Al Davis
Allen R. Davis was an American professional football executive and coach. He was the managing general partner, principal owner and de facto general manager for the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League for 39 years, from 1972 until his death in 2011. Prior to becoming principal owner of the Raiders, he served as the team's head coach from 1963 to 1965 and as a part-owner from 1966 to 1971, assuming both positions while the Raiders were members of the American Football League. He served as the AFL commissioner in 1966.
Known for his motto "Just win, baby", Davis managed the Raiders becoming one of the NFL's most successful and popular teams. The franchise enjoyed its greatest successes during the 1970s and 1980s where it was a perennial playoff contender and won three Super Bowl titles. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992.
Davis was active in civil rights, refusing to allow the Raiders to play in any city where black and white players had to stay in separate hotels. He was the first NFL owner in the modern era to hire a black head coach, the first to hire a female chief executive, and the first NFL owner to hire a Latino head coach. He remains the only person to have served as a scout, assistant general manager, general manager, assistant coach, a head coach, a commissioner, and an owner of a team.
Early life
Davis was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family. Davis's father, Louis Davis, worked in a variety of trades in Massachusetts; having found some success in the garment manufacturing field, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 with his wife, Rose, and their two sons, Jerry and Allen. Louis Davis rented a sixth-floor walkup for his family off Utica Avenue, became very successful in the garment trade, and put his two sons through college before seeking a more comfortable home in Atlantic Beach, New York. Although there are a number of stories of Louis Davis backing his younger son in anything so long as the boy did not get caught or back down from a confrontation, most of these stories derive from Al Davis. Childhood friends depicted him as more of a talker than a fighter, although very good with his mouth. Young Al's sport of choice was basketball, and he gained a reputation of a hard player, if not the most skillful. As a boy, he was determined to play for Coach Al Badain at Erasmus Hall High School, passing up the opportunity to attend school closer to his house. Although he was only a reserve on the Erasmus team, and did not play much, Davis studied Badain's coaching techniques, and felt he learned much from him. In the 1980s, with Badain ill and in need, Davis brought his elderly former coach to the West Coast to witness his Raiders in the Super Bowl, and paid the man's debts.Despite Davis's slight role on his high school team, Raiders media guides later published descriptions of Davis which depicted him as a schoolboy star, only to have the claims scaled back—slightly—in future editions after reporters investigated the matter. His lack of football playing experience made him one of the few to be a head coach in the NFL or AFL despite never having played even for the high school varsity.
Davis graduated from high school in January 1947, immediately enrolling at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio at age 17. The school had recruited Davis, although it did not extend him a scholarship. He spent a semester there, occupying himself with baseball and plans to transfer to a higher-profile school. In mid-1947, he transferred to Syracuse University. Although Davis repeatedly tried out for the various varsity teams, the height of his athletic career at Syracuse was warming the bench for the junior varsity baseball team. Frustrated by this, he briefly transferred to Hartwick College, also in New York State, in 1948, but soon returned to Syracuse. Despite Davis's lack of athletic success, he commonly mingled with varsity athletes, many of whom assumed he was also one but on another team. Unsuccessful in his efforts to join the men's basketball team, Davis became interested in football strategy, and haunted the football team's practices until asked to leave by the head coach, suspicious of Davis for taking notes. Davis also took the academic courses in football strategy given by the assistant coaches, and ordinarily attended only by players.
Early coaching career
College coach
While job hunting, he introduced himself as "Davis from Syracuse", likely intentionally to conflate with George Davis, star halfback for the school's football team. Turned down at Hofstra University and by Bill Altenberg, athletic director at Adelphi University, he approached Adelphi's president. What went on between the two men is not known; his biographer Mark Ribowsky suggests Davis used a combination of "bluff and con," but a half hour after Altenberg dismissed Davis from his office, he received a call from the president that he had a new freshman football coach.Military service
In 1952, with his student deferral ended upon receipt of his master's degree, Davis was inducted into the United States Army. He quickly secured a place attached to a public relations unit near Syracuse, and set about obtaining a place on one of the coaching staff for the military's football teams. General Stanley Scott of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, obtained Davis's services in 1953 as football coach for his post's football squad. At the time, military football was taken very seriously; the teams were well-stocked with drafted college stars, and often scrimmaged National Football League teams. Davis coached Fort Belvoir, just south of Washington, D.C., to a record of eight wins, two losses, and one tie, missing a chance to play in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego because of a final-game loss to the nearby Quantico Marine Base. As a private first class, he was often coaching players of a higher rank, including officers. Near the end of 1952, he was called to testify before a congressional committee investigating whether athletes were being coddled in the military. Although most of Davis's team was sent to Korea, he remained at Fort Belvoir until his discharge in 1954. While coaching in the army, Davis sold scouting information about his players to NFL teams. One NFL executive who contacted Davis was Pete Rozelle of the Los Angeles Rams, but as Rozelle had been allocated no money, Davis gave him no information.Scouting and return to college coaching
After military service, Davis married his fiancée, Carol Sagal, in a Brooklyn synagogue; the couple established a first home in Atlantic Beach, near Al Davis's parents. Davis worked for a year as a freelance scout for the Baltimore Colts of the NFL. He had considerable knowledge of the players he had had on his roster or coached against, and advised the Colts which players to offer contracts to or draft as they returned to civilian life. Davis cultivated the Colts' head coach, Weeb Ewbank, hoping Ewbank's connections would lead to a coaching job for Davis, and these efforts paid off in January 1955, when Davis was hired by The Citadel in South Carolina as an assistant to first-year head coach John Sauer. In contrast to the glory won by its alumni in war, the South Carolina military academy's football team had lost every game the previous season, and previous head coach John McMillan was dismissed after two seasons. Davis stated, in his interview, that he would be able to persuade small-town boys from the Northeast to attend The Citadel, which often had difficulty in recruiting star players because of its regimented lifestyle. He was successful in his recruiting, although not all remained past the first training camp, at Parris Island Marine base.During games, Davis was stationed in the press box, calling plays which were generally run by Sauer without modification. The Citadel unexpectedly began the season by winning five of its first six games, although it lost the next three to end the season 5–4. Davis received much credit for his role in The Citadel's success, although losing Sauer's regard through too-aggressive self-promotion. The 1956 season was less successful, as the team finished 3–5–1. Sauer resigned at the end of the season; Davis unsuccessfully sought the head coaching position and then resigned; Ribowsky records that there were allegations of payments and other benefits to players in violation of NCAA rules; he also states that Davis pressured professors to change grades to keep student-athletes eligible to play football. By the time he left The Citadel, Davis had already arranged his next job, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Davis was an effective recruiter as a USC assistant coach, bringing one prospect, Angelo Coia to the Los Angeles Coliseum at night, and as the lights were slowly turned off, asked the student to imagine himself playing there before 100,000 people. Coia played for USC and later worked for the Raider front office. When Davis arrived, USC was on NCAA probation for allowing alumni to surreptitiously give money to players, and had not been permitted to play in a bowl game after the 1956 season; these sanctions hampered Davis's first two seasons at USC, 1957 and 1958, during which the team posted a combined 5-14-1 record. The head coach, Don Clark, came to rely heavily on Davis. Clark and Davis hoped that 1959 would bring a conference championship and the chance to play in the Rose Bowl, but in April 1959 USC was sanctioned by the NCAA again, this time for inducing recruits signed by other schools into breaking their letters of intent. Not allowed to play on television, USC won its first eight games before losing to UCLA and Notre Dame. Despite the defeats, the team was Pacific Coast Conference champions, but because of the sanctions could not play in the Rose Bowl. Clark resigned after the season; although Davis put in for the position, it went to another assistant, John McKay, who did not keep Davis on his staff.