No fair! Al Davis likes you more!

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I covered the Raiders as a beat writer for five seasons, and I know the best part of Al Davis news conferences. It’s when they click off the TV cameras and we all head on stage to collect our recorders and get some time to talk with the owner in a somewhat less public forum.

No matter what you think of him, he is fascinating to listen to.

It was during that part of Tuesday’s news conference that Davis took another swipe at Denver Coach Mike Shanahan, splashing a little more gas on a fire that has raged for 20 years.

“When Shanahan left me, he went to Denver,’ Davis said. ‘He was there for about four or five years as an assistant and they fired him for insubordination. Dan Reeves and he had a big battle. He went to the 49ers and he learned their style of football and when Dan Reeves failed in Denver, the first guy they had was Wade Phillips, I think . . . then he brought Shanahan back. And Shanahan had success. But Shanahan has an asterisk next to those two Super Bowls, because they were caught cheating.”

-- Sam Farmer

For Shanahan’s funny response click the ‘Read more’ link below...

Cheating?

Evidently, Davis was talking about the Broncos getting dinged by the league in 2001 for circumventing salary-cap rules.

As reported on ProFootballTalk.com, Shanahan had a tongue-in-cheek response today when he met with the Denver media for his regular news conference.

“I was really disappointed, to be honest with you,” he said. “When you take a look at it, I was there 582 days. Lane Kiffin was there 616 days. So what it really means is that Al Davis liked Lane more than he liked me. And I really don’t think that’s fair. I won three more games, yet he got 34 more days of work. That just doesn’t seem right. Does it to you guys? No, really, think about it.”

Everyone laughed.

“I know the right thing to say. The thing I should have said is, ‘I haven’t had time to look at interviews and what really happened.’ But I think everybody saw the press conference. We’ll leave it at that.”