Post by TheShadow on Nov 27, 2008 10:57:35 GMT -5
www.buffalonews.com/
A young Al Davis moves from coaching ranks to commissioner’s office
The groundwork for the modern National Football League was laid in 1966, when owners from the NFL and the upstart American Football League agreed to a merger. Former Buffalo News Sports Editor Larry Felser revisits that pivotal time in his new book, “The Birth of the New NFL: How the 1966 NFL/AFL Merger Transformed Pro Football” (Lyons Press, $14.95).
The News is running three excerpts from the book. Today’s second installment focuses on Al Davis, the former coach who served as AFL commissioner and ultimately owner of the Oakland Raiders.
Erasmus Hall, the legendary Brooklyn high school established in 1787, has seen generations of famous people file through its halls, from Barbra Streisand and Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf to the late chess wizard Bobby Fischer and Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Nevertheless, the school may never have graduated a student more distinctive than Al Davis, the most popular boy in his senior class.
By the time he reached 30, the “most popular boy” was working in professional football as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Chargers of the new American Football League and already becoming extremely unpopular with Chargers opponents. By the time he was 33, he was head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and the unpopularity had turned to loathing in both the National and American leagues. By the time he was 36, he was the second commissioner of the AFL, and loathing had collected a partner, fear, among the NFL owners who had to contend with Davis’ agenda of piracy.
When the Chargers were founded as an original franchise in the AFL, they were based in Los Angeles. Sid Gillman, who had spent five years as coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, had been fired just as the new league was formed. Barron Hilton, the hotel scion and original owner of the Chargers, had been impressed by Gillman’s work with the Rams, especially his sophisticated passing offense. Sensing that an entertaining offense would be a help in attracting customers to a start-up operation, Hilton hired Gillman.
Hilton was in charge of the hotel chain’s blossoming credit card business — hence the name “the Chargers” — and Gillman ran the entire football operation. His selection of his first coaching staff was a masterpiece. First hired were two members of his former Ram staff, Jack Faulkner and Joe Madro. Then came Davis and Chuck Noll. Coaching staffs in those days were minuscule compared to the ones of the 21st century, and five men was the limit. It was enough, and three of them — Noll, Davis and Gillman himself — ended up in the Hall of Fame.
Faulkner breathed the first fresh air into the moribund Denver franchise as head coach and general manager. Noll coached the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl victories. Davis created “Raider Nation,” a dynasty and its raffish followers, which stayed near or at the top of pro football for more than four decades and into the new millennium.
Slick recruiting was second nature to Al from the time he worked at the Citadel. Paul Maguire, an ESPN sportscaster, told the story of when he came out of Youngstown, Ohio, as a coveted tight end and punter. “Al told me if I came to the Citadel I wouldn’t have to take military and he’d get me a car,” said Maguire. “When I got there, I found out that everybody takes military at the Citadel. When I asked Al about the car, he said, ‘I’ll introduce you to this used-car dealer I know in Charleston. He’ll give you a good price.’ ” Maguire stayed at the school, and in his senior year he caught 11 touchdown passes. When he graduated, he signed with the Chargers to a contract proffered by a coach named Al Davis.
By the end of the 1962 season, it appeared the Raiders would either relocate, probably to New Orleans, or close down operations. Instead Wayne Valley, the managing partner, convinced his board of directors to give it another year, mainly because the team had received a $400,000 infusion of cash from Ralph Wilson, owner of the Bills, in exchange for 25 percent of the team. Wilson later said, “I knew it was against the constitution, but the league would have folded. I did it for the sake of the league.”
The Raiders then got an infusion of professionalism by hiring Davis as head coach and general manager. He had been recommended by Gillman. One of the first moves Davis made was to trade for Art Powell of the New York Titans, a big, fast, enormously talented receiver who had previously worn out his welcome in one year as a Philadelphia Eagle. It took him three years in New York to become a dispensable asset. The trade with the Titans came about because Davis was unafraid to take big risks. Powell caught 16 touchdown passes in his first year as a Raider. Davis made other risky moves, and they were what made the 1-13 Raiders of 1962 into the 10-4 Raiders in his first season as a head coach.
In 1966 the AFL owners elected Davis their new commissioner.
He quickly broadened his staff. He already had a strong public relations man in Jack Horrigan, the former Buffalo Evening News sportswriter whom he knew well and with whom he felt comfortable. Horrigan was a thick-skinned, wisecracking Irish Catholic with a reputation for great integrity and loyalty.
From the beginning of the AFL, the practice was to schedule each team for three consecutive games on their opposite coast.
When the Chargers came east to play Buffalo, New York and Boston, it was their custom to stay and train in either Niagara Falls, N. Y., or cross the bridge to Canada and set up camp in Niagara Falls, Ont. They would travel to New York and Boston by short hops in chartered props. Horrigan would visit the Charger coaches in their temporary headquarters in the Hotel Niagara on the American side of the Falls. “Their language would peel the wallpaper,” he said. “One day I saw a secretary in the hotel office quit her job because she couldn’t stand the obscenities wafting down from the coaches’ office as they argued.” Those visits were where Horrigan and Davis bonded.
I had my own opportunity to bond with Davis in April of 1966. Beverly and I were departing on our honeymoon and staying in a Miami Beach hotel room when the phone rang. We were startled. The call was unexpected and unwanted. The Miami stay was a one-day layover while we awaited our flight to the Bahamas for the rest of our honeymoon. No one was supposed to know where we were. I answered the phone and heard the voice of Al Davis, who had found me somehow. He wanted to hire me for his staff. I thought it over for 24 hours in consultation with my bride then declined Davis’s invitation. I was too happy in the newspaper business.
The most pressing administrative problem Davis encountered when he began the job was smoothing the way for Joe Robbie and Danny Thomas with the new franchise in Miami. It was during his conversation with Bills owner Ralph Wilson that more interesting news broke. “About six weeks after I was named commissioner,” Davis said, “I was visiting Ralph Wilson in his Detroit insurance office, since Ralph was serving as president of the league. We were talking about Miami. Suddenly one of his top people, Lou Curl, walked into the office with some big news — the New York Giants had just signed Pete Gogolak. Ralph was indignant, since Gogolak was his player, very important to the Bills.
“I told him, Ralph, don’t be indignant,” Davis said. “The NFL just handed us the merger.”
