Al Davis

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Allen Davis, (July 4, 1929 – October 8, 2011) was an American football coach and executive.

He was the principal owner and general manager of the Oakland Oakland Athletics of the National Football League (NFL), from 1972 to 2011.

He served as the team's head coach from 1963 to 1965 and then part owner from 1966 to 1971, while the Raiders were still a member of the American Football League (AFL).

In 1966, he served as the AFL's commissioner. The Raiders became one of the NFL's most profitable and popular franchises under Davis' leadership, with their slogan "Just win, baby."

Despite the fact that the franchise will be declining in his final years, the Raiders would have enjoyed many successes in the 1970s and 1980s, winning three Super Bowl titles.

In 1992, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Davis was very involved in civil rights, refusing to allow the Raiders to play in any city where black and white players had to remain in separate hotels.

He was the first NFL owner to hire an African American head coach and a female chief executive (Amy Trask).

He was also the second NFL owner to recruit a Latino head coach (Tom Flores).

He is the only NFL executive to serve as an assistant coach, head coach, general manager, commissioner, and owner.

Early life

Davis was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family. Louis Davis Davis, Davis' father, worked in a variety of industries in Massachusetts; after finding some success in the garment manufacturing industry, he and his two sons, Jerry and Allen, moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1934. Louis Davis, who rented a sixth-floor walkup for his family off the Utica Avenue, became very wealthy in the clothing trade and taught his two sons through college before moving to Atlantic Beach, New York. Although there are a few tales about Louis Davis assisting his younger son in any way as long as the boy did not get caught or back down from a fight, the bulk of these stories come from Al Davis. He was more of a talker than a fighter, according to his childhood friends, who were also good with his mouth. Basketball was young Al's sport of choice, and he gained a reputation as a rough player, but not necessarily the most efficient. He was determined to play for Coach Al Badain at Erasmus Hall High School as a child, but he was unable to attend school closer to his house. Despite the fact that Davis, the student at Erasmus, was just a reserve on the team and didn't play much, Davis learned a lot from him—in the 1980s, with Badain sick and in need, Davis took his senior coach to the West Coast to watch his Raiders play in the Super Bowl and paid the man's debts.

Despite Davis' modest involvement on his high school crew, Raiders media reports later published descriptions of him as a schoolboy actor, but the accusations were eventually scaled back—slightly—in future editions after reporters investigated the situation. Despite never having played even for the high school varsity, his lack of football (he did play football for his high school fraternity) made him one of the few people to be a head coach in the NFL or AFL.

Davis graduated from high school in January 1947 and enrolled at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, at age 17. Davis had been accepted by the university, but not for him to receive a scholarship. He spent a semester in the city, occupied himself with baseball and plans to transfer to a more prestigious academy. He went to Syracuse University in mid-1947. Despite Davis's continued to play for various varsity clubs, he was left on the bench for the junior varsity baseball team at Syracuse during his athletic career. He briefly attended Hartwick College, which was also in New York State in 1948, but soon returned to Syracuse. Despite Davis' inability as a result of athletic development, he mingled with varsity athletes, many of whom believed he was a member of another club but not on another team. Davis, who was unsuccessful in his bid to join the men's basketball team, became interested in football analysis and haunted the football team's practices until told to leave by the head coach, who was suspicious of Davis for taking notes. Davis attended the undergraduate course in football leadership taught by the assistant coaches, but players almost exclusively attended only by players.

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Early coaching career

He will identify himself as "Davis from Syracuse," likely from inadvertent confusion with George Davis, the school's football team's star halfback. Bill Altenberg, the athletic director at Adelphi University, and Turned Down at Hofstra University, both on Long Island, met Adelphi's president. Davis used a combination of "bluff and con" in his biographer Mark Ribowsky's analysis, but the president did not tell him that he had a new freshman football coach.

Davis was accepted into the United States Army in 1952, with his student deferral endowed on receipt of his master's degree. He landed a position with a public relations firm near Syracuse and set about finding a job with one of the military's football teams. Stanley Scott of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, obtained Davis' services as the football coach for his post's football team in 1953. Military football was taken seriously at the time; the squads were well-stocked with drafted college recruits and often scrimmaged National Football League (NFL) teams; and often, scrimmaged national football League (NFL) teams were scrimmaged. Davis coached Fort Belvoir, just south of Washington, D.C., to a record of eight victories, two losses, and one tie (8–2–1), but they missed out on the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego due to a final-game loss to the nearby Quantico Marine Base. He was often instructing players of a higher rank, including officers, as a private first class. He was summoned to appear before a congressional committee probing whether athletes were being coddled in the military near the end of 1952. Although the bulk of Davis' staff was sent to Korea, he remained at Fort Belvoir until his retirement in 1954. Davis sold scouting reports about his players to NFL teams while serving in the army. Pete Rozelle of the Los Angeles Rams was the contact who called Davis, but Davis gave him no details because Rozelle was not paid no money.

Davis married his fiancée, Carol Sagal, in a Brooklyn synagogue, and the couple bought their first home in Atlantic Beach, near Al Davis' parents. Davis spent a year as a Baltimore Colts scout. He had a vast knowledge of players he had worked on his roster or coached against, and he advised the Colts which players to offer contracts to or draft as they returned to civilian life. Davis cultivated Weeb Ewbank, wishing that Ewbank's links would result in a teaching position for Davis, and his 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. The South Carolina military academy's football team had lost every game in the previous season, and former head coach John McMillan was suspended after two seasons, despite the glorious honor won by its veterans in war. In his interview, Davis said that he would be able to convince small-town boys from the Northeast to attend The Citadel, which had a difficult time recruiting star players due to its regimented lifestyle. He was successful in his recruiting, but not all stayed past the first training camp at Parris Island Marine base, so not all stayed until the first training camp.

Davis was usually in the press box during games, playing roles that were traditionally run by Sauer without modification. The Citadel started the season by winning five of the first six games, but it lost the next three to end the season 5–4. Davis was lauded for his contribution to The Citadel's success, but Sauer's reputation was shaky due to his overt self-promotion. The 1956 season was less fruitful, with the team finishing 3–5–1. Sauer resigned at the end of the season; Davis unsuccessfully applied for the head coaching position and then resigned; Ribowsky has confirmed that there have been allegations of compensation and other athletic privileges to athletes, in violation of NCAA rules; Davis has also stated that Davis pressured professors to change grades to keep student-athletes eligible to play football. Davis had already arranged his next job at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles by the time he left The Citadel.

Davis was an excellent recruiter as a USC assistant coach, taking one prospect, Angelo Cooria, to the Los Angeles Coliseum at night, and asking that the student imagine himself playing before 100,000 people. Coia played for USAC and later worked for the Oakland front office. These sanctions prevented Davis' first two seasons at USC, 1957 and 1958, when the team posted a combined 5-14-1 record. Don Clark, the head coach, came to rely heavily on Davis. Clark and Davis hoped that 1959 would bring a conference championship and a chance to compete in the Rose Bowl, but the NCAA suspended USC for inducing recruiting letters of intent signed by other colleges in April 1959. Before losing to UCLA and Notre Dame, who were not allowed to watch on television, USC won its first eight games before losing to UCLA and Notre Dame. Despite the setbacks, the team was the Pacific Coast Conference champions, but the squad was unable to participate in the Rose Bowl due to the sanctions. Clark resigned after the season, but Davis hired John McKay, who did not want Davis on his staff.

Davis had visited Los Angeles Rams coach Sid Gillman in Atlantic City at a coaching clinic; the NFL coach was amazed that Davis had sat in the front row, taken copious notes, and asked several questions afterwards; he was pleasantly surprised that Davis had sat in the front row, was impressed; the NFL quarterback had been enthralled. After the 1959 season, Gillman was fired, but the Los Angeles Chargers of the startup American Football League (AFL) drafted him straight away for their debut 1960 season. Davis recruited Davis as a backfield coach on a coaching staff that included future hall of famer Chuck Noll, as well as NFL general manager Jack Faulkner. Davis later claimed that he recruited him both as a mentor and as a recruiter, and because "Al had a knack of telling people what they wanted to hear." He was very convincing."

The AFL's rules were designed to encourage wide-open, high-scoring football. Davis argued that he conceived the Chargers' offense or at least deserved partial credit in later years, much to Gillman's rage. The team was first successful in the AFL Western Division in 1960 and 1961, but the Houston Oilers lost each time in the AFL Championship Game. The team relocated to San Diego in 1961 due to financial hardships caused by small crowds to the massive Los Angeles Coliseum. The team won just four of 14 games in 1962, however, in 1962.

Lance Alworth of Arkansas, who was a first-round pick of the NFL San Francisco 49ers in the 1962 NFL Draft, was one of Davis' recommendations to the Chargers and later acquired. Davis raced into the crowd at the end of Alworth's last college game and agreed him to a deal under the goalpost as 49ers head coach Red Hickey watched helplessly from the stands. "I knew it wasn't safe to let Alworth go to the dressing room," Davis later said. Davis was selected by Alworth in 1978 to introduce him at his induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

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