OAKLAND - Never thought of this place as the city where dreams go to die.

Battered metaphorically as the poor sibling of San Francisco across the bay - "There's no there, there,'' said local girl Gertrude Stein - Oakland for a long while survived on its championship teams.

It's all changed. The Athletics have started the season decently, but every forecast has them finishing at the bottom of American League West.

The Warriors missed the NBA playoffs for the 15th time in 16 years, even though their coach, Don Nelson, didn't miss overtaking Lenny Wilkens for the most career victories.

The Raiders had a seventh consecutive season of at least 11 defeats, and then Thursday signed Kyle Boller, a quarterback who in consecutive seasons was dropped by the Ravens and then the Rams.

Off the field, the Athletics are trying to move their home to San Jose, a 40-mile shift opposed by the San Francisco Giants who claim that burg as territory ceded them by baseball when the A's came west in 1968.

The Warriors also may be moving, to San Francisco, after supposedly being bought by the Oracle software billionaire Larry Ellison.

The Raiders aren't going anywhere, which could be a blessing or a curse. Raider Nation, as it bills itself, has not only been very angry but very inattentive, staying away either in disgust or distress.

Instability is a very large part of life in Nor Cal, certainly, what with the Hayward Earthquake Fault running along the East Bay hills and the San Andreas Fault underlying San Francisco.

So is franchise dysfunction. The A's, owned by Lew Wolff, Bud Selig's frat bro at Wisconsin, cover the upper deck seats at McAfee Coliseum, apparently trying to fool people into believing they don't exist. The seats that is, not the people.

The Warriors make use of their seats, despite their lack of success. Either the public doesn't know any better or doesn't care, but attendance at Oracle Arena, which holds 19,595, averaged around 18,000. Now that's loyalty. Particularly when half the roster was fleshed out of the Development League because of injuries.

How loyal Larry Ellison might feel toward Don Nelson, assuming Ellison's rumored purchase of the W's occurs this summer, is a legitimate question. Nellie has one more year on his contract and is due $6 million. He might get fired, but he's not going to quit.

Neither is Al Davis, the man in charge of the Raiders. Now three months from his 48th season with Oakland and his 81st birthday, Al continues his maneuvering, the acquisition of Boller making some wonder once more about Al's thought process.

Three years ago, with the first pick in the draft, the Raiders selected quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who was beaten out last season by Bruce Gradkowski. Now on comes Boller, who played collegiately at Cal, a few miles up the road from the Raiders complex.

Boller also was a first-rounder, in 2003 the 19th overall selection, by Baltimore, where for five seasons he was tantalizingly inconsistent and in a sixth was out with a shoulder injury. That the Ravens found it imperative to bring in Steve McNair to compete with Boller makes one wonder.

But now Boller, at age 28, is being brought in to compete with Russell and Gradkowski, a jigsaw puzzle proposition if one ever existed. It would be just like the Raiders to pick yet another quarterback in next week's draft.

The Raiders reportedly wanted Donovan McNabb from the Eagles, but he refused to come to Oakland and was traded to the Redskins. So a team that once acquired Jeff George now reaches out to Kyle Boller.

And now you know why the home folk refer to California as "The State of Confusion.''

The A's always appear to be in a very confused state. Billy Beane, the GM, the hero of "Moneyball,'' has a budget not much larger than that of the average 10-year-old. He tries everything other than asking for bailout money but continually is obligated to trade away talent that he knows would be lost through free agency.

Beane got Matt Holiday a year ago and then after a few months got him off to the St. Louis Cardinals. This season the man in the temporary spotlight is pitcher Ben Sheets, signed for $10 million, which guarantees his departure is inevitable, especially after his performance Thursday night against Baltimore in which he allowed no runs in six innings.

The A's most of all suffer from ballpark envy. They have this stadium, the Coliseum, commandeered by the Raiders and always compared to that charming place on the water the Giants call home.

Where did it all go wrong?