A number one fan on the fate of Oakland’s rebel team.
The Raiders indelibly stamped Oakland on the national psyche, simply by being on television (first on ABC, then NBC, and now CBS) every week of football season with an audience of millions for over 50 years. Starting in 1963 when he took over the then-pitiful team as coach, Al Davis transformed the Raiders into must-see TV by emphasizing the electrifying long bomb to the end zone. As a tribute to the Raider teams of this era (the fumes of which all Raider fans, myself included, inhale daily), New York writer Peter Richmond penned Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death and John Madden’s Oakland Raiders (2010, HarperCollins). Now that Mr. Davis has passed into a silver-and-black–hued afterlife, I thought it only fitting to check in with Richmond about the future—not just for Raider Nation, but the world.
Paul Kilduff: When you met [Al Davis], were you afraid of him? He wanted to be feared, not respected.
Peter Richmond: It’s weird! I go into this sanctum behind these huge black doors, and there’s this little guy with a walker. All wizened and frail and emaciated, but I was scared to death. ’Cause he’s the man! I wrote this book about the Raiders because they were rebels and I was a rebel. I was getting high every day and wearing fingernail polish and hair down my back, but I loved football. And every Sunday afternoon, I’d watch this team with eye-black and Afros and long blond hair, and they’d be trying to kill people, and I thought, I love these guys! You can have football and rebels. The first half of Al Davis’s life, he was truly a monumental figure. I’d divide it now into Al 1.0 and Al 2.0. 2.0 starts with him making the egregious decision to move the team to Los Angeles.
PK: Why do you think later on he still had this big chip on his shoulder?
PR: He had a good middle-class childhood but he was always a rebel, even as a kid. He’d get into fights in basketball and playground football. He was small and he was tough, and he was Jewish and he always held that as a chip on his shoulder whether he had to or not. That was something that he always said: “I’m a Jew!” He said it to some of his black players to prove that he was sympathizing with African-American plights, which he always did. Once he got everything he needed, it was almost as if he had to find things to fight and part of that manifested itself in refusing to ever be part of the [NFL scouting] combines. I’m sorry. You can’t run a team and not be part of the collective scouting system.
PK: Was he the classic entrepreneur who just couldn’t stop micro-managing?
PR: Instead of entrepreneur, for me the metaphor was always emperor. The emperors happened in Rome because the republic of Rome, which in theory was a good democracy, didn’t work at all. It was like our Congress. It was a bunch of really rich people pretending to represent people. Which they didn’t, so eventually the emperors come in because somebody has to rein this thing in. “Okay, we’re going to turn to one guy. And for better or worse we’re going to follow him.” [Davis] came in and did help force the merger [between the NFL and the AFL] back in ’66, which not only saved the game but turned it into what it is now, which is like a monstrous economic driving wheel of a nation.
PK: They have religion now.
PR: Religion is a great metaphor for it. He wasn’t doing it for his ego as much as he was doing it for what the Raiders represented [to him], which was this rebellious empire that could show the rest of the world who was most powerful.
PK: Al 2.0 is pretty dismal, except for Jon Gruden, and a lot of people say Davis drove him away because he was jealous and Gruden was getting all the credit. Do you subscribe to that theory?
PR: I wouldn’t disagree, as somebody aging myself. There comes a point you say to yourself, “Oh, and there’s the other nine-tenths of life that the Buddha and the Dalai Lama were talking about. I better get into some vibe there.” Well, Al never let go. He had to have the gratification of people saying, “He’s an amazing guy! He did an amazing thing!” Somebody smarter than I is going to write a really good play about Al and it’s going to be Shakespearean tragedy.
PK: The Raiders are the evil team of the NFL. Do you think that’s had an enduring psychological effect on the entire city of Oakland?
PR: It was a great thing to have a city wrapped around. We go out there to intimidate and guess what? We do intimidate. We have a complete attitude, us against the world, Hell’s Angels hang with us, gangs love us, and we win. But once you become a really bad franchise and the emperor has no clothes, then the city is like, oh my God! So what you want to see is the Raiders survive, kept alive for the next five or six years until ownership and stability comes in, and then you don’t have to have the madmen Raiders of Al Davis. They don’t have to be sociopathic. They don’t have to play football as the evil empire.
PK: The last Raider game I went to, it was like going into San Quentin. I go up to my nosebleed seat, there’s a guy sitting in my seat. What is the normal protocol there? “Hey! This is my seat.” No, this guy’s not getting out of my seat. He doesn’t even acknowledge me. People are fighting. It’s just crazy. I know there’s a problem in the entire NFL. But here’s what bothered me. The Raiders have never ever addressed these issues with their fans. If you go to the parking lot at a Raider game and you’ve got your gear on for the opposing team, you’ll come back and your car is plastered with Raiders stickers.
PR: I went to Philadelphia three weeks ago, my first game in Lincoln Financial Center. I was in the upper deck, and there were two guys behind me drunk. They spent the entire game referring to the players in the ugliest racial words we know, loudly, jokingly. Stuff you would’ve expected from George Wallace’s friends in Alabama. Nobody did anything. So all I’m saying is, it’s an ugly species we belong to and often we overlook the fact that football games and a lot of beer tend to bring out the worst. I mean, that’s as ugly as it gets. So, it’s everywhere.
PK: Yeah.
PR: That’s a happy note to end on, isn’t it?
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For more Kilduff, go to thekilduff-file.blogspot.com.
Age: 58
Birthplace: Bronxville, N.Y.
Astrological sign: Bastet, Ancient Egyptian cat goddess.
Credo: Sleep late, leave early.
My American idol: Trey Anastasio
Website: peterrichmond.com
