A History of Al Davis' Gangster Moves

Unlike the vast majority of pro sports owners, Davis actually knew the sport he was involved in. He became famous for hiring young, unknown coaches (John Madden, Jon Gruden), and Davis himself was a young unknown when he became the Raiders' head coach in 1962 at the age of 33. He became a partial owner of the Raiders in '66, and controlling owner in '76. Contrast his pedigree to that of Redskins owner Dan Snyder, a marketer whose idea of "touchdown" prior to purchasing his team was the way he and the wife chose comforters at Pottery Barn, and you get an idea of why the NFL isn't half as fun as it used to be. Sure, Davis' hands-on approach wore thin in the '00s, but his football bona fides are unquestioned.

Were batteries thrown from the crowd at professional sporting events prior to the advent of an end zone grandstand populated by drunk people donning pirate masks? Probably. It probably wasn't as fun as this, though. When Davis became Raiders coach in 1963, he inherited a team whose colors were black, gold, and white. He promptly changed them to silver and black, emphasized the football helmet-wearing pirate and crossed sabers logo, and the rest is sports marketing history.

Apologies to Dan Rooney, who is a great man (and the anti-Davis in a lot of ways), but Al Davis didn't need a fucking rule to realize that white men weren't the only people who knew football. He hired Tom Flores (pictured above), the first NFL Hispanic head coach, in 1979, Art Shell, the first black coach of the modern era, in 1989, and Amy Trask, the first female CEO of an NFL team. And it's far from an empty gesture: Flores was the head coach for two of the Raiders three Super Bowl championships, and Shell won NFL Coach of the Year in 1990.

Davis was notoriously paranoid, so when he saw Hunter Thompson hanging around at Raiders practices in 1973, he...well, it's impossible to really say exactly what happens in Hunter Thompson stories, but it may have involved implied violence performed with a cattle prod.

Paranoid, yes, but Al Davis was also forgiving, even to those that threatened to kill him. After Davis refused to cut N.W.A. a merchandising check in the '80s, Ice Cube suggested that he wear a bulletproof vest. Twenty years later Cube interviewed Davis for his documentary on the Raiders, in what would be Davis' last on camera interview.

Not once, not twice, not three times, but on more than a half dozen occasions, Al Davis sued the NFL. He had more run-ins with the commissioner (particularly Pete Rozelle, pictured above) than Pacman Jones. The suit he won in 1982 that challenged the NFL's anti-trust status and allowed the Raiders' move to Los Angeles paved the way for similar franchise moves out of Baltimore and Cleveland. Those moves broke thousands of hearts, and for better or worse opened a lot of fans' eyes to the truth of professional sports: the "professional" part of the name means it's a business folks.

That's what Ice Cube called him this weekend, a reference to Davis' penchant for doing things his way. To the very end, Davis ran his team exactly the way he wanted to. Did Raiders fans scratch their heads (or worse) at some of his moves in the past decade? Of course. Running Jon Gruden out and bringing Jamarcus Russell in will make you do that. Here's a clip of the press conference where Davis fired Lane Kiffin. A little paranoid and crazy? Yup. But that's a nearly 80-year-old man still running his business the only way he knows how. That's certified gangster.

The world of sport is a really sanctimonious place. The world of professional sport is a really, really sanctimonious place. The NFL beggars the dictionary for a big word that describes "preening piety" better than "sanctimonious." Most professional athletes are not nice. They run over people when they're drunk, they subject puppy dogs to rape stands, and they even (gasp!) leave their Hollywood girlfriends when those Hollywood girlfriends are pregnant. They get away with all of that stuff if they win, and Davis not only understood that, he didn't make a show of pretending otherwise. Not a bad catchphrase, huh?