Rozelle

  the tough guy who could finally make his franchise a winner. Valley

  was solely responsible for his coming to Oakland. So Davis goes 10- 4

  and is coach of the year. But wins no championship. And he never did

  win one when Wayne was in control, and that rankled Valley.

  He nicknamed Davis “my genius,” but from a compliment that nick-

  name turned into a needle. The Raiders lost five afl title games in

  six years when Valley was there. After the fourth one Valley saw him

  in the Pittsburgh airport and shouted in a voice that could have shat-

  tered all the stained windows in St. Patrick’s Cathedral: “There’s my

  genius. Hey, genius, when you gonna finally get us a championship?”

  Wayne was acerbic, to put it mildly, and Al hated that. He often

  criticized his coach in public and to his face, and Davis hated that. I think Wayne may have been the only guy Al ever actually hated. He

  didn’t hate Rozelle. That was business. But Valley really got to him.

  And what did Davis do about that? Well, wasn’t he the guy who

  preached “Just win, baby, win”? So he went out and won. In old-

  fashioned football terms, he went out and mouse- trapped him.

  There were three general partners in the Oakland Raiders—

  Davis, Valley, and Ed McGah. While Valley was off in Germany

  at the 1972 Olympics, Davis wooed McGah and got him to sign

  an agreement that made Davis the controlling general partner in

  perpetuity. Under corporate law at the time, he was able to launch

  224

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  a palace coup. Since there were only three eligible voters in the corporation, Davis welcomed Valley home with the news that

  he was no longer in control. “Well, around that time Pete and I

  had to fly out to the Bay Area for a labor arbitration session,” Jay

  Moyer, then the in- house counsel to Rozelle, recalls. “After that

  meeting, Pete said we had to go over to Oakland to meet with Al

  and Wayne, but he didn’t explain why.”

  So we walk into their conference room, and Davis is sitting at one

  end of the table and Wayne at the other, and nobody is saying any-

  thing. After we sit down, Wayne opens his briefcase and pulls out a

  newspaper and fires it the length of the table to Davis. Then he says,

  “Is this true?”

  Davis looks up and he says, “Yeah, it’s true.”

  And Wayne shouts back that he can’t do that, and Davis shouts

  back, “Well, I damned well did.”

  My recollection after that was that Wayne sued, and he asked for

  two things. He wanted the agreement invalidated, and he wanted

  Davis kicked out of the Raiders. The judge gave him the first but

  not the second. Wayne said he couldn’t ever work with Al again. Pete

  tried to talk some sense into him, but Wayne was adamant. He sold

  out and walked away.

  Later, when the 49ers became available, Valley tried to buy

  them. If successful, he planned to install Monte Clark, the former

  San Francisco player who had been spectacularly successful as an

  assistant coach with the Dolphins, as his head coach.

  But the late Morabito brothers who had owned the team had a

  clause in their agreement that upon the deaths of both of them,

  ownership would pass to their widows, and the existing minority

  stockholders would then have first crack at raising the money to

  buy the team, should they sell.

  One of those stockholders was Franklin Mieuli, who owned the

  nba Warriors and had a piece of the San Francisco Giants. Mieuli

  and another minority stockholder, a prominent Bay Area attor-

  ney named Joe Alioto (who ironically would later represent Davis

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  225

  on many occasions), tried to raise the money between them. As they struggled to put together the funds, they used their place in

  line to stall other buyers and keep their hopes alive. Meanwhile,

  the surviving Morabito widows grew impatient with the lack of

  serious bidding.

  Confirmed details are hazy over exactly what followed, but this

  much is clear. Their representative contacted Davis to ask if he

  knew anyone who might be interested. Soon after, according to

  Newhouse, who was then covering the 49ers, Franklin Mieuli

  returned from a day on his boat and was handed an urgent mes-

  sage from the harbor master. “He was told it was imperative,” New-

  house recalled, “for him to immediately call his office. When he

  did there was a message from Alioto waiting that read: ‘The wid-

  ows have decided to sell the 49ers to Eddie DeBartolo Jr.’”

  The DeBartolo family had an interesting history. The father,

  Ed DeBartolo Sr., had built major shopping malls, owned race-

  tracks, and unsuccessfully attempted to buy the Chicago White

  Sox (twice), Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, and Seattle Mar-

  iners. The prevailing wisdom concerning those rejections is that,

  rightly or wrongly, baseball was influenced by various U.S. Jus-

  tice Department reports that the elder DeBartolo had ties to orga-

  nized crime. The official excuse was their ownership of racetracks.

  But in a memo, made public years later, Bowie Kuhn, the com-

  missioner of baseball, wrote to a select few that the DeBartolos

  were not the “r.p.” Those who knew his shorthand said the ini-

  tials stood for “right people.”

  The DeBartolos, originally from Youngstown, Ohio, were a

  cause of belated concern to Rozelle’s security people. The father

  was said to have had friendships with several well- known mafio-

  sos, which he explained like this when the league sent Moyer to

  vet him: “Of course I know the people on your list. I grew up with

  them in Youngstown. Hell, it was Youngstown. Most of the peo-

  ple I grew up with wound up with those ties.”

  But there was another aspect of the DeBartolo sale that bog-

  gles the imagination. Al Davis was at the very heart of it. It is

  226

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  well known that he had been contacted by the Morabito widows in their quest for a buyer. As subsequent events proved, he had to

  know the DeBartolos.

  It was Joe Thomas, a former nfl general manager, who bro-

  kered the deal between the Morabito widows and DeBartolo, and

  in return Thomas was named the Niners’ new gm. Thomas and

  Davis had known each other since Al had been a scout for the

  Colts (then in Baltimore) and Thomas was their general manager.

  Much of the talk about the elder DeBartolo and organized crime

  dealt with a bank in which he was a majority stockholder. The bank,

  whose loans were investigated by the State of Florida, was the Met-

  ropolitan Bank and Trust Company of Tampa. Metropolitan col-

  lapsed in 1982. It was thought to be the largest bank failure in the

  history of Florida. It was tied to a number of mafiosos, including

  their longtime elder statesman and adviser, Meyer Lansky.

  It is interesting to note here that many years later, Al Davis was a

  featured speaker at the Fred Biletnikoff Award Dinner. The toast-

  master that night was Dave Newhouse. He was the only newspa-

  perman in the
room, but he vividly recalls the strange anecdote

  Al Davis told the audience that night about an event during the

  week of Super Bowl II in Miami:

  I got to my room the Sunday before the game and I was unpacking

  when the telephone rang and a fellow on the other line said he was

  calling me because there was a national undertakers convention in

  town and [Meyer] Lansky wanted me to speak that Saturday night.

  I explained to him that I had the Super Bowl game on Sunday night

  and I had to concentrate on that, so as much as I would like to speak

  for him, it would be impossible.

  Then on Friday the telephone rang and it was the same guy, and

  he said that Mr. Lansky insists you speak. There would be a limo in

  front of my hotel at 6:30, so I went and I spoke.

  “I was the only newspaperman at that dinner about ten years

  later when he recounted that story,” Newhouse said, “but obvi-

  ously he did know Lansky.”

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  227

  But an even stranger part of the sale of the 49ers came to light when Valley, bitter over the way the 49ers cut him out of a chance

  to buy in, called George Ross, the sports editor of the Oakland

  Tribune, and insisted that Davis had, in fact, received a six- figure finder’s fee for bringing in DeBartolo (through Thomas). “There

  was a league meeting in Phoenix at the time,” Newhouse remem-

  bered, “and Ross, who was my boss, told me to call Davis there

  and get him to confirm or deny. I did. I got him on the telephone

  and I explained who I was and told him what I wanted, and with-

  out saying another word, he hung up.

  “So I called back and tried to explain, and he hung up again.

  Ross insisted I try one last time, and I did. When he heard my

  voice, he hung up for the third time.”

  I don’t think Rozelle could or would have done much about

  Davis’s finder’s fee. The league could hardly have benefited from

  the public airing of a possible conflict of interest leading to a new

  challenge to DeBartolo’s ownership. By the time Rozelle learned

  of the problem, it was far too late to do anything except let the

  matter drop.

  But lawyers are, after all, still lawyers, and it is evident that the

  more the tension between Davis and Rozelle escalated, the more

  the lawyers most closely associated with Rozelle were sensitive to

  the need for vigilance to the nuances of almost everything David

  did. But nobody, absolutely nobody, expected the emotional artil-

  lery shell that Davis was about to fire at the establishment.

  There are those who insist that the original germ of the idea

  that resulted in what followed was born not in Oakland but 371

  miles to the South, where the late Carroll Rosenbloom lived in

  Beverly Hills luxury. There was a closeness between the owner

  of the Rams and Davis dating back to his pre- pro- coaching days

  as a scout for Carroll’s Baltimore Colts.

  In 1972, in a deal brokered by Hugh Culverhouse, who later

  bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Robert Irsay purchased the

  Rams franchise for a reported nineteen million dollars and, then,

  228

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  with Rozelle’s approval, swapped the franchise to Rosenbloom in return for the Colts.

  With both Rosenbloom and Davis on the West Coast, their

  friendship grew. I well remember a night in Los Angeles when

  their teams met in an exhibition game. Davis visited Carroll’s

  box at halftime. They were joking about the terrible play of one

  of Carroll’s running backs, and Davis said, “He’s not worth the

  money. Dump him. Leonard will take him.”

  He was referring to the Eagles’ owner, Leonard Tose, and Car-

  roll responded with “Good idea. But the way the two of us have

  screwed him over and over, I better throw in a tube of ky Jelly.”

  And they both roared. Rosenbloom had always been an owner

  that Davis respected, and the bond between them was clear. That

  same night Carroll told me that he was going to put intense pres-

  sure on the LA Coliseum Commission and the city itself to get

  new facilities, possibly a new stadium, and a much better deal. “If

  they don’t do what they should, I have spoken to people in Ana-

  heim,” he said, “and I’ll do whatever I have to do.” Because of their

  friendship, it is not unfair to assume that he had confided in Davis.

  Had he stayed in Los Angeles, the chaos that followed with the

  Raiders’ move to LA never would have occurred.

  For years, with San Francisco casting its magical shadow from

  just across the Bay, Oakland had been a second- class city in terms

  of image. As far back as 1937, Gertrude Stein had written of the

  city of Oakland that “there is no there there.”

  But that suddenly changed. It began with the building of an

  indoor arena and an outdoor multipurpose stadium that in con-

  cert were known as the Oakland— Alameda County Coliseum.

  Now Oakland had major league baseball and major league football

  and major league basketball. Starting in 1973 the Athletics won

  three straight World Series. The Raiders were perennial contend-

  ers and won their first Super Bowl in 1976. The Warriors moved

  over from San Francisco in 1971. To the outside world, Oakland

  had come of age.

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  229

  Davis felt the Raiders’ contribution to that wasn’t properly appreciated. After all, the ballpark had been built in the era of multi-

  use stadiums that were fast becoming obsolete around the league.

  Davis wanted a new park.

  As a counterbalance to his claim, Doug McAllister, a city coun-

  cilman and member of the Oakland— Alameda County Commis-

  sion, countered with the fact that the complex had turned a profit

  every year with the Athletics and the Raiders. Nobody in town felt

  Davis had any leverage to threaten. Where the hell could he go?

  “He never would have thought of Los Angeles if Carroll hadn’t

  had a deal with Anaheim in the works,” Newhouse contended.

  So while the Alameda County Commission talked of its profits,

  Al Davis said nothing and planned a lot. “Find me a man like him,”

  Newhouse continued. “He stayed to the very end even when he was

  terminally ill and still had an impact on his franchise. You can’t figure people like him, and when you finally do, you realize he’s ten

  jumps ahead of you. You go to a press conference ready to unload on

  him, and when it’s over, you realize you didn’t lay a glove on him.”

  The reason the scenario finally played out the way it did was

  that Al Davis was who he was and Pete Rozelle was who he was. For all his good qualities (remember, he hired the first African American head coach in pro football’s modern era, and John Madden

  will tell you that if he was your friend, there was no greater friend

  to have), the fact is that he always operated from an “us against

  them” mentality.

  He ran his team that way, and he ran his life that way. His feud

  with Rozelle was deeply rooted in his belief that he was the foot-

  ball man and Pete was the pr man. He was real, and f
or him Pete

  was just a fortunate spinmeister. He was damned if would lose

  any battle to him.

  He believed that Rozelle was a product of privilege— which was

  totally incorrect. In Al’s mind he, himself, had come up the hard

  way— which he did not. But for him, like most of us, perception

  perceived long enough that it became truth. He always saw their

  feud as he, the street kid, battling Pete, the silver- spoon kid.

  230

  Davis Again: Feud without End

  Newspaper writer Ron Borges, who covered Al for the Oakland paper for a few years and covered Rozelle for decades in Boston,

  offers the most insightful analysis of everything that followed in

  this feud. “I really think that if Al had gone to Pete and laid out

  the rational part of his desire to move, Rozelle would have stud-

  ied a million angles but in the end he would have worked it out,

  which was Pete’s way. And if that happened he would have been in

  LA without a court case. But Al was Al, and he could never have

  sought Pete out. And Pete was Pete, and he never could have per-

  mitted himself to initiate that conversation.” So all hell broke loose.

  The Irsay- Rosenbloom swap was not relevant because own-

  ers and not franchises moved. Rosenbloom’s move to Anaheim

  didn’t count because technically his team was still the Los Ange-

  les Rams in name and theory. The last obvious abandonment of a

  territory had been the negotiated move by Rozelle and approved

  by the nfl in 1960 of the Chicago Cardinals to St. Louis. “If you

  look in the dictionary,” Newhouse joked, “you will probably see

  Al’s picture next to the word calculating. Davis leaked his case to the media in increments. One day he would tell a reporter that

  the dressing room was a disgrace. The next he would tell another

  that the parking lots were a nightmare. A third guy would be

  reminded that the stadium’s sightlines were bad and there were

  no luxury boxes.”

  So it was drip . . . drip . . . drip.

  Then, before the 1980 season, he suddenly announced that he

  had signed a memorandum of agreement to move the Raiders from

  Oakland into the Los Angeles Coliseum. Under the nfl consti-

  tution a 75 percent approval of all owners was required. Using

  his intimidating style, Davis said he would move with approval

  or without it. Some owners were angered by his refusal to abide