Skip to playerSkip to main content
AJ McKenzie
  • 1 day ago
Just win, baby
IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
Transcript
00:05Hello, I'm Chris Fowler and welcome to SportsCentury. Born on the 4th of July, most of his life has
00:11been a rebellion against authority and a struggle for independence. Aleb Davis thrives on chaos,
00:17much of it his creation, and boasts that he would rather be feared than respected. As we'll see
00:23in the next half hour, the man who specializes in jumpsuits and lawsuits was made the Raiders
00:29a refuge for renegades, and the discarded remains obsessed with the one foe he has never beaten
00:35and never will.
00:38What?
00:45He has the ability to control a lot of situations, but he doesn't have the ability to control
00:54life or death. It really, really hurts him when somebody he's friendly with or somebody
01:03that he knows has a physical problem.
01:09I lie there for five months, and I couldn't do this, I couldn't blink an eye, I couldn't
01:16utter a sound. He used to come up about nine o'clock, and he would stand by my bedside, and
01:25Al Davis would say, Del, you're not going to die. He said, you are a Raider, and Raiders
01:33don't die.
01:39You sure about that?
01:42Irony is, a lot of those old Raiders, especially on the defense, died early.
01:47So, uh, old Raiders from when they were good.
01:56As he's gotten older, he's become more absorbed with the subject of death. He's a regular attendant
02:01at funerals of people who've passed away, who've come into his life. Whether they're friends
02:05or enemies, he goes anyhow. He went to Pete Rozelle's funeral, and Pete Rozelle was his archenemy
02:10for most of his adult career.
02:14That's the only thing.
02:16He was just...
02:17Making sure he was really dead.
02:19That's all.
02:20That I don't think I've lived, in my life, that I wasn't able to save some people who
02:29were dying.
02:32In 1979, the shadow of death fell across Davis when his wife, Carol, lapsed into a coma after
02:39suffering a heart attack.
02:41At that particular time, there was some doctors telling him that she wouldn't come out of it.
02:45He refused to believe that.
02:47He sat up around the clock, day in and day out, talking into her ear to keep her brain functioning.
02:55On the 17th day of this coma, she comes out of it.
02:58A woman that was supposed to die, a woman that was supposed to die, or at the very most be
03:01a vegetable, gained 97% of her faculties back in the course of that year, largely just through Al Davis's
03:09will.
03:10So, he believes that there's a way to beat death.
03:13I mean, he's actually had these conversations.
03:15He said, we haven't dominated that death thing yet.
03:18Yet.
03:19Huh.
03:21Al Davis was a strange guy.
03:22As we were loosing up on pre-game and we're out there exercising and stretching out, he would walk and
03:28look at all the players.
03:30I used to always think it was so weird.
03:34He just was like one of these guys, let you know that he's close enough to, close enough to touch
03:39you.
03:41The stuff he used to wear, I mean, it was kind of Elvis Presley type, Liberace kind of stuff, you
03:47know, and we'd say stuff to him about that and never seem to bother him.
03:53You have this man who has very few close associations in the football world, almost a maniacal attitude with respect
04:03to privacy.
04:05Al Davis thinks everybody's out to get him.
04:07He's paranoid about it.
04:09He's an us against them kind of guy.
04:10You go out to the Raiders training camp and they're very high fences with green windscreens.
04:16They've got guards posted so that if anybody's trying to look over the screen, they're going to get shooed away.
04:21I think he loves the image of being sort of a gangster type of guy.
04:25Dangerous, unpredictable, yet brilliant.
04:29He's a smart, a fiendish kind of man.
04:33Great, there's one great hero in life is Adolf Hitler.
04:36What?
04:39I'll give you some perspective on him.
04:45In 1939, when Davis was 10, Hitler's blitzkrieg struck like lightning into the heart of Eastern Europe.
04:51More than 40 years later, in an interview with writer Gary Smith, the Raiders owner recalled an impressionable boy's obsession
04:59with the Nazi army's tactical brilliance, despite the dark implications to his own heritage.
05:05You've got this Jewish kid who's part of a culture who's being wiped out systematically by Hitler, but yet Al's
05:14fascinated by what Hitler was doing.
05:17And just the boldness and the brazenness of Hitler's reach for power was something that hit Al Davis on a
05:24real gut level.
05:25The specter of a Jewish kid admiring Hitler, you have to ask yourself, is Al Davis completely sane to even
05:33compliment something like that?
05:35When he says something really outrageous, as he did in that Gary Smith.
05:39No, Al Davis went too far with that.
05:41How can you be Jewish and admire that guy of all people?
06:01I think Al Davis was always regarded by some people as a rebel, simply because he didn't always adhere to
06:10the party line.
06:11He was always very opinionated. You knew that if Al Davis made a move, it was going to be controversial
06:16in some way.
06:17It was going to be attention-getting for sure.
06:20Listen, if you live your life worrying about what people think and what people say and who's good or who's
06:28bad, you'll never take a step.
06:31He hired the first Hispanic-American NFL coach. He hired the first African-American coach of the modern era.
06:37And the person who we all believe will succeed him when he's gone is a woman.
06:45He's a bad opportunity.
06:47Well, that didn't happen. It was Mark Davis.
06:54Had he lived long enough, he would have put in the first Asian-American head coach.
07:01When he gave opportunity to me as a 32-year-old head coach, he's one that is open to anything.
07:10He will sit at the table with 30 other owners of National Football League teams and defy every one of
07:17them.
07:18Sue them.
07:19You have to wonder, what is in the man's mind that drives him?
07:23Not to think about retirement, but think about more conquest.
07:26He's thinking about what 30-year-old owner he's going to show up as a fool because he's still smarter
07:32than the rest of football.
07:34This is something Al Davis dreamed of when he was a kid.
07:40Born in 1929 to Rose and Louis Davis, Al and his older brother Jerry were raised in a comfortable Jewish
07:47home in Brooklyn.
07:49Everybody calls him a gutter fighter, you know, a kid who came from nothing.
07:52He came from very high middle-class surroundings.
07:54His father was a very successful garment manufacturer, so he didn't really want for anything growing up.
08:00The father cut no slack.
08:02You know, if they were running on the beach, he'd run his boys to their knees.
08:06If they came home with a B, it was pretty much scoring.
08:10He had to have an A, so he grew up in a house where you had to find a way
08:16to make it happen.
08:18You had to win.
08:21Even as a young guy, I had a dream that I would build the final professional sports.
08:29Alan was wonderfully popular with girls.
08:33He was good-looking, he's charming, and he's bright.
08:37There's nothing in his background to suggest that he was persecuted, but he always acted that way.
08:44He always acted as if people were against him, that he was the underdog.
08:48He had to prove himself constantly.
08:54He did.
08:55At 21, Davis was a line coach for Adelphi College.
08:59At 33, he was head coach and general manager of the Raiders in the emerging AFL in 1963.
09:06Three years later, he was hired as the league's commissioner.
09:09His plan was to wage a dirty war against his NFL counterpart, the smooth, diplomatic Pete Rozelle.
09:16There was nothing nice about this.
09:18It was a matter of survival.
09:21Al was the one cog that we used to go ahead and intimidate the national footballer.
09:26We got commitments from about six to eight of their great players, several of them quarterbacks.
09:33We said that we would hold one team totally hostage.
09:37What Davis didn't know was that the secret peace talks between the leagues had been underway even before he started
09:44his talent raids.
09:45In June of 1966, the war ended.
09:49I had to go over and tell Al that there was a merger and that the commissioner of the combined
09:55leagues would be Pete Rozelle.
09:58And he got no support from his own owners.
10:00I think he was very bitter about that.
10:02We won the war and they know it and the peacemakers made the peace, which was fine with me.
10:08Al Davis would have been king.
10:11He wanted to be the commissioner of all the footballs, not just the ones the AFL was kicking around.
10:20With his ambitions still burning, Davis returned to Oakland, this time as managing general partner.
10:26While he solidified his control by outmaneuvering one of his two partners and outliving the other, he occasionally skirmished with
10:34Rozelle.
10:34In 1980, three years after he passed the only vote against the commissioner's new contract, Davis committed an act of
10:42open rebellion.
10:44Al was going to move to Los Angeles without asking Pete's permission.
10:48There was a touch of arrogance of Al in doing that, which is Al's style.
10:52He's tough.
10:52And Rozelle resented the fact that Davis was subbing this down his throat and he decided to fight it.
11:01We're fighting for a principle.
11:04We see, we don't think the antitrust laws were intended to let a team just get up and move after
11:1112 straight years of sellout.
11:12The National Football League acted in bad faith with no polling, secret and sneaky lawsuits, just a number and a
11:21myriad of things that were totally unfair and totally restricted.
11:26The league was unanimous in believing the Raiders should stay up and open.
11:31Only a few clubs abstained on that.
11:34I think it was unfortunate that it got as personal as it was, but that's the nature of court fights.
11:38Amazing he would, he would block Al Davis from moving, but not stop that scumbag Bob Ursae from moving the
11:47Colts.
11:48From Baltimore, the city that popularized the NFL and made Rozelle himself rich.
11:56Sounds, sounds like somebody got shafted.
12:01Here you had a member of the league testifying him.
12:08Fighting his partners.
12:10And we'd never been associated with that type of thing before.
12:14When someone within your ranks sues you, it just makes you look very inept and amateurish.
12:19And that's hurt the fraternity of NFL owners.
12:33I don't really have that much respect for Pete Rozelle, especially when I thought his credibility was destroyed in this
12:40case.
12:42He drove my buddy Pete Rozelle out of the business.
12:46Again, with litigation and testifying against him.
12:53But Rozelle's exit in 1989 was not the end of Davis' private war against the system.
13:00He continued to be embroiled in several lawsuits with the NFL and the city of Oakland,
13:04where he returned after 13 seasons of disappointing profits in Los Angeles.
13:09Seeking billions of dollars in the courts, the Brooklyn boy became an island with all its bridges burned.
13:16His fellow owners despise him.
13:19At one point talked about trying to form a coalition to get him kicked out of the league.
13:25There may only be one way to do it, and that's Al Davis' way.
13:30Al seems to enjoy a fight.
13:33My personal opinion is that Al makes doing business more difficult.
13:39Al believes that if he is disruptive, that he can function in chaos better than someone else.
13:45He had no business pursuing that litigation with such vigor and such intensity to try to tear us down.
13:52I'm angry.
13:54I'm angry.
13:55Al gets angry at Al Davis, who loses the last friend he has in the NFL.
13:59I firmly believe that Al is at a stage where he likes that turmoil.
14:03There's been a lawsuit going on for, what, the last 25 years?
14:07I think he likes that.
14:08I think he likes that confrontation.
14:10You know, if it isn't there, he's going to start it.
14:19Al Davis would give you this test.
14:22If you could only have one thing, what would you pick?
14:24Power.
14:25Money.
14:27Love.
14:28And if you didn't pick power, you know, you were a fool forever.
14:31Because if you had power, you could get everything else.
14:33He wanted to make every single decision that had anything to do with the Raiders.
14:40That was his goal.
14:41That's where he was.
14:42That's where he wanted it.
14:44That's where he kept it.
14:45He knows everything that's going on in his organization.
14:48From what the equipment man is doing to what, you know, what shoelaces Tim Brown wore.
14:54At the point.
14:56Between 1963 and 1985, the Raiders won more games than any team in pro football.
15:02248.
15:03Reaching four Super Bowls, they triumphed three times.
15:07Then they hit a wall of mediocrity from 1986 to 1999.
15:11Taking just one division title as Davis cycled through six head coaches.
15:17Al Davis has never really given up being head coach of the Raiders.
15:20So he's had problems with strong-willed coaches who wanted to do it their way, not the Raider
15:25way.
15:25He had Shanahan there.
15:27Shanahan wanted to change things.
15:30You're out.
15:31You know, that old expression, it's his way or the highway.
15:35It's that way.
15:36There was a hint that maybe John Gruden was actually running things.
15:40We learned quickly enough that he wasn't, and maybe that was the reason John Gruden left.
15:45He told me when he hired me, the guy that has to answer to everything is you.
15:49But also, he was on your side, and he was in your corner.
15:52He did everything he could to help you win.
15:55He started as much film or more film than the coaches did.
15:59Al Davis was out of practice.
16:01You know, he showed up all the time, was always around, very involved.
16:04But the word on the street was that, you know, Al was the one calling the shots.
16:10Terrible moves, an inability to admit mistakes, constantly trying to reinvent himself with the
16:16same old tired tricks of the past, while other people moved past him.
16:20Through his influence, he decided to set a Hall of Fame player like Marcus Allen on the bench
16:25when we needed him.
16:27We had two very gifted receivers that Al Davis, for no unforeseen reason, decided to set those
16:33two guys on the bench.
16:34And so, yeah, I think that those were times that his overbearing influence definitely could
16:38have hurt the team.
16:42Despite occasional feuds with such players as Marcus Allen and Ken Stabler, Davis retained the
16:48respect for most of his players.
16:50I have nothing but good things to say about him because he was always straight up with me
16:55and he paid us well.
16:57Al was a guy where you felt like you could go to him and talk about your problems, and a
17:02lot of
17:02people did.
17:03Now, there are a lot of people who hate him in the NFL because he's beating them in the
17:06courts and he's beating them on the field.
17:09But he is extremely gracious and great to all his ex-players.
17:15If you wore that silver and black in Al Davis' book, you were a part of him and you were
17:21family.
17:22I think every player, whether he admits it or not, towards the twilight of his career,
17:28wants to go play for the Raiders.
17:30I saw Al Davis do that with many players.
17:33He took guys at the end of their career and gave them life.
17:39We'll grow and be tough now.
17:41Fight with them and just keep sticking it to them.
17:45Just we'll fight with them.
17:50The Raiders is a persona team.
17:53We walk with a different swagger than other teams.
17:55We talk with a different swagger than other teams.
18:00No ties and jackets, no dress coats, no hours, no rules, hardly.
18:09We've got the reputation of being a lot of thugs and ne'er-do-wells and ex-convicts, maybe.
18:17We always thought that they were against us.
18:19It was us against the ledge.
18:20It was us against everyone.
18:22And we'll get in the foxhole.
18:23Come on.
18:24Okay, guys, let's get in the foxhole.
18:25We're the Raiders.
18:27We're the Raiders.
18:31It meant that you were on the most feared team in the National Football League.
18:35You would cheap shot.
18:36You would try to intimidate an official.
18:39You would try to stretch the rules.
18:41You live in the gray area.
18:42And you knew that you'd be rewarded for it.
18:48I always sensed that Al had this way that he wanted to do it.
18:52It really didn't matter what the rules were.
18:53Al was going to do it his own way.
18:55And that used to trouble me a little bit.
18:56He had players who, you know, were charged with rape, players who were picked up for drunken driving, fit in
19:05with those kind of players.
19:06And they all became the outcasts who were going to show the establishment who they were and what they could
19:11be.
19:13Al Davis can say or do anything that affects his image.
19:17Because there are people who love him, think he walks in water.
19:23There's the larger group of people that hate him.
19:26And nothing is going to change the opinion of either one.
19:30Al Davis is totally different from the perception.
19:35The picture you have of Al Davis.
19:37And he doesn't try and stop this either.
19:40The picture you have of Al Davis is over here.
19:42And the real Al Davis is the complete opposite of him.
19:46Al doesn't want anybody to think he has a soft spot.
19:50By design, I believe.
19:53We had an assistant coach in New England who had coached with the Raiders.
20:00Three or four years later, he got cancer.
20:04He died.
20:06He left behind a wife and some children.
20:08They had no money.
20:11Al paid for the funeral.
20:14Al gave money to the family.
20:17If you're a friend of his and you're loyal to him, he'll be loyal to you.
20:21No matter what happens.
20:23I'll tell you one thing you find out about him.
20:25Don't try to screw him, man.
20:27You make a mistake with him and you're going to pay for it.
20:30It runs the gamut.
20:32You hear stories about, you know, him being totally ruthless.
20:36And then on the other end of the spectrum, being so philanthropic, it's beyond comprehension.
20:42He's all those things at different times.
20:44You know, he can be petty.
20:45He can be generous.
20:46He's just a mass of contradictions.
20:52In 2003, Davis reached his fifth Super Bowl and lost to a coach he let go only a year earlier.
21:00Gruden.
21:00As the battle fires of his passionate march continue to flare, Davis remained an elusive figure.
21:07Dressed in black or white, his portrait blurs into a murky gray or perhaps silver, depending on one's point of
21:14view.
21:15Is he going to be remembered for the great Super Bowl teams, for the passion which he brought the game
21:20on the field?
21:21Or is he going to be remembered for the dispassionate way that he moved his franchise around off the field
21:25and sued people left and right and treated fans like they were thirsting quarterbacks?
21:33He assembles competitive teams almost all the time, and you have to give him credit for that.
21:38A lot of people don't like to because they don't like him.
21:41I think there's a ton of respect for Al Davis in this league, and they're always looking over their shoulder.
21:47Nobody wants to deal with him because they think he'll beat them.
21:52Al recognizes new ideas better than anyone that I know in the NFL.
22:00As good a football man as any owner in the history of this league, even including George Halas.
22:08Professionally, he's been a big disappointment to me.
22:13It's praising myself, but I've done more than anyone else.
22:17Yeah, I've lived my dream, but I thought I would live my dream.
22:20I thought I would.
22:22But, you've got to go get it.
22:23You've got to go fight for it.
22:25You've got to dominate it.
22:30Following the 2000 season, the Raiders sent promotional postcards to certain media members.
22:36Arrayed in gleaming splendor were the team's Super Bowl rings and trophies.
22:40The only human being pictured was Al Davis, amidst 23 of his favorite sayings and those shining spoils of victory.
22:50He was where he prefers to be, defiantly alone, in the center of the silver and black universe that he
22:57created.
22:58For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
Comments