One look around the state-of-the-art facilities at the University of Oregon and Raiders chief executive Don Furner knew he was somewhere special.
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"Unbelievable, best you'll see anywhere," Furner said on Friday. "Barcelona and Manchester United, I can't imagine they would have better facilities. We just went through UC Berkeley, and they were very good, but University of Oregon is renowned for being state of the art."
The Raiders' senior management team have been sharing ideas and getting in an insight into the inner workings of several professional and college American football programs.
Furner and commercial and marketing manager Jason Mathie are concentrating on the business side, while Raiders coach Ricky Stuart and team manager John Bonasera focus on the ways to boost on-field performance.
The University of Oregon is located in Eugene, a city with a population of 160,000 people about one and three-quarter hours south of Portland in the Pacific North West.
The Ducks have sold-out their 54,000 capacity seat stadium for every game for the past 16 years.
Not a stone is left unturned in getting the maximum performance out of their team.
There's a dedicated theatre room for players and coaches to study game film, a practice field the envy of any NRL team and recovery facilities second to none.
The Raiders' tour started in Seattle where they met with the 2014 Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks, and the University of Washington Huskies.
Stuart caught up with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, where they exchanged ideas and got insights into each other's respective football codes.
"Pete is a gentleman and a coach I follow with great interest," Stuart said. "It was a pleasure spending some time with him and his organisation. They have given us great access to their facilities and their coaches and it's been worthwhile."
The motives for the Raiders' trip is two-fold. The first is to gain an insight into player preparation, the second is to pick up any tips they can use for their proposed new facility in Braddon.
"Commercially, they are on another level to us, but their fan engagement, what they do with the Wi-Fi at the stadium, how they welfare their players on and off the field, how they engage with them and how they deal with big squads are all things we can take back," Furner said.
"The access that we've had has been really good. We've been blown away by their hospitality as well and couldn't thank them enough."
The Raiders' group visited the University of California in Berkeley on Friday and will have offered staff from the Bears access into their preparations for an NRL game in Sydney next August.
The Bears will be in Sydney to play the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors at ANZ Stadium on August 27.
The Raiders' group will make the short drive to Oakland to visit their American namesake, the Oakland Raiders on Saturday.
On Monday, they will watch the Raiders take on the Kansas City Chiefs before heading an hour down the road to Santa Clara for the Pac-12 Conference championship game between USC and Stanford before a full-house of 80,000 at Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers.
"As an organisation, we want to make sure we are doing our sport science, our preparation, welfare, physically and mentally, that we're on the right track and that we shouldn't be doing anything we shouldn't be doing," Stuart said.
"It's a good way to compare what other sporting organisations are doing. It really shows we're on the right track in Canberra with our programs and sport science and our preparation of our players."
