by Mike Siani
“Al Punzak was our Hungarian guy. It was the perfect hangout. Big, long bar and down at the end he had this bell. As soon as you’d step in, he’d ring the bell, and call out, ‘Villapiano in the house! Ken Stabler in the house!’
“He’d make these delicious beef ribs for us and every player who walked in had a drink named after them. Mike Siani’s was called a ‘Mohair Special.’ It had something to do with Bailey’s Irish Cream. We paid nothing for anything. Of course, part of why he did it was because it brought hundreds of people into his restaurant every week.”
The second stop was Jack London Square.
“After the Cactus Room, we’d head to the Grotto to eat, then to Clancy’s, and later to Uppy’s,” said Pete Banaszak. “Christ, we were drunker than skunks. But we had a way of policing each other. If a guy was too drunk, we’d always find a way to get him home.”
Ken Stabler remembers one particular night at Uppy’s on the Square. It was owned by Gene Upshaw and his brother, Marvin.
“One night I heard a voice call out, ‘Hello, Snake.’ When I turned around I saw that it was Huey Newton of the Black Panthers standing there.”
The Black Panthers would frequent the Raiders’ practices.
“It was just our style,” said Willie Brown. “Bobby Seale would come to practice sometimes. The Panthers loved the Raiders. They were part of us. All the different organizations and groups that were disengaged, we took them and brought them in and accepted them. The Angels? That’s part of us. The Panthers? That’s part of us. We didn’t think of it then as what it means today.”
Stabler became friends with Hell’s Angels then president Sonny Barger.
“I was always a huge fight fan ever since I was a kid and I’d watch the Friday night fights with my dad. Freddy and I used to go to this gym in downtown Oakland. Freddy would live in there and watch the fighters work out.
“One day Freddy asked me to meet him at the bar near the gym. There was a guy at the bar with a sleeveless jean jacket that said ‘Hells Angels’ on the back of it. Everybody knew who we were. So he introduced himself, wanted to know if we wanted to shoot a game of pool with Sonny Barger. And we did.”
Defensive tackle Art Thoms remembers drinking with the Angels.
“I remember one story when Stabler was out drinking with the Angels till a.m. It was the night before a game. Kenny went to the game. The Angels went home, watched him on TV, then passed out”
Villapiano used to work out with the Angels.
“I used to life weights with Sonny in a gym in Hayward, on East 14th Street. Sonny and his bodyguard were serious lifters. Matuszak and I would meet them there a lot during the offseason. If you met them at a bar, you’d have beer together. They’d be on the sideline during the game—you’d see Sonny a lot.”
Offensive guard George Buehler remembers one night when Villapiano had not returned to the hotel. It was long after curfew and Phil was nowhere to be found.
“All of a sudden, around the corner here comes Phil, a bloody mess. His shirt was torn and he was stumbling badly. The guys got him over to the room.”
Phil said it all began while drinking in the Bamboo Room. He had had a bad day.
“I was pissed off because I was changed to inside linebacker. On top of that I had pulled a muscle in practice and knew I wouldn’t be practicing the next day. I hung out at the bar and had a few more beers. When I came out of the bar there were a couple of guys leaning on my car.
“I told them, ‘Get the fuck off my car.’ The next thing I remember is I got a hammer to the side of my head. If I didn’t know Sonny, I’d probably be dead. As soon as I mentioned his name, those guys stopped. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. Head wounds just tend to bleed a lot.
“Jack Tatum wanted revenge, as well as a few others, but I told them that we didn’t want to go there. Someone is going to get hurt and it’s going to ruin our season.
“Guys were still yelling to go out and get those assholes, but Madden came into the room and said, ‘No one’s leaving!’
“A week or so later, I made up with the Angels. I had to invite them to practice. When Madden saw them he began yelling, ‘What the fuck?’ I explained to him what happened, practice went on as usual, and we were friends with the Angels once again.”
* * *
The Raiders had a Junior Board and a Senior Board that was in charge of various Raider functions. The Junior Board was made up of the younger and newer guys, and the Senior Board was made up of the veterans. Since they all were together so much throughout the week, they decided to purchase a limo to drive them from one bar to another. In addition to driving the players around town during the week, the limo was used to pick up friends and family members who would fly into Oakland for the weekend when we played at home—and we always had family and friends come to see us play.
“We always had a lot of Board functions,” said Art Thoms, “so we had to have the Board Limo. We all kicked in like $500 apiece. Couldn’t have cost more than $2,500 tops. It was a black, run-down piece of crap. Hell, it must have been at least ten years old.
“After a 49ers game, we went down to a bar on Union Street in San Francisco. We parked right in front of the bar and we put all our girls on our shoulders and walked into the place.
The bouncers weren’t real happy. They tried to keep us out, but we weren’t leaving. The 49ers weren’t very good at that time and the Raiders dominated both sides of the bay. That night Phil Villapiano got up on one of the tables. He was singing along with the dueling piano’s, and he fell off the table crashing to the ground and dislocating his right elbow—I think he pulled a groin too but he never missed a beat and never missed a day of practice.
“Another time we used the limo to go to a Boz Scaggs concert. He was a Raiders fan. Used to say I was his favorite player said Art Thoms. So we pulled the limo up to the very front of the place, and there was this line of people waiting to get in. There was this little area, this red zone. I backed in and I hit the curb and the tire blew. It was like a shotgun going off. Everyone turned and looked and we just walked in. I left the limo there. It’s a miracle I didn’t get sued.”
Pete Banaszak always thought that Thoms’ behavior was strange.
“We referred to Art as ‘King Arthur.’ He was kind of fucking strange. He would travel with a Snoopy lunch pail under his arm. I have no idea what he kept in it.
“Otis Sistrunk and Art were ‘Salt and Pepper.’ Everyone had a gimmick. You had to have a gimmick. Otis was black and bald and Art was white with long hair, so Art would wear a black hat and Otis would wear a white hat. Otis brought the cigars and the two of them would smoke the cigars on the way to the stadium.”
RIVALS, ENEMIES, AND FOES
THE RAIDERS AND THEIR rivalries represented everything that was great about the 1970s. Back then, the Raiders were the most hated team in the NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs, the Denver Broncos, and the Pittsburgh Steelers were among their major rivalries of the era.
Oakland dominated each of their rivals during that decade. The team records were as follows: Raiders vs. Chiefs: 12–6–2; Raiders vs. Broncos: 14–6–1.
But the dominant rivalry was that of the Raiders and the Steelers. When the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, the Raiders and the Steelers played eleven times, including five playoff games against each other. At the end of the ’70s, the Raiders led the regular season series 4 to 2, and won 2 of 5 in postseason play.
In the ’70s, the Steelers and the Raiders met in three straight AFC Championship games, with the winner taking the Super Bowl each time.
The San Diego Chargers were always a rival of the Raiders, but during the ’70s, there was little rivalry as Oakland dominated by winning fourteen out of twenty-one games, with one tie. This is why the Chargers are not listed in this section. The rivalry came back to a short-lived life on September 10, 1978, after a 21–20 Oakland victory in a game noted simply as “The Holy Roller,” which will be retold later on in this book.
&nb
sp; KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
The Red versus the Black.
The fierce rivalry began during the early days of the AFL, and from the beginning no member of the opposing organization could escape the fury.
It wasn’t just the rivalry that was fierce, but also a fierce hatred for the Chiefs’ mascot.
“They had a horse that Madden hated,” said Pete Banaszak. “Every time the Chiefs would score, the horse would be running up and down the field and the Chief would be waving the spear. I remember me and Biletnikoff coming on the field and throwing ice cubes at the horse.”
But according to Kansas City running back Mike Garrett, the cheap shots were not just reserved for the horse.
“If you’re behind, it’s kind of natural to give an elbow here or throw some dirt there or trip the player to make the other guy look stupid.”
A lot of players didn’t like each other if you get right down to it. One of those players was defensive end Ben Davidson.
“When Buck Buchanan corkscrewed George Blanda upside down and threw him down on his head, that rubbed us the wrong way. It was now payback time.”
Defensive back George Atkinson remembers the personal rivalry between the Chiefs defensive back Jim Marsalis and Fred Biletnikoff.
“Biletnikoff had this running thing with cornerback Jim Marsalis. Once when he caught the ball for a touchdown, he spiked it in front of Marsalis and pointed his finger at him. I don’t know what he told him, but evidently it wasn’t very pretty. When it came to Kansas City you could say hello to a guy and a fight would break out.”
It wasn’t just the players who had issues. Pete Banaszak was forthright about the fact that he didn’t have a lot of respect for the Chiefs’ legendary coach Hank Stram.
“It all started with their coach Hank Stram. He was always so neat and proper. You could always hear that squeaky voice yelling, ‘Hey, you’re holding #63!’ You would want to go over there and spit on him, too.”
But there was one classic fight between the Raiders and the Chiefs (in 1970) that executive assistant Al LoCasale will never forget. It involved Lenny Dawson and Ben Davidson.
“It was late in the game. The Raiders had used all their time-outs and things were looking very bleak. The Chiefs had a three-point lead and Dawson called a bootleg. What should have been a game-clinching first down by Dawson was instead wiped away by actions typical of two archenemies.”
What Ben Davidson did next would now be considered an “illegal” move.
“Lenny very much needed to be touched down, but I figured being a conscientious defensive end, I should touch him down—which is illegal now—with my helmet in his back. Immediately after that Otis Taylor came at me and the referees penalized the Chiefs. We got the ball back as a result of that.
“We drove to near midfield and with three or four seconds left in the game Blanda kicks a 48-yard field goal and we tied the game, 17–17.”
Their contests were punctuated by more than just malice. During the ’60s, the Chiefs and the Raiders were the class of the AFL.
Chiefs running back Ed Podolak talks about his early years of the Raiders rivalry.
“For the first five years that I was with the Chiefs, every time we played them, it was either for the lead in the division or the conference championship.”
Such was the case in 1969, when Oakland beat Kansas City twice during the regular season.
“So we had to go out there to play them for the right to go to Super Bowl IV,” said quarterback Lenny Dawson.
He continued: “They were so confident that they were going to win that the players had their bags packed for New Orleans and had stored them at the stadium because they were going to go right to the airport.”
“We were up going into the third quarter and we had Lenny Dawson with a third and about fifteen,” said George Atkinson.
“Unless a miracle could be performed, Coach Stram knew his team was in deep trouble.
“We’re in the end zone. We hid Otis Taylor between the right guard and right tackle, went on a quick count, and Otis went deep down the sideline and made a one-handed catch. It gave us a first down and enabled us to win the game.”
But was Taylor in bounds? Atkinson doesn’t agree.
“He catches the ball with one foot out of bounds. This was a real bad call. They went in and scored and beat us.”
Dawson added salt to the wound—and enjoyed every minute of it.
“It makes it so satisfying because as we are going to our bus to catch a plane—go back to KC to get ready to go to New Orleans—here come the Raider players with suitcases in hand. They had to walk by us to get to their cars. And I’ll never forget that. It was the most enjoyable thing that I can recall.”
The defining legacy of this rivalry is not only the championships, but the intense battles that were endured in order to reach those victorious feats.
“Those moments and those games were special,” said Banaszak. “Now I’ll sit and watch a Raiders–Chiefs game on TV and I start reliving all those certain situations. It’s almost like I’m looking across at Bobby Bell screaming out something and all of a sudden I got sweat coming out from under my arms down to my waist . . . it’s like reliving all those moments that you cherished.”
DENVER BRONCOS
The Raiders and Broncos rivalry is as bitter today as it was during its heyday in the ’70s, when an established Oakland team clashed with the up-and-coming Broncos.
Running back Floyd Little felt that beating the Raiders was imperative.
“We had to beat the Raiders. Guys that were injured would get ready to play the Raiders because we needed everybody we had to play.”
Broncos coach Red Miller (1977–1980) had only one thing to say about the Oakland renegades.
“I hate the Raiders. I hate them. The Oakland Raiders, I hate them!”
Hell, back in those days, who didn’t hate the Raiders?
Broncos linebacker Tom Jackson had no trouble hating the silver and black.
“They were easy to hate. They dressed in black which made them look bigger than life. They had some guys who were real characters on that ballclub, and I think that physically I had never run into a ballclub like that when we began to play.”
“The only way a rivalry ever heats up is when both teams are good,” said Coach Madden. “When Denver was down, it wasn’t a good rivalry.”
Denver didn’t stay down long, sparked by the emergence of their hard-hitting defense. But hard hits were old hat for the Raiders.
“When [defensive back] Jack Tatum would hit a receiver, it was unbelievable,” said George Atkinson. “The contact, the sound that I heard was incredible. But Tatum wasn’t happy with just the hit.”
“I said, ‘Man, great hit. What’s wrong?’
“Jack said, ‘He didn’t drop the ball.’”
For Denver, Jack Tatum became public enemy number one. And the Broncos player he, Upshaw, and Stabler despised most was Tom Jackson.
“There was no guy on the field that had a bigger and louder mouth than Tom Jackson,” said Gene Upshaw.
“Tom Jackson was a tremendous athlete that talked all the time,” said Stabler. “He was always jawin’ and always trash talkin’.”
Jackson remembers his first words coming out of the locker room.
“I intend to kick your ass today!”
Jackson’s remarks were backed up when, in Week 5 of the 1977 season, the Broncos finally blew away the Raiders, 30–27, in Oakland.
Denver was ahead in the second quarter and had a chance to go for a field goal, but special teams coach Marv Braden had something different in mind. He ran the idea by Coach John Ralston.
“Marv Braden comes up to me, and I mean he was serious, man. ‘Coach, it’s time for that play—the play where we fake the field goal and throw to Jim. I know it will work.’ I said to him, ‘It better work!’
“We fake the field goal and Jim Turner runs down the left side line with nobody in miles of him. He scores a t
ouchdown.”
Tom Jackson recalls Turner’s remarks to John Madden as he ran by him.
“Turner ran by the bench and said to Madden, ‘It’s all over, fat man! That’s it, it’s done!’”
While there was much hatred on the field, fuel was added to the fire by the fanatical fans of Denver.
“That Orange Crush group was tough,” said Stabler.
“They’d stomp their feet while you were trying to talk. They would throw stuff at you,” said Madden.
“They would pelt you with everything they had,” said Upshaw.
Jack Tatum remembers getting hit with snowballs.
“We got bombarded with about twenty or thirty snowballs. We turned around, and all the people are booing and cussing at us.”
The defining moment of this matchup came in 1977. It would be the ultimate test for the Denver franchise, and was best said by Terry Frei of the Denver Post:
In the AFC Championship game, with Denver holding a 7–3 lead in the third quarter, Oakland’s Clarence Davis fumbled at the Raider 17, and Broncos defensive end Brison Manor recovered. Moments later, Craig Morton hit Riley Odoms for 13 yards to put the ball on the 2. On first down from there, Denver rookie running back Rob Lytle went off the left side, was hit by Jack Tatum, lost the ball, and Oakland’s Mike McCoy recovered and took off the other way with the ball.
But hold up . . .
Linesman Ed Marion ruled that Lytle’s forward motion was stopped and the whistle had blown before he fumbled. Replays, though, seemed to show he fumbled the second he was hit, before he was knocked back. Denver was awarded the ball and a penalty on the Raiders was added on top of that for arguing the blown call. Denver scored on the next play and the Raider bitterness reached a boiling point along with their shot at the Super Bowl.
The following day, Ted Hendricks saw the photos of the fumble in the Oakland Tribune.
“The Tribune clearly showed the fumble out of his hands while he was trying to jump across the goal line. We got screwed.”
John Matuszak, who did not have what one would call a great game, had this to say about the NFL refs.