Al Davis: the gift that keeps on giving
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Al Davis’ diatribe Tuesday at Raiders headquarters provided an even deeper insight into what life on the edge is like in Raider Nation. And columnists in the Bay Area and elsewhere were spoon-fed material to fill their pages.
A few samples:
Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News:
Al Davis did the worst thing possible. Highly entertaining, but not good for business. He drew back the curtains on the Raiders freak show and gave us all a long look. And what we saw wasn’t pretty.
Ray Ratto in the San Francisco Chronicle:
His extended news conferences ... failed to provide the one answer to his issues with coaches, specifically: Why he can’t find one he likes for more than a year... Davis’ inability to delegate any useful prerogatives to his head coach, or better still, a knowledgeable intermediary, stands at the heart of this team’s multi-layered dysfunctions.
Monte Poole of the Oakland Tribune:
It was a one-man show -- one performance only -- the likes of which you may never see again, an extraordinary example of an individual Davis, who feels he was wronged in countless ways and is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to extract his pound of flesh.
Ian O’Connor of Foxsports.com:
Davis said he fired [Lane] Kiffin for ‘bringing disgrace to the organization.’ If that’s the standard for getting whacked in Oakland, Davis should’ve fired the man in the mirror a long time ago.
-- Mike James