When I was a kid growing up in Kenner, LA, there was professional football on Sunday afternoon only. The NFL was on CBS and the AFL was on NBC. The NFL had the Green Bay Packers and Vince Lombardi. Sweep right, sweep left, run up the middle, pass once in a while. Chasing them was the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Rams, Baltimore Colts, and Cleveland Browns. The Bears, Lions, Vikings, Giants, Eagles, Cardinals, 49ers, Steelers, etc weren't very good then. There were no Saints, Falcons, or Bucs. The other NFL teams, particularly the Cowboys, were a little more exciting than the methodical Packers but not much. The Cowboys under Tom Landry did all sorts of motion and the linemen used to rise before settling into their stance. That was fun.
Over in the AFL, though, they were playing a different kind of football. They were wide open. Of course, wide open is a relative term. They weren't throwing 60-65% of the time like the Saints do today but it was much closer to 50% than the NFL, who was probably throwing 30-35% or less. They were throwing deep, too. They were called bombs then. The Chiefs' Len Dawson to Otis Taylor, the Chargers' John Hadl to Lance Alworth, the Jets' Joe Namath to Don Maynard, and the Raiders' Darryl Lamonica to Warren Wells and Fred Biletnikof. The Raiders threw deep more than any of them. Lamonica became known as the Mad Bomber. What a great nickname. It became the Raiders signature and it is still with them today. That's the kind of football the owner wanted to play. That was Al Davis. Didn't know it when I was a kid. No one knew who the owners were in those days. They were irrelevant. Wish they still were.
Al had another thing going for him that I liked and that is that his teams were always loaded with colorful characters. Many of them were castoffs from other teams, where their antics had gotten them into trouble or had worn out their welcome. Ted Hendricks, the Mad Stork, was one of those. Hendricks was one of those guys most teams would cringe to have today. So was Kenny Stabler. They'd club all night and come to practice hung over. Davis didn't care what they did away from the team. He adopted the "Just win, baby" mantra that they still recite today but can't really practice any more. The NFL has cracked down on that kind of behavior. It was fun, then, though.
Last, but not least, Al Davis created what former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle called "franchise free agency" when he pulled his team out of Oakland and brought them to Los Angeles. Since then, the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams, Houston Oilers, and St Louis Cardinals have left their loyal fan bases and moved to other cities. Of course, the Rams were once in Cleveland, the Colts were the Dallas Texans, and the Cards were in Chicago so I'm sure bad, unstable ownership had nothing whatsoever to do with the wanderlust. Yeah, right. Then, Commissioner Rozelle and the NFL owners opposed and fought the Raiders move. Now, Commissioner Goodell and current NFL owners embrace that kind of economic and emotional extortion. They're doing it in Minnesota now and it's coming soon to San Diego, Jacksonville, and Tampa. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, and I blame it on Al Davis.
R.I.P., Al.
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