'Just Win, Baby' - The Life and Times of Al Davis

by Bobby Davis

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October 12, 2011

Like all Oakland Raiders fans, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of the team patriarch, Al Davis, last Saturday, on the eve of a very tough road game against the Houston Texans, an up-and-coming outfit against whom the Raiders have never played very well. Davis’ physical deterioration was obvious in recent years, as he used a walker and his head had obvious lesions, but as with all things relating to Davis, the source of his malady was secret (a circulatory problem? A blood disease?). He did not appear at the Raiders’ training camp this year, for the first time ever. But Al Davis actually dying? Now? Didn’t seem possible. I’ve been a Raider fan since 1968, when I was eight years old, and Al has always been The Man.

His death has caused an outpouring of tribute, from former players and coaches and media members, all providing wonderful stories about this legendary man. Even people who clearly did not like Davis or the Raiders, such as Broncos’ owner Pat Bowlen or former Bronco All-Pro linebacker and current ESPN analyst, Tom Jackson, praised him as one of the league’s giants. Jackson can barely disguise his disdain for the Raiders as an analyst, but he made some surprisingly affectionate comments about Davis. Steelers’ owner Dan Rooney, who once called Al a “lying creep,” said after his death: “Al Davis was a good man and we were friendly rivals. He was a football man and did a lot for the game of football. I had a lot of respect for him and he will be missed throughout the entire NFL.”

This outpouring of respect and admiration has been rather jarring, coming on the heels of years of open disdain toward the Raider chieftain. Few things are as American as shaudenfreude for the great, and eight straight losing seasons since 2002, including an NFL record seven consecutive seasons of 11 losses or more, brought Davis low in the public eye. Even last year’s 8-8 season under former coach Tom Cable, the first season of hope in many years, resulted in yet another coaching change, the ninth since 1995. Not only had most media analysts dismissed him as out-of-touch, with passe offensive and defensive schemes and an unhealthy fascination with size and speed above real playing ability, but some critics were amazingly nasty, calling him “The Crypt Keeper” and making cruel fun of his obvious physical infirmities. It was like people making fun of the 94 year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor for losing her leg to diabetes. Even many Raider fans, especially younger ones, had concluded that the Raiders would never win while Davis was alive. Davis did not live to enjoy a total resurgence, but he lived long enough to know he had left the team fully stocked with young stars under the leadership of one of the NFL’s most dynamic young coaches, Hue Jackson. After nearly a decade of maddening incompetence by the coaching staff and players, the team feeling rudderless and, above all, boring, the Raiders are exciting and relevant again.

Many myths surrounded Al Davis, above all that he was dictatorial. Most outsiders regarded him as the NFL’s version of Joseph Stalin, keeping a jealous grip over all power and not listening to subordinates. The truth is that while Davis made all final decisions, he consulted with everyone and had an unusually open system in which coaches and scouts participated in draft decisions. He was more of a hard-nosed Socrates, challenging his people to justify their opinions. He was in charge, but he liked to consult and welcomed advice, but you had better know what you’re talking about. And, as he joked about the New England Patriots after making the team-changing trade for defensive tackle Richard Seymour right before the 2009 season, the Raiders aren’t the only team where the owner has to be consulted before making personnel decisions—a shot across the bow of those who questioned why the puerile Lane Kiffin wasn’t given free reign over team personnel. Al was the de facto GM, and on all teams the coach and GM do not see eye-to-eye on every player. Al had the additional authority of being the owner. 

Many felt he made crazy draft-day decisions, pointing to the drafting kicker Sebastian Janikowski in the first round 2000, choosing Darrius Heyward-Bey over the much more highly regarded Michael Crabtree in 2009, and the Jamarcus Russell debacle. Yet Janikowski has improved his accuracy with age and after 11 years is not only the team’s all-time leading scorer but a major weapon, who makes kicking 55 yards look like a 40-yard kick for most kickers. Al acknowledged that Russell was a mistake, a small-time guy overwhelmed by the NFL game and his poor work ethic. Yet Russell in the last third of the 2008 season showed signs of major progress, leading the team to two victories over teams fighting for the playoffs, before his apparent addiction to the codeine in “purple drank” led to a disastrous performance the next year. Yet over the last several years, Davis has acquired a lot of very good players through the draft and free agency who weren’t given Mel Kiper’s stamp of approval: lower round picks such as defensive lineman Matt Shaughnessy, Trevor Scott, Desmond Bryant (of Buffalo and Harvard, respectively, not exactly hotbeds of NFL talent), Roderick Coleman, Grady Jackson, and free agent Tommy Kelly. No one had heard of Nnamdi Asomugha when Davis made him one of the team’s two first-round picks in 2003; the ESPN broadcasters coldn’t even pronounce his name. He has become one of the league’s best cornerbacks, and one of its best people, too. More recently, wide receivers Jacoby Ford (fifth round in 2010) and rookie sensation Denarius Moore look like stars in the making, draft long after much bigger names. People make fun of Al’s need for speed, but all those fast, talented players are finally being harnessed in Hue Jackson’s creative system.

In this weekend’s gritty victory over Houston, Al’s guys made huge impacts. When the team could barely buy a first down, Janikowski made field goals of 55 and 54 yards to keep the team close. An obviously emotional Heyward-Bey had the game of his life, scoring a big TD right before halftime and catching 7 balls for 99 yards. He also blocked downfield like his life depended on it. Crabtree, meanwhile, has mostly been hurt and childish. Richard Seymour, Kelly, and Bronco reject Jarvis Moss led a ferocious defensive effort in the second half, while Bruce Davis, Jr. the unheralded son of former Raider offensive tackle Bruce, Sr., blocked a punt. And Michael Huff, who Al supported through thick and thin, made the game-saving interception at the end, eerily reminiscent of Mike Davis’ end zone interception in Cleveland in 1980 that sent Oakland to the Super Bowl against Philadelphia. The game looked like it would end as so many Raiders’ games have in recent years, with numerous breakdowns leading to inevitable loss, but the Raiders made the big play to win. It was an emotional victory for every Raider fan, and hard not to believe the great man had something to do with it from beyond.

Al Davis was often not a nice man; he was a sonofabitch on many occasions and made no bones about it, he was stubborn and sometimes irascible and overly secretive, and he would do almost anything to win with little regard for conventional morality. The Jets were convinced he bugged the visiting locker room in the 1960s, and Chiefs players of that era hated Davis and the Raiders for their perfidious ways. He fought the NFL so bitterly, first to bring about the merger between American Football League and National Football League in 1966 (though interleague play didn’t begin until 1971), later to free the Raiders from their lease in Oakland for the ostensibly greener pastures of Los Angeles, that many older owners came to hate him. Former Commissioner Pete Rozelle retired in 1989, exhausted from the fight. Yet Davis cared deeply about his players and about giving people their just opportunities. When black AFL players, led by the Raiders’ Art Powell and Clem Daniels and the Buffalo Bills’ Cookie Gilchrist, led boycotts of Southern cities that discriminated in public facilities such as stadiums and hotels during pre-season games, Davis backed them to the hilt. Their boycott of the 1965 AFL All-Star game in New Orleans was the first boycott of an entire city by a major sports event, and effctively desegregated sporting events in the South. He became the first to hire a Latino coach (Tom Flores), an African-American coach (Art Shell), and a female chief executive (current CEO Amy Trask).  

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Davis not only took on black players who were often cut by NFL teams because they were too “militant” in their racial politics (Powell had been cut by the Eagles in 1959 for just this reason, plus he had a white wife), he gave them an opportunity to be themselves and flourish. Unlike the semi-military regimentation of most teams in that era (e.g., Vince Lombardi), the Raiders under coach John Madden had three rules: “Be on time, pay attention, and play like hell.” I don’t think he or the Raiders have ever been given enough credit for how much they were able to succeed at such a high level at a time when the drug and alternative political culture of the era brought a new type of player into the league. Lombardi died at the right time, as he could never have dealt with the more independent breed of player who came in after 1970. Compared to say, Tom Landry’s Cowboys, who were utterly nonplussed by racial militancy and hippie culture and left some rather bitter feelings among the players, the Raiders just took it in stride and gave a home and new life to rebel players. Free (or troubled) spirits like Ted Hendricks, Ben Davidson, and John Matuszak, partiers like Ken Stabler, Tom Keating, and Fred Biletnikoff, all flourished in Raiderland, but performed when it counted on the field. Lester Hayes stuttered and watched Star Wars a few hundred times and he looked like The Predator, covered in stickum and grass and played in a deep crouch. They didn’t have to wear suits and ties, they could dress like Viking warriors on the practice field, they drank oceans of alcohol, but they always kicked ass on Sundays.

Comedian George Carlin caught the spirit perfectly in a riff in 1996: “In football, I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents, and fuck-ups, they have lots of penalties, fights, and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked... Someday, the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome, white, heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits.”

I grew up in Long Island during the heyday of Joe Namath and the Jets, but I was attracted to the Raiders as a boy because they loved to throw the bomb, by the silver and black colors, and by hero worship of Biletnikoff when I was learning to play football myself. The AFL was wide open and the NFL was stodgy (except for the Cowboys, who were also fun to watch). The AFL had more black players who were able to show their skills in more wide-open offenses and very physical defenses. AFL teams (especially the Raiders) used the Bump-and-Run, where defensive backs played tight on receivers and bumped them all over the field. The rivalries mattered: Raider linemen went out of their way to beat up on Namath, and he got right up, spit in their faces, and threw bombs to Don Maynard. From the mid-60s to the mid-70s, both games against AFC West rivals the Kansas City Chiefs were the best games of the year, a blood match with both teams filled with Hall of Famers and All-Stars, the division or league title usually at stake. And, finally, the great’ 70s rivalries with the machine-like Miami Dolphins and, above all, the fierce Pittsburgh Steelers. For both teams, the road to Super Bowl glory led through the Raiders, and every game was a titanic struggle. Miami’s three-Super Bowl dynasty ended with the miraculous “Sea of Hands” game in Oakland in 1974, still the best game I have ever watched. The Steelers’ dynasty began with the “Immaculate Reception” game in December 1972, perhaps the most amazing play in NFL history, a play I saw at my uncle’s house in Venus, Florida on a raw and cold day and still feel in the pit of my stomach. The Raiders won their first championship, after two heartbreaking losses in the playoffs to Pittsburgh, by beating them in 1976. The Raiders could have lost their final regular season game and avoided playing Pittsburgh, but the team said they wanted to face them and beat them. As Joe Greene reminisced after Davis’ death, both teams intended to kick the others’ ass, both expected to dominate, and he thanks Davis for making it so hard to reach the pinnacle of success.

As I grew up in the ‘70s, the Raiders were the rebel team; Biletnikoff and Stabler had hair flowing beneath their helmets, and each had a unique style. Freddie standing with hands on hips on the line of scrimmage before bursting into his perfectly run patterns, Stabler sauntering on and off the field like he had all the time in the world and knew he’d win, no matter how tight the score or difficult the game. They were stupendously fierce, with safeties Jack Tatum and George Atkinson forming the most intimidating defensive backfield in league history, and runners like Mark van Eeghen and Marv Hubbard churning for tough yards behind massive lineman Art Shell and Gene Upshaw. Living on the East Coast and being a Raider fan was kind of weird; I didn’t know anyone else who rooted for them, and finding someone who did was like finding a long-lost buddy. I identified strongly with the team’s emphasis on individuality but seeking collective excellence. I felt like a fish out of water in most other aspects of life; being a Raider fan only reflected and intensified that feeling, but it felt a lot more cool. I also love the Mets in baseball and Lakers in basketball, but I identified with the Raiders, and still do. Even struggling through losing seasons (something I didn’t have to worry about much between 1968 and 1991), having friends laugh at my hapless team, I wore the colors every Sunday and my loyalty never wavered. Our Raider fan group is the loudest and most passionate in the bar, even when we were getting creamed. The fanbase is truly diverse in every way, and truly nationwide.

John Madden was the passionate but good-natured circus master of this crazy, talented team, while Davis always embodied its outlaw tendencies and will to win. Seeing his eyes twinkle as he collected the Lombardi Trophy from archenemy Pete Rozelle and grinning widely as he intoned “Just win, baby!” remains an iconic moment. Madden was always seen as Davis’ stooge, but he was more a counterbalance to the owner’s darker tendencies and an excellent personnel and game manager. Both were, in essence, humane men in a savage game. Part genius, part hipster, a man with wide-ranging interests but paying minute attention to detail, he was unique among NFL owners. Free agents and coaches, including Sean Payton of New Orleans, Bill Belichick of the Patriots, and former Raider coach John Gruden, all marveled at the depth and breadth of his knowledge, a fellow football man to his core with whom they could talk shop for days. And the league rebel became a respected elder statesman in recent years, helping build support for the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2006 and this year. He became close friends with another rebel owner (though one in the league’s fiancial elite), Jerry Jones of the Cowboys. His Raiders face some serious challenges, most importantly a new stadium deal, possibly in partnership with the San Francisco 49ers. They will need a general manager who knows the football side of things, possibly even Hue Jackson himself. But Al seems to have righted the ship at the end, salvaging victory from the jaws of defeat as his teams have so many times.