The Man Who Changed The Game

This is not a joke.  I'm not being sarcastic or anything like that.  I think Al Davis, who passed away Saturday at the age of 82, was the best owner in the history of sports.  Bar none.  His passing gives me another reason to appreciate what NFL Films did for the growth of the game.  We'll always have the old shows about the big game losses in the late 60's and early 70's, and the Super Bowl wins during the mid 70's and early 80's.  The most memorable of those films, and all fans who followed the league then have seen it, was after Super Bowl XVIII.  There is an image of Al Davis, who a year earlier had won lawsuit he had filed against the NFL when they tried to block the relocation of his Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles, in the locker room after the game.  He is holding the Lombardi Trophy while congratulating his team on their 38-9 dismantling of the Washington Redskins.  After congratulating his team, he smiles and utters the phrase that will always make football fans anywhere think of Al Davis and the Raiders.

"Just win, baby!"

I am personally not a fan of the Raiders.  There was a mystique about them when I was a child, when the only time fans outside of northern California could see them was when they were playing in your team's area or on Monday Night Football.  They truly were the renegades of professional sports, their roster filled with last chance players that Davis decided could still play.  Names like Hendricks, Matuszak, Sistrunk, Plunkett, and Alzado come to mind as players who nobody else wanted who won championships for Davis.  The list of players that were original Raider draft picks is impressive as well.  Shell, Upshaw, Stabler, Branch, Allen, and Brown were all great players.  Although Davis was criticized for his evaluation of talent in recent years, it is arguable that he drafted and signed more talent than anybody in pro football history.

Al Davis and his Raiders are the main reason that the NFL has franchises in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Arizona, and back in Baltimore.  Indirectly, he is also responsible for the lavish new stadiums that have been recently built, mainly to entice the franchises to stay in their cities. 

His team did not perform well on the field the last few years, but the Oakland Raiders have been to more Super Bowls in the last ten years than such yearly championship picks as the Ravens, Jets, Vikings, and Chargers.  His teams were among the fastest and most physically talented in football even when the wins didn't pile up.

When Al Davis purchased the Oakland Raiders outright in 1966, the price tag was $180,000.  In 2008, Forbes listed the Raiders as being worth $861 million dollars.  He is not the last of the original American Football League personalities, but he certainly remains the most influential owner in history.

There seems to be a misguided notion in professional sports that in order to be successful, an owner must be invisible.  Al Davis may have been the first owner in football that was more widely known than his players, yet the success followed.  Always guaranteed to speak his mind and fight for what he thought was right, Davis took on his own league and won.  He did as much or more to popularize the game of American football as anyone.  He will never be forgotten.

Yesterday afternoon, the Raiders were statistically dominated by the Houston Texans.  Their running game, among the best in the league, struggled.  Houston threw for over 400 yards and kept the ball for over thirty-five minutes, but when Micheal Huff intercepted a pass in the end zone to end the game, the Raiders won 25-20.  It was a game Al Davis would have loved.

His team just won, baby.