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Al Davis
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Uh, about these spring meetings the NFL holds in the Southern California desert
community of Palm Desert. They seem to have misplaced something. A strong NFL presence.
Members of the league’s executive committee, for which read the ranking officers
of the teams, aren’t exactly showing up in force as I write this. Mostly, they
aren’t showing up at all, and it isn’t that the Marriott Desert Springs Resort
is a shabby place to idle away a few days. Quite the opposite.
There are two reasons why the league’s warlords are choosing to occupy themselves
in other ways. The first is that precious little meaningful business is to be conducted at
this convocation. Oh, there will be a lot of talk concerning how the league should
realign, but only talk, not action. A vote on realignment won’t come until May.
The second reason is the more meaningful. In Superior Court in Los Angeles, the
Raiders’ lawsuit against the NFL is being tried. This being California, an owner
showing up here could have somebody thrust a subpoena at him and be required to testify in
Los Angeles, which would be a bother, at the least.
The other day, I might note, I popped up to L.A., which I generally prefer to avoid,
and looked in on the legal scrimmaging in Judge Richard C. Hubbell’s chambers in the
matter of the Raiders vs. the NFL.
This one’s big. The Raiders are suing for more than $1 billion, contending that
the league improperly sought to torpedo their plans to occupy a proposed stadium at
Hollywood Park in the mid 1990s. In the team’s argument, it thus was twice damaged:
in Los Angeles, which it departed, and in Oakland, where it had to go hat in hand, so to
speak.
Arriving in the court, I asked the question, "Who’s winning?" One does
not ask that sort of question in a courtroom, I gathered, but I did get one answer.
"We are," Bruce Allen said. "But I didn’t think we were supposed to
be winning by this much this early."
Allen’s remarks must be thrown out. Isn’t that the legal phrase? He is, after
all, the "senior assistant" of the Raiders, which translates to general manager
on a team on with whom titles can be as shadowy as Al Davis, the NFL’s Prince of
Darkness.
On the day I was in the courtroom, Davis appeared to be upbeat. He told me that he
recently had called me. I answered that I had sought to return his call, but that I had
failed to reach him. And what was on his mind?
"Keith Lincoln," he said. Davis explained that he had become aware that
Lincoln was being honored by the San Diego Hall of Champions.
"I remember him when he was at Monrovia High," Davis said. "Bill Kilmer
was at Azusa. I was at USC. They were the best high school athletes in Southern
California. Do you realize we had Paul Lowe and Lincoln? Every play was a potential
touchdown."
Here’s a man involved in a $1 billion lawsuit, and he’s talking about the
backfield of a Chargers team (on which he was an assistant coach) of almost 40 years ago.
The NFL is represented by Allen Ruby. Big guy. Patient. Stands with his hands in his
pockets. Seems affable but has a tough side. Doesn’t want his clients to get bounced
around. When Joseph Alioto’s questioning of one witness became heated, Ruby objected.
"To the tone," he explained.
Hubbell agreed. "I don’t want to get into one of those ‘Is it
true?’ things," the judge explained.
Hubbell, I gathered, is one of those let-’em-play judges. He seldom interrupted
the testimony.
Alioto is the son of the late Joseph Alioto, who might have had no peer as an antitrust
attorney. That’s what the late Tommy Prothro used to say, and Prothro was wise about
many things. One of his wisdoms was that in a lawsuit, the side with the best lawyer
generally wins.
The junior Alioto is one of those men who appears to have every hair perfectly in
place, which can be important when a man is balding, as he is. His manner is what I would
describe as insistent. He got every answer he wanted from Neil Austrian, the president and
chief operating officer of the NFL from May 1990 until December ’99.
At issue in this case is "a second team" other than the Raiders that might
have occupied a proposed stadium at Hollywood Park. Davis didn’t want to share the
place.
According to an NFL resolution, for Davis not to stand in the way of a co-tenant, two
Super Bowls rather than one would be scheduled in the 2000s at the Hollywood Park site,
with the Raiders serving as the host team and receiving 10,000 tickets to each game.
The lawsuit’s thrust is that the NFL made the terms for a second team at Hollypark
so much more favorable than the terms the Raiders were negotiating that the Raiders had no
course other than to return to Oakland. The NFL’s reply is that Davis chose without
being coerced to shift to the East Bay.
I won’t get into the niceties of this case, but I will say that football can make
strange bedfellows. I refer to Davis and Carmen Policy, who said very little that was
flattering about one another when Policy was associated with the 49ers, and he and Davis
were operating on opposite sides of the Bay Bridge. Davis and Policy, however, became
positively palsy-walsy when Policy was serving as the finance committee’s "point
man" while Davis was negotiating with Hollywood Park.
Policy said Davis had advised him to exercise caution in his dealing with Hollywood
Park operator R.D. Hubbard.
"He said, ‘Be careful of Hubbard. He tries to come off like a cowboy, but
he’s pretty slick,’ " Policy said.
Pals forever, Davis and Policy. Yeah, sure.
Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for
PFW since its inception in 1967 |
