Post by TheShadow on Feb 14, 2007 8:23:58 GMT -5
www.contracostatimes.com
By Jerry McDonald
MEDIANEWS STAFF
The man Al Davis called "The T.O. of his time" got dumped by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Art Powell, like Terrell Owens, was a headstrong, independent free-thinker who discarded conventional wisdom as easily as he scored breathtaking touchdowns.
Pro football management, with one exception, wanted no part of him. Opponents and even some teammates felt the same way.
Powell would not conform to societal norms, challenging the last vestiges of the Jim Crow South when many other African-American athletes were keeping quiet.
The comparison to "T.O." by his former boss elicits a chuckle from Powell. He is 69 years old and living in Aliso Viejo, not far from where he grew up in San Diego.
Powell can see the similarities between him and Owens. They were both former basketball players -- Powell packed 211 pounds on a 6-foot-3 frame -- who became extraordinarily gifted receivers. They were controversial, although as Powell points out, in very different ways.
Owens is a multimillion-dollar talent in a billion-dollar industry. Powell played when racial quotas were commonplace and black players in Southern locales were housed separately from white teammates.
"The challenges that were before me were social challenges," said Powell, who was inducted Friday into the African American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame in Oakland. "I chose to challenge 'em while others chose not to challenge 'em ... I made a lot of people angry."
Powell, a San Diego State product who had posted big numbers with the New York Titans from 1960 through 1962, was brought by Davis to Oakland in 1963. In four seasons, he caught 254 passes for 4,491 yards and scored 50 touchdowns in 56 games.
Yet Powell's name draws blank stares not only from the most die-hard football fans but from current NFL players who don't know of the sacrifices he and others of his era made.
"I've heard about African-American kids playing baseball who don't know who Jackie Robinson is," Powell said. "If that's the case, no one is going to know who Art Powell is."
Powell grew up in San Diego and said he visited the library often as a youth, reading with particular interest about Robinson and Paul Robeson, an actor, athlete and singer who was active in the civil rights movement.
Still, Powell said he did not set out to challenge the system.
"All I wanted to do was be a football player. Period," Powell said. "All this other stuff was dumped in my lap."
Those who know and played with Powell relate to the physical comparison with Owens but reject the notion of the two being anything alike other than as receivers.
"The things Owens does are all self-serving, in my opinion, and I don't even know the guy," said Tom Flores, who played with Powell in both Oakland and Buffalo. "The things that Art did were because of beliefs that he had."
Bill Walsh, the Raiders receivers coach in 1966, has known Powell since his days at San Jose State and has long admired his willingness to act on principle.
"Art was his own man and fiercely independent," Walsh said. "He was not afraid to voice his opinions and to take a stand."
Owens' relationship with the Eagles was fractured over money. Powell was let go after his rookie season because he was the only one of a dozen African-American players who refused to play in a preseason game in Norfolk, Va.
"We were told colored ballplayers -- that was the language in those days -- would not be allowed to stay with the rest of the team in the hotel," Powell said. "I chose not to play."
The Eagles, Powell said, told him to go home and think about it. Meanwhile, the American Football League was formed, and Powell signed with the New York Titans.
In his first season, Powell caught 67 passes for 1,167 yards and 14 touchdowns but wasn't prepared for what was to come the following season while on a trip to Greenville, S.C., for a preseason game against the Houston Oilers.
"I had never been to a place with colored and white drinking fountains," Powell said.
When the Titans arrived, Powell said general manager Steve Sebo informed the approximately 15 black players they would not accompany the white players to the team hotel. While the white players boarded a bus and left, black players were taken to the outskirts of town.
When the Titans played the Oilers on Aug. 25, 1961, Powell again chose not to play.
"I told Steve Sebo I didn't think it was fair," Powell said. "You preach all year about team play, then you know darn well we're not going there as a team."
Powell decided he wanted to leave the Titans, and financially strapped owner Harry Wismer gave him permission to sign with any team in 1963.
Powell said he began getting phone calls from George Ross, sports editor of the Oakland Tribune, and Scotty Stirling, a Tribune sports writer. They told him that Davis was trying to reach him.
The Raiders were coming off consecutive seasons of 2-12 and 1-13. Powell, living in Toronto at the time, said he wasn't interested.
Davis called anyway.
"He told me he'd bought a plane ticket and for me to pick him up at the airport," Powell said. "My wife and I took Al to dinner. We went back to our apartment, and he told me how he was going to give me a chance to stretch out and show what kind of receiver I could really be. Being the salesman that he is, when he left he had a signed contract with my name on it."
Playing before crowds averaging 17,435 at Frank Youell Field, located on the grounds of what is now Laney College, Powell caught 73 passes for 1,304 yards and 16 touchdowns as the Raiders went from 1-13 to 10-4.
Before the season, Powell saw a potential problem when he looked at the preseason schedule. The Raiders were to play the New York Jets in Mobile, Ala., on Aug. 23, 1963.
"We got information that we weren't going to stay together as a team," Powell said. "They were going to rope off a section for the colored fans to sit in, and the colored fans wouldn't be able to use the bathroom."
Powell said he regarded it as "my first big challenge with Al Davis, but it turned out it wasn't a challenge at all."
Davis, after consulting with Powell, Bo Roberson, Clem Daniels and Fred Williamson, switched the game to Youell Field.
"Al never put another game in the South during the time I was with the Raiders," Powell said.
When the AFL All-Star Game was slated for New Orleans after the 1964 season, Powell was one of 23 African-American players who decided not to play because of the treatment of blacks at the Roosevelt Hotel and on Bourbon Street.
African-American players couldn't ride cabs, were denied entrance to restaurants and were verbally abused at the hotel, Powell said. San Diego Chargers Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison said they were ordered to leave a nightclub at gunpoint by a bouncer. Powell said the players met at 2 a.m. to share their experiences.
They decided to leave town.
Davis got involved, Powell said, and by the time he landed in New York en route to Toronto, the game had been moved to Houston.
In 1966, his fourth season with the Raiders, the club moved into the more spacious Coliseum. Powell finally got a chance to play before some big crowds.
Yet Powell had a business opportunity in Toronto and told Davis he wanted to move on. He said Davis tried to talk him out of it. Eventually, he was traded to Buffalo along with Flores in exchange for Daryle Lamonica before the 1967 season.
Powell sustained a knee injury that required surgery early in his first season with the Bills and was never the same. He ended his career as a fringe player for the Minnesota Vikings in 1968.
Years later Powell wonders how his career would have been different had he stayed in Oakland.
"Not every decision you make goes well," Powell said. "I regret it more than Mr. Davis does. There is no doubt playing for the Raiders would have been the best way to finish my career. No doubt.
"You make a decision, you live with it."