SUPER BOWL XXIV : DENVER BRONCOS vs. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS : San Francisco’s Silver Lining : 49ers: Cast off from the Raiders, linebacker Matt Millen found himself at home again in the Bay Area.

NEW ORLEANS —  Our Raiders in Wonderland series continues with Matt Millen, who woke up a civilian one day after nine seasons of colorful service and grieved . . .

. . . all the way to Super Bowl XXIV.

Talk about your magic touches. Al Davis has placed recent former employees on both sides: Denver assistant Mike Shanahan and Millen, now a San Francisco linebacker, making this the first year of the Ex-Raider Mystique.

Desperation being what it is among reporters covering the same old Broncos and the 49ers, who were once pre-selected by Bill Walsh for their blandness, Millen and Shanahan are being interviewed exhaustively about their days with the feared silver and black.

“Awfully bland?” Millen asked. “I don’t find it awfully bland, because the spice of this team--oh geez, this sounds terrible--is winning.

“Now again, winning is great for football and Sunday afternoons, but it doesn’t win any wars or cure any cancers.

“That’s my Joe Paterno speech.”

Try to shut this guy up. He all but stopped talking on the record in his last Raider seasons, aware that the front office no longer laughed at irreverence. He had no comment when he was axed suddenly last September, coming off a Pro Bowl appearance, but try to keep from getting the story now.

“The night before, the linebacker coach (Sam Gruniesen) came up to me and said, ‘Look, you gotta get ready, you’re starting this week,’ ” Millen said.

“It hadn’t been looking like I was going to be part of the picture (in a large break with tradition, Millen was joking openly and loudly about the prospect of being cut), so I’d been standing around most of the day, hurling insults at individuals.

“Then Jackie Shipp got hurt in the last exhibition, so they said, ‘You’re gonna start.’ That was the night before. So the next morning, I get a call that said, ‘Shanahan would like to talk to you.’

“I’m driving up and I say, ‘why the heck would he call me in early like this unless he’s going to cut me, or tell me I’m starting and the job’s mine again?’

“So I walk into his office and I just said: ‘Well, just tell me why you’re doing it.’ Kinda kept it vague.

“And he said, ‘Well, Matt, you kinda knew it was coming . . . ‘

“And I thought to myself, ‘God, they’re going to cut me!

“This team needs me and they’re cutting me!’

“Then we just talked about things. I talked to him a little bit about his situation (the Raiders had been 0-4 in the exhibition season). Actually, as I walked out of the office, I had my arm on his back, saying, ‘It’s going to be all right, Mike, don’t worry about it.’

“That’s the truth.”

Did Shanahan give Millen any indication he was up against it?

“No,” Millen said, laughing. “I gave him an indication that he was up against it.”

Does he think it was Shanahan’s decision to cut him?

“It would be nice to say that,” Millen said, “but we know better.

“I spoke with Al. What he told me was kind of interesting. I said, ‘Well, I was thinking about just retiring.’ He said, ‘No, no, you can still play.’ And, of course, the obvious question I should have asked was, ‘Why can’t I play here?’ But I just let it go.”

Why indeed?

A Raider assistant said Davis always wanted a faster man, and was hoping first that Jack Squirek then Jamie Kimmel would beat Millen out. Neither came close.

Another theory is Millen was too independent for Davis’ liking.

Whatever, Shipp started the season with a broken hand--and was subsequently waived.

In exile, Millen received bids from other teams. Seattle’s Tom Flores called “twice a day, every day,” Millen said. The Rams wanted to start him the very next week at their “nosebacker” spot.

Millen decided to sign with the Rams but, on a lark, decided to take a last-second look at the 49ers. Surprise! George Seifert wanted him so badly, he offered Millen his full $400,000 salary, even after he had missed a game.

Millen became a 49er, even if he couldn’t figure out how he was going to face Ram Coach John Robinson.

“I didn’t know what I was going to say to the guy,” Millen said. “Heck, I had dinner with him the night before. I sat there with the whole staff. I went over the defenses with Fritz (Shurmur, defensive coordinator). I just assumed I was going to sign.

“The next morning, I just woke up and decided I should go up and look at the Emerald City (the 49ers’ 11-acre, $10-million facility in Santa Clara).

“I walked up; it was a little different. (The Raiders practice in an unadorned former junior high school in El Segundo.) It’s unbelievable. It’s incredible.

“So, I walked up to the door, and there’s this guy who opens it and says (adopting a rough falsetto, like Billy Crystal playing Rumpelstilts-kin):

“ ‘Who’s there?’

“ ‘It’s me, Matt.’

“ ‘What do you want?’

“ ‘I’ve come to see the Wizard.’

“ ‘Go away!’

“ ‘No, I have nowhere else to go.’

“ ‘That’s a horse of another color. Come on in.’

“That’s what it felt like, anyway.”

Amazingly, Seifert picked Millen up at that price with no real need for him. Millen didn’t play for several weeks and watched for Raider scores as if he were still on the team. When Shanahan was replaced by Art Shell, Millen went through his pangs all over.

However, Jim Fahnhorst’s injury thrust Millen into the 49er lineup, and here he is, still the run-jammer, coach on the field and hotdog, firing up teammates.

But it’s not quite the same . . .

Your basic 49er never missed Sunday School.

“At the Raiders, we had some of the greatest, quotable, funniest characters you’ve ever seen in your life,” Millen said.

“They were great off the field and they were great on the field.

“We had a guy like Ted Hendricks, yelling at Don Shula in the middle of the game, telling him that Nat Moore couldn’t block him and it was an insult to him. I mean, you don’t find that stuff, and then he made the plays, on top of it.

“You have a guy like Howie (Long) chasing (49er line coach) Bobb McKittrick up the tunnel, threatening his life. Lyle (Alzado) tearing somebody’s helmet off and throwing it at him, while everybody’s staring in disbelief. Because it could be your helmet that he’s throwing at you next.”

How about the guy who walloped the Patriots’ general manager with his helmet?

“Yeah, that went over big.”

That, of course, was Millen, a cheery, likable, religious family man off the field but a wild man anywhere near it. He slugged Patrick Sullivan after the Raiders loss a playoff in January, 1986, though he later apologized.

“That’s a long story,” said Millen, still embarrassed. “I don’t want to bore you. Suffice to say, he attacked Howie (Long, who outweighs Sullivan by about 150 pounds), and Howie was defenseless. So I came to the rescue.”

They don’t make Raiders like that anymore.

They never made 49ers like that.

“When I was with the Raiders,” Millen said, “I got the greatest letters that you ever read, telling me what a scumbag I am. Now, I get the gentleman-type letters.”

Makes a fellow proud to be an exile.