “There definitely are some ghosts around there. The grounds seeped of beer."

Now the Raiders conduct training camp at their practice facility in Las Vegas, and can you imagine what the ’70s members of the Silver and Black would have been like after hours in Sin City?

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