Honored as a genius or reviled as a bully, Raiders owner always did things his way

But when coach Don Clark retired at Southern Cal and Davis was passed over to replace him — a fellow assistant, John McKay, got the job — he headed back to the pros, where he took over as offensive-end coach for the Los Angeles Chargers, a first-year AFL team. He learned under the tutelage of Gillman, who entrusted him with recruiting players away from the established NFL. That was Davis' specialty.

In three seasons — and a relocation to San Diego — Gillman and Davis helped lead the Chargers to the top of the AFL and created a passing offense that gave opposing defenses fits. It was clear that Davis was headed for even bigger things. Gillman said of his young assistant: "There isn't a doubt in Al Davis' mind that right now he's the smartest guy in the game. He isn't, but he will be pretty damned soon."

Davis made a splash when he came to the Raiders as head coach in 1963, but he was headed for even greater challenges. In April 1966, Davis took over as commissioner of the fledgling AFL, which was overshadowed by the 47-year-old NFL and its popular commissioner, Pete Rozelle.

Putting to use his ability to recruit players, Davis weakened the NFL by luring away some of its disgruntled star quarterbacks. Just eight weeks into the job, he signed quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel, among other players. The NFL soon caved under that pressure and agreed to a merger.

Having been passed over in favor of Rozelle as commissioner of the new NFL, Davis returned to the Raiders as the managing general partner with a 10-percent share of the franchise that reportedly cost him $18,500 — a phenomenal investment considering the latest Forbes magazine rankings had the Raiders valued at $761 million. By the mid-1970s, Davis had acquired full control of the franchise.

"The things that people criticize him for were probably also the things they should praise him for," said Madden, whom Davis hired in 1969 to coach the Raiders.

"Al has his own ideas, and many of them are contrarian," Madden said earlier this year. "Whenever there was a time when people said, 'Let's do it the way we've always done it,' Al would say, 'Hey, wait a minute, let's look at this. Maybe there's another way to do it."'

By the end of the 1980 season, the Raiders were two-time Super Bowl champions and one of the NFL's most popular teams. Despite a decade of sellout seasons in Oakland, however, Davis could not persuade the city to make major improvements to the Oakland Coliseum, including luxury suites.

Arguing his team needed better digs — and the franchise needed the extra revenue to stay competitive — Davis signed a memorandum of agreement with the L.A. Coliseum in March 1980. In order for a team to relocate, the NFL requires a three-quarters vote from its ownership. So when Davis tried to move to L.A. without that, he was forced by a court injunction back to Oakland.

Never satisfied in L.A. Coliseum

In 1982, after a lengthy federal court battle, a U.S. District Court jury unanimously ruled for the Raiders and against the NFL on antitrust and bad-faith counts. Two months later, Davis announced he had signed a 10-year deal with five successive three-year renewal options to play at the L.A. Coliseum.

The Raiders played their first game in Los Angeles in August 1982 and the following season won their third Super Bowl. Tens of millions of viewers watched as Rozelle and Davis — bitter adversaries in the courtroom — shook hands in the locker room after the game.

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Davis' Raiders provided the NFL with some of its most colorful characters, players such as quarterback Ken "The Snake" Stabler, linebacker Ted "The Mad Stork" Hendricks and cornerback Lester Hayes, who used to smear his hands and forearms with Stickum before every game.

Davis later said he didn't realize the extent of his players' involvement with drugs and alcohol, among them defensive end Lyle Alzado, who admitted to having used human-growth hormone and later died of cancer; defensive back Stacey Toran, who had a high blood-alcohol level when he was killed in a car crash; and defensive end John Matuszak, who died of an overdose of Darvocet, a prescription painkiller. When he became aware of the problems, Davis took steps to help the Raiders clean up their act, assigning an assistant coach to monitor off-field activity.

Although the Raiders enjoyed some success in Los Angeles, highlighted by their 38-9 victory over the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII after the 1983 season, Davis was never satisfied playing at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The stadium had history, dating to the 1932 Olympics, but it lacked luxury boxes, and the team seldom filled the 92,000-seat venue.

Impatient with the Coliseum Commission about promised renovations, Davis shopped around for a new stadium site. In 1987 he announced plans to move to Irwindale and got a $10 million advance from the city. The deal ultimately collapsed and Irwindale lost its money when it failed to fulfill its obligations to secure financing and build a new stadium.

Davis shifted his sights to Hollywood Park, where a $250-million privately financed stadium was to be built. However, the Raiders balked when the league stipulated that they would have to share the stadium with another NFL franchise for "a limited amount of time" in exchange for hosting two future Super Bowls. In 1995, Davis unexpectedly moved the team back to Oakland, saying there were no "adequate and already existing" stadiums in Los Angeles.

The NFL said the Raiders abandoned Los Angeles simply because they thought they had found a better deal in Oakland; Davis claimed the league forced him to retreat to Northern California by interfering with his attempt to secure a modern stadium with luxury boxes and other amenities.

He insisted the Raiders retained the territorial rights to the nation's second-largest TV market and, if the league tried to place another team in Los Angeles, it would have to buy the rights back from the Raiders.

In 2001, the Raiders lost their $1.2-billion lawsuit against the league in Los Angeles County Superior Court. A lower court judge subsequently granted a new trial on the grounds of juror misconduct, but in 2005 the State Court of Appeals overturned that decision and in July 2007 the California Supreme Court turned down a further appeal. The appeals court also ruled that the Raiders were obligated to share with the league revenue gained from their lease in Oakland.

The Raiders also battled with their new landlords in Northern California. A lawsuit against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum followed, based on Davis' assertion that East Bay officials did not deliver on promises when the team returned in 1995. A jury in Sacramento awarded the Raiders $34 million in 2003 in the team's suit against Oakland, although the club had asked for as much as $833 million. Because attendance lagged and television blackouts increased, the team dropped to the NFL's bottom tier in revenue production.

He didn't like shaking hands

The team didn't perform particularly well on the field after moving back to Oakland until Coach Jon Gruden led the Raiders to winning records in 2000 and 2001. The resurgence was short-lived though, as the young coach bolted for Tampa Bay and his new team clobbered the Raiders, 48-21, in the Super Bowl following the 2002 season.

Over the nine years that followed, the Raiders hired six head coaches. Davis' vertical passing game came to be viewed as outmoded compared to the West Coast offense, created across the Bay by San Francisco 49ers Coach Bill Walsh.

Between 2003 and 2009, the Raiders became the first team in NFL history to lose at least 11 games in seven consecutive seasons.

Davis became more reclusive as the seasons passed, seldom speaking with reporters.

But in January 2011, in his first news conference in nearly a year and a half, he broke his silence when introducing his latest coach, Hue Jackson.

"I have made mistakes," Davis acknowledged. "Yes, there's no question about it, and you got to have great players. But you also, sometimes, have the players and don't get it done. So, you're saying, should I take some of the blame? I certainly do."

Davis remained intimately involved with the team, despite keeping his distance from the media. He usually spent at least a couple of days a week at practice, often pulling aside players to give them tips on their technique.

"When you think of Al Davis, he gave his whole life to football," Madden said. "He's done nothing else. I always told him, 'You've got to do something.' He never hunted or fished or played golf. His job, his profession, his free time, everything was football."

Davis had more than a few personality quirks. He didn't like shaking hands, saying it made him feel like a Las Vegas greeter. He seldom made a public appearance wearing anything other than a black or white Raiders sweatsuit. And, if his team lost in a particular city, he would switch hotels for the next visit.

He also had a brilliant mind for football and an almost eerie ability to predict what was going to happen on the field. When his team played on the road, Davis often watched the game from the press box alongside a retinue of close friends and an ever-present bodyguard. He would make observations aloud to his traveling companions, then slam his hand on the table and hiss whispered curses when angered by a mistake on the field.

When it came to hiring people, Davis was colorblind. He was the first NFL owner to hire a black head coach, Art Shell; the first to hire a Latino head coach, Flores; and the first to promote a woman to chief executive, Amy Trask. Davis was fiercely loyal to those people who were loyal to him. His generosity was legendary when it came to helping former players in need, although he routinely did so without fanfare. His philosophy: Once a Raider, always a Raider.

The most notable exception was Marcus Allen, the star Raiders running back whose largely unexplained feud with Davis lasted for more than a decade and apparently went unresolved. Allen, the former Heisman Trophy winner from USC and easily the most popular L.A. Raider, accused Davis of trying to ruin his career by allegedly instructing coaches not to play him. He inexplicably spent the better part of four seasons on the bench, inspiring fans to wear "Free Marcus" T-shirts.

"I find the whole rule-by-fear mentality that he used to drive the Raiders really sad," Allen wrote in his autobiography. "Somewhere along the way, Davis lost track of where the man ends and the myth begins. I feel sorry for the guy."

After filing suit against the Raiders and the NFL to win his release, in 1993 Allen joined the Kansas City Chiefs, where he spent five more seasons. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003, 11 years after Davis was enshrined.

Unlike Allen, many current and former Raiders both feared and revered the team owner, whom they nearly always referred to as Mr. Davis rather than Al.

"You might not have thought everything he did was the right thing," Millen said. "But he always believed he was doing right by his Raiders."

Davis is survived by his wife, Carol, and son, Mark. Davis said in interviews that his wife and son will soon inherit the team.