by Mike Siani
Former Green Bay Packer defensive tackle Mike McCoy was traded to the Oakland Raiders in 1977. He compares Madden’s practices to Bart Starr’s practices.
“I thought to myself, this is incredible. This is the way it should be. He didn’t want you to leave it on the field, so practices weren’t what I was used to.
“I was used to hitting as hard as I could. One day I hit Pete Banaszak hard. He turned to me and said, ‘Cool it down a little. This is offense day. Today the offense wins. Tomorrow the defense wins.’ I turned around and Jack Tatum put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Cool out, guy. Save it for the game.’”
Because of these laid-back workouts, the Raiders always had the fourth quarter because they were rested.
George Atkinson sums up Madden the man.
“You had to take your hat off to Madden as far as keeping everything from going haywire bonkers, you know? He kept us aware of what our mission was. In order to keep all of us organized and running smoothly, it took one hell of a guy.”
TRAINING CAMP
AN EXPLOSIVE MIX OF TESTOSTERONE, ALCOHOL, AND INSANITY
THE EL RANCHO MOTEL: THE PLACE WE CALLED HOME
Approximately 60 miles north of the Oakland Coliseum lay the quaint town of Santa Rosa, California. Here nestled in its quiet and serene Sonoma County foothills was the infamous El Rancho Tropicana Motel where for two decades the Raiders’ veterans, rookies and coaching staff held training camp.
While for six weeks other NFL teams were enjoying the comforts and curfews of a college dorm, Oakland was held up for eight weeks at the seedy and rundown El Rancho. But to the Raiders, it was like a match made in Heaven.
The entire facility consisted of a hotel, two practice fields and a makeshift locker room that were built behind the motel. Each year the Jacuzzi would overflow with soapsuds, and firecrackers would be shot off at various times throughout the day. It was more like a summer camp for adult delinquent males than a training camp.
“My own, personal training camp memories and experiences are like nothing I had ever seen or heard—experiences I will never forget!
“I arrived almost two weeks late for my first training camp with the Oakland Raiders in Santa Rosa. Myself and three of my rookie teammates: Cliff Branch, John Vella, and Dave Dalby were selected to play in the Chicago Tribune College All-Star Game and we had spent the last few weeks at Northwestern University, just north of downtown Chicago, preparing to play the previous season Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys.
Here we were, a bunch of twenty-one and twenty-two-year-old kids right out of college with no professional experience and having never met each other—let alone played together—and we were supposed to compete in front of a national audience against the greatest football team in the world. The Cowboys were led that year by future Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach. Another future Hall of Famer, the great Tom Landry, was their head coach, and both their offense and defense were filled with football legends like Bob Lilly, ‘Bullet’ Bob Hayes, Dan Reeves, Calvin Hill, and Chuck Howley to name a few. I remember in particular watching Bob Hayes in pre-game warm-ups because I wanted to see just how fast the Olympic gold medalist in the 100 yard dash could run and, after seeing him run, I thought to myself: who the hell is going to cover him?
Our squad was loaded with All-Americans from across the country; the best of the best from the college ranks and we were coached by outstanding Nebraska University coach Bob Devaney and his staff, who had just won the National Championship a few months earlier. Needless to say, we were no match for the Cowboys and they quickly proved why they were the best team in the NFL, as their offense scored at will against us and their defense shut us down completely with a shutout. I don’t know who the genius was that concocted the idea of this event, but it was like the proverbial throwing the Christians to the lions—and the lions won easily that night at Soldier Field.
“Having flown from Chicago to Oakland the day after that game, we four Raiders rookies were picked up at the airport by a character nicknamed ‘Charley Tuna,’ who worked for Raider owner Al Davis. The drive from Oakland to Santa Rosa on interstate 80 was short, only about an hour or so, but when we finally arrived and the car stopped, the four of us looked at each other in amazement and wondered why our driver had stopped at a small motel complex called the El Rancho Tropicana? Surely this was not where the feared Raiders trained and honed their skills in preparation for the upcoming season . . . or was it?
“We quickly found out that we were in the right place and were led into a small wooden building behind the motel which served as a locker room. As I was led past rows of lockers and players getting ready for an afternoon practice, I was directed to where my locker was towards the end of the last row. Smoke filled the air of this section of the locker room, and it seemed that every player down that row was smoking a cigarette, cigar, or something they had rolled themselves. The language spewing from the players mouths was like nothing I had ever heard in the locker room at Villanova; the small catholic college I had graduated from only two months earlier—what a wake-up call!
“My locker was smack in the middle of the running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks. I was suddenly thrust in the midst and surrounded by the likes of George Blanda, Darryl Lamonica, Ken Stabler, Fred Biletnikoff, Warren Wells, Marv Hubbard, Pete Banaszak, and Raymond Chester. Down the line were the lockers of the offensive linemen and I could see Art Shell, Jim ‘00’ Otto, Gene Upshaw, and Bob Brown getting dressed for practice. They looked like they were getting ready for war. I had never seen players this big, wearing pieces of what seemed like homemade football equipment that resembled gladiators about to enter the Coliseum. I was intimidated and a little scared and I thought that I was in a prison cell and not an NFL locker room.
“Fortunately, Cliff Branch had been assigned the locker right next to me, so I was able to feel some relief as I looked at Cliff and could tell he was as nervous as I was. Now, let me remind you, this was the offensive side of the locker room. We were the cerebral players; we were the disciplined players, we were the organized players. I could only imagine what was going on across the way on the defensive half of the locker room where the lunatics were dressing for practice and were about to be let out of their cages!
For the next six weeks of my life, I learned what professional football is all about and about how the Oakland Raiders played football. These men who were now my teammates were amongst the best in the world at what they did and they did it with the attitude of the badasses that they really were!
Practices were hot, long and physically exhausting—even to a young twenty-two-year-old rookie like myself who thought he was in great shape. For two and a half hours in the morning and then another two and a half hours in the afternoon we hit the field at full tilt and never stopped until the last gasser was run and Coach Madden had finally blown his whistle.
“According to linebacker Phil Villapiano, I quickly became ‘one of the guys.’
“Mike acclimated to the ‘Raiders way’ very quickly. He was right in there with the rest of us. He was a fucking wacko!”
Following the afternoon practices, we lifted weights, had individual position meetings with our coaches and then even had time before dinner to frequent some of the local drinking establishments to replenish the fluids we had sweated out with a few cold ones. After dinner were some more team meetings, breaking up into offense and defense and finally breaking up into position meetings again. Meetings ended around 9pm and normal people would have headed straight to bed to rest up for the next day’s grueling schedule—but not the Raiders baby! The day just began for us when meetings were finally over.
From 9 p.m. until 11 p.m. we were on our own and we always made the most of our free time! For the next two hours the most of that time was spent escaping the rigors and discipline of the practice field. No matter how tired, soar, hurt or injured you were, nothing was going to keep you from hitting the streets of Santa Rosa and the Raiders hit them
hard—as hard as Jack Tatum hit opposing receivers. The key was to hit quick and go to as many bars as we could in two hours because at 11 p.m., curfew was in effect and the fines were high if you missed bed check.
Just before eleven was considered to be the most treacherous time of the evening for the streets of Santa Rosa. At this time the cars, trucks, and motorcycles screeched and skidded into the El Rancho’s parking lot. Like the beer and alcohol they had consumed, the players poured themselves out of their vehicles as they stumbled and stammered their way to their motel rooms. Most of the time, cars were left running as players sprinted to their assigned rooms to make bed check.
But the party was far from over after coaches had performed the nightly ritual. Five minutes after bed check players would once again pour themselves back into their vehicles and bikes and return for round two to their favorite haunts like the Bamboo Room, Melendy’s, Al’s Cactus Room, the Music Box, and other hot spots. Sometimes they would rendezvous with their favorite ladies of the night but most of the time the partying was simply a way of forming friendships and camaraderie with your teammates.
The El Rancho’s motel-style rooms opened to the outside parking lots, making it easy for the renegades to escape undetected into the night.
“Anyone could play on Sunday. But if you could play with a hangover, you were a Raider,” said former defensive end Ben Davidson.
“Those training camps were among the best times of my life,” he added. “But you won’t see them like that again. These players today . . . they’re closer to their agents than they are to their teammates.”
“There was no recession for Santa Rosa during Raiders training camp” said Pete Banaszak. “The owners of the establishments were overjoyed when the Raiders were in town. We were single-handily boosting their economy. The hookers rejoiced. We’d show up two days early. We loved training camp—we busted our asses and practiced hard but we also played just as hard off the field!”
“Only a team like the Raiders would stay at the El Rancho,” said tackle Dave Rowe. “The other teams in the league stayed in dorms.”
Kenny Stabler described it as big kids having fun.
“It was just kids having fun and life being good. We couldn’t wait to get to training camp, to get away from our wives and girlfriends, play some football, have a few drinks at night, and do that for eight weeks.
“We also had a smoking room at the El Rancho. We changed a closet in one of the motel rooms into the marijuana room. But, of course, we didn’t put any clothes in there.”
The monotony of training camp was innovatively challenged by the players.
“The Oakland Raiders of my day trained in the long sucking heat of Santa Rosa, California, where the sweat poured like rain for eight weeks.” The workouts were scheduled for ninety minutes in the morning and ninety minutes in the afternoon. But I’d like to have an Al Davis pinkie ring for every workout that lasted over two hours. We got so much conditioning in during practice we didn’t have to do the extra running that other teams did.
All in all, I loved camp. First, because with the Raiders we went in knowing we were going to win every year; and second, because we also knew we were going to have fun. In fact, we expended almost as much energy devising and executing good times as we did getting ready for the season.
Quarterback Kenny Stabler described it this way: “The monotony of camp was so oppressive that without the diversions of whiskey and women, those of us who were wired for activity and no more than six hours of sleep a night might have gone berserk. I was fortunate to have four ‘let’s party hearty’ roommates to pal with most of my years in Oakland. My roomies were halfback Pete Banaszak, wide receiver Freddy Biletnikoff, defensive end Tony Cline, and middle linebacker Dan Conners. We lived for the weekly football games and the football player nights in between. I liked to think of us as The Santa Rosa Five.
“The motel rooms of the El Rancho accommodated two players, but in order to ‘socialize,’ we shared one main room, with Pete and Dan in the adjoining one. Since there were only two beds in each room, Freddie chose to sleep in the closet. He had his mattress, pillow, and blankets set up there.
“At a used appliance store we bought three ancient refrigerators for $10 apiece and installed them in the suite. We kept the fridges full of beer, soft drinks, candy bars, and fruit . . . but mostly beer.
“Pete had a girl one year who baked us a pie every week. The pies were also stored in the fridge. The girl was strange. Given all the female ‘players’ who moved through our abode, it was inevitable that the girl would be replaced by new talent, and she was. Yet she kept bringing pies.”
“Why don’t you ease her out gently?” I asked Pete.
“I like pie,” he said.
“She’s a tad weird.”
“Her pies ain’t.”
“The final week of camp, on her last pie delivery, the girl heaved it at Pete who ducked. Instead, it hit me in the chest and ran down my shirt.”
“You’re right, Snake.” Pete said. “She’s weird.”
TEAM MEETING TRICKS, GADGETS, AND TOYS
After you’ve played a few years for John Madden and have the offense down, meetings end up being the most boring aspect of training camp.
“Biletnikoff taught me how to deal with that,” said Stabler. “Freddy had already played eight years when I took over at quarterback and he had perfected a neat meeting trick.
“We always sat together in the back of the room. One night I leaned over and whispered something to him and got no response. I nudged him with an elbow and whispered. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ He had been staring straight ahead with the lifeless expression in his eyes that veterans get at meetings, but now he shook his head like a dog coming out of water and said, ‘I was asleep.’ Goddamn, I said to myself, he’s been sleeping with his eyes open! Well, it took some practice to get that one down, copping Zs with your lids up and a semi-attentive look on your face. I guess that’s when I decided that a determined man can do just about anything.”
Many of the Raiders were into gadgets and toys. After all, being isolated at training camp for eight weeks could drive you crazy if you didn’t have a few diversions.
“Center Dave Dalby brought the first moneymaking toys to camp. He hauled in two coin-operated pinball machines and set them up in his room. It cost twenty-five cents per game, and there was usually a line waiting to play that stretched out of Dave’s room and all the way down the hall. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘tilt’ until you’ve seen a defensive lineman get mad at a pinball machine. But those two machines paid for all of Dalby’s preseason bar bills.
“George Buehler, a six-two, 260-pound guard, inevitably brought the most interesting toys to camp; intricate models that he would assemble. Once he brought a remote controlled model airplane that cost about $7000. He spent every free moment in camp working on that plane. We’d watch him in his room, his thick, gnarled lineman’s fingers fastening tiny parts. Finally, after weeks of labor, he took his plane out for its maiden flight.
“Naturally, we all went out on the field to see if his slick looking craft would actually fly and if George could control it. The plane was terrific and so was George. He had it doing loops, diving, climbing, banking, all kinds of maneuvers. A group of us stood there watching with admiration as George put his plane through its paces like a prized hunting dog. We let out cheers and he was rightly proud.
“Then, as he brought the plane down low for some lazy circles and figure eights, Dave Casper came walking by. Casper didn’t know what was going on, which in itself was not that unusual; I never knew what was going on with Dave Casper either. He was a very intelligent individual able to hold two or three conversations at the same time. One on one, though, he was sometimes a tad hazy.
“The plane dove once right over Casper, a six-four, 245-pound tight end, and he sort of waved it away, like King Kong swatting at the bothersome planes that dove at him in the movie. When Buehler’s
plane made a second pass, Casper was ready. He grabbed a handful of lava rocks from the path and threw them at the plane, hitting the engine. The plane pitched straight down and crashed, pieces flying in every direction.
“Casper just kept walking, without a word to anyone.
“I went to George, who stood there dumbfounded. ‘Maybe you’re just too big to play with model airplanes,’ I said.
“The year after his plane crashed, Buehler constructed a high-dollar, remote controlled tank. This machine was virtually indestructible. Just to make sure it stayed that way, though, George told Casper that if he so much as looked at the tank he was going to bite his face off.
“Inside the quadrangle of rooms at the motel was a sidewalk that skirted a courtyard of flowers, bushes, grass, and rocks. The courtyard was about fifty by fifty and George ran his tank all over it: over rocks, around flowers, through bushes. I saw that, remembered my firecrackers, and decided they would make a great combination—especially when Coach Madden was in his office.
“One afternoon between practice and dinner, Pete Banaszak and Ken Stabler requisitioned Buehler’s tank. He left a note in Buehler’s his mailbox: DON’T WORRY, THE SNAKE WILL RETURN.
“Next we went to our room, said Stabler which were directly across from the coaches’ offices and timed running the tank over to them. We taped a handful of firecrackers to the tank and attached a long fuse that we calculated would be just the right length to set off the fireworks as the tank rolled into the offices. Our calculations proved to be accurate.
“Seconds after the bombs burst, a frantic Madden came running out of the office, jabbing index fingers into his ears and screaming, ‘Who the hell did that? Where’d you go?’ Meanwhile we turned the tank around, and while coach stood there hollering and turning pink and pulling at his hair as he tended to do whenever he got excited, we ran that little tank between his spread legs and brought it on home.