Glazer: Scribe Salutes Fallen Fellow ‘Bad Boy,’ The Raiders Al Davis

Nobody can argue that Raiders‘ boss Al Davis, along with men like Lamar Hunt, created the modern NFL..

Both men had teams in the first two Super Bowls. Both lost those games. Yet the Chiefs and Raiders would soon follow up those losses with Super Bowl victories. In fact it was the Vikings who fell to both teams just a few years apart.

And it’s no secret that Chiefs fans hated Al Davis who died this past weekend.

Davis wore black and was the head Raider. The Raiders dominated the Chiefs for the most part through the years under both Davis and Hunt. True, in the Marty Schottenheimer era the Chiefs came back and handled a lesser Raider group for nearly a decade.

TheChiefs  were also as the FIRST wild card team and defeated Oakland in 1969, sending KC to its first and only Super Bowl win in 1970. However that’s where our good fortunes mostly ended.

The Raiders have been far better than KC over the long haul.

The Oakland Raiders won three Super Bowls to our one. They lost two others to our one. Maybe more importantly, under Al Davis the Raiders won 15 Western Division titles to the Chiefs 7.

"Just win, baby" was Davis mantra and boy did they. The Raiders also dominated Monday Night Football. At one point they were 18-1-1 and had the best all time Monday Night Football record.

I hated the Raiders because they were usually the better team. I wanted to beat them so badly every year until the rivalry lost its meaning as both teams became average or worse by the late 90’s.

Al Davis did it one more time with our quarterback, Rich Gannon. They got to the Super Bowl again in 2003. The Chiefs have never been close since the Dawson era. We did make one AFC title game with Joe Montana in 1993, but got smashed by the Bills. And that was that.

So yeah we hate the Raiders and Al Davis.

But Al Davis was a rebel with a cause. He was a tough guy – on the outside anyways. He stole good players and cut every corner, but his teams were winners. We were the good guys in red and white and they were the bad guys in silver and black. They were the Outlaws, while we wore the white hats.

In the end though, the bad guys kinda won.

Davis did it with several different groups from Kenny Stabler and Daryl Lamonica to Jim Plunkett and Rich Gannon. We only did it with Len Dawson. And that was it.

I never met Al Davis. Everyone I know that knew him, seemed to like him though. Even my pal actor Sonny Landham was a Raider fan. Sonny and I attended Chiefs/Raiders games in the 90’s when we were the better ball club. We saw them in KC and in LA (they were the LA Raiders at the time).

And my friend Marcus Allen hated Al because he cut Allen from the team and gave him to KC. Allen played his best football in Kansas City, but moved back to the LA area afterwords and has few to no ties to KC. Marcus still dislikes Al.

Still I can relate to Al Davis…

He was kinda an outlaw and wore dark sunglasses ala Jack Nicholson and me. Oh yeah, Davis was seen as the bad guy almost everywhere.

Sound familiar?

But Al got a ton done, was a sharp guy and maybe a little misunderstood. I don’t know if he was a lady’s man, but my guess is maybe he was in his younger days. He didn’t have my good looks, but he was kinda cool.

I hated him back in the day, but have learned to respect the man now.

"Just Win, Baby"sounds pretty good to me right now. Maybe it’s something KC should consider a bit more.