Al Davis: Just Win Baby!

 "Pride and Poise" 

My interest in the NFL started in grade school when I was ten, most kids rooted for the Cowboys, but I was drawn to a different team. Leafing through back issues of Sports Illustrated at the school library, a certain logo drew my attention. It was a silver & black swashbuckler with an eye patch, I instantly became a Raider fan. Since then there's been a litany of heartache, punctuated by rare moments of joy. "The Raiduhs" as Al Davis called them in his Brooklyn accent, were a thing of legend and also of despair.  

Through it all there's been one constant, Al Davis.  He took over a losing team in 1963 that barely had a stadium to play in and transformed them into one of the most marketable and recognized franchises in sport history. After winning the AFC title and making  a Super Bowl appearance in 2002, a blow out loss to Tampa Bay. The Raiders fell on hard times. Seven consecutive losing seasons followed, a streak that was finally broken when they finished 8-8 in 2010.

Al Davis and The Raiders became fodder for the wisecracks of ESPN's trendy sportscasters. They were the butt of every joke, a punchline in football pads.  A dysfunctional, disorganized outfit with no clue led by a crazy maniacal owner. Every move Al Davis made seemed to backfire, most glaringly the drafting of JaMarcus Russell. (which mirrored that of Todd Marinovich) The wizard it seemed, had lost his touch, everyone piled on. The Raiders for so long the exponents of pride, effort, tradition and toughness were a mere shell of their former selves. 

 "Commitment to Excellence."

Raider haters like to point out that Al Davis was the first to hire an Hispanic & African-American head coach and also the first to fire both. It's always been assumed that Al made all the calls and the head coach simply went along. This led to some nasty splits when the relationship between Davis and the head coach went sour, Mike Shanahan, Lane Kiffin, Art Shell per examples. It doesn't detract from the fact that he was a true visionary, a man who proved himself on the sidelines and in the front office. Al Davis was always in charge for better or worse.

Forever loyal to active & former players, it could be his greatest strength and his biggest flaw. Those who's loyalty he questioned felt his wrath, Marcus Allen, the Super Bowl MVP in 1984 was first benched and then unceremoniously released. Davis would later say of Allen  “He was a cancer on the team.” By the time Al passed away Marcus had put it behind him, "It’s no secret that we didn’t see eye-to-eye at times, but I’ve always been grateful for the opportunity that he gave me, and I’ll always remember that.”

He tried to right a perceived wrong by rehiring Art Shell as head coach. Shell was not up to the challenge and bringing him back initiated a downward spiral. Al gave young assistants the chance to be head coaches, although it came back to bite him more than once. The worst example of this was the firing of Lane Kiffin. A ridiculous finger pointing affair that will go down in the annals as Al Davis & The Raider's worst moment. 

 "You don't adjust. You dominate."

I won't lie to you, as the losses piled up and The Raiders floundered, I started to lose faith in Al Davis. More than once I signed on to online Raider forums and demanded that for the good of the team, Al should step down. My love for the team transcended my admiration for the man, although they were one and the same. The one fact that I've always been cognizant of,  is that The Raiders would continue without Al Davis, though never without his memory or presence.

Since that day in 1969 when I first read his name in Sports Illustrated, on through my childhood and as an adult, Al Davis & The Raiders have been a part of my life. As a novice Raider fan I once asked a friend "Is Al Davis the Raider's coach?" he looked at me funny and answered "Not exactly, but I'm not sure what he is" Al Davis went out the only way he knew how, on his shield, a Raider is a Raider  for life.... Go Raiders!

 If you're a Raider fan I don't have to explain it, if you're not then there's no way I can explain it.  

I purposely requested an assignment to Travis AFB in Fairfield, Ca. because of its proximity to the Bay Area. There, my civilian supervisor was a jovial hard drinking career GS, who introduced himself as "A good 'ol Arkie" which he described this way "An Arkie is the same as an Okie, just from Arkansas." I hit it off well with Claude Hurley, for one thing he was an Oakland A's and Raider fan, plus just like me he had no use for The Giants or The 49'ers.

Once he found out I was also a Raider fan, he invited me to go along. It was 1976 and the Raiders led by Kenny "The Snake" Stabler were Super Bowl bound. At the game we took our seats along a row of middle aged men. They were ham fisted, red faced, cigar chomping, whisky drinking dock workers, ship builders, warehouse men and truck drivers. These were the original Raider fans, the ones who stuck with the team during the lean years before Al Davis turned the team around. They were the blue collar holdovers from the AFL days, who had picked The Raiders over The 49'ers because the seats were more affordable.

Everyone knew Claude, most eyed me with curiosity, one passed me a hip flask, I took a swig and gagged, which brought forth a raucous round of laughter. The afternoon and the game went by in a swirl of cigar smoke, beer and whiskey, that's all I really remember. The actual game details were lost right about the time I started throwing up into a trash can after the game.* As we drove back to Fairfield, Claude kept looking at me and asking if I was ok. I was fine, it was my first Raider game and nothing could be finer. 

* A 19–6 win over the Denver Broncos