Invaders Repulsed, Davis Says : Raiders’ Owner Gives Testimony for USFL in Trial

Al Davis, managing general partner of the Raiders, testified Tuesday as a witness for the USFL in its $1.5 billion antitrust suit against the NFL, and said his league tried to destroy the USFL’s Oakland franchise, the Invaders.

Davis testified for about two hours in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Although the USFL completed its questioning, Davis said he was willing to come back to testify for the NFL, which is expected to begin presenting its case today after the USFL calls its last witness, former ABC Sports commentator Howard Cosell.

Davis won his own antitrust case against the NFL in 1983 after the league sought to block Davis from moving his team from Oakland to Los Angeles.

The NFL was “in illegal collaboration with the City of Oakland and the Oakland Coliseum from the very beginning in 1980 (when the Raiders announced their intention to move) to destroy the Raiders,” Davis said he told the NFL’s attorneys when they took his deposition seven months ago in preparation for the USFL trial.

“Because the Invaders in Oakland were a viable alternative (and threatened the effort to bring back the Raiders), they destroyed the Invaders,” he added.

Davis, who has served in almost every position in football from team scout to commissioner of the former American Football League, said the USFL had approached him at one point to serve as commissioner. He did not say why he declined the job.

USFL attorney Harvey Myerson centered his questions to Davis on the charges the NFL dangled the possibility of bringing the Raiders back to Oakland or another NFL franchise to pressure Oakland and Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum officials to stop cooperating with and promoting the USFL franchise in the city.

The Invaders, who played three seasons, are now inactive and not among the eight remaining USFL teams scheduled to begin their first fall season this year.

Davis said the Raiders, who left Oakland after the 1981 season, helped the Invaders get started in 1983, recommending coaches, players and other personnel, and putting them in touch with booster groups and radio sponsors.

The team performed well on the field, Davis said, but struggled financially.

Oakland’s mayor initially welcomed the team warmly, but three months later changed his attitude, and pronounced the Invaders to be “dull,” Davis said.

When the team opened its 1985 season, Oakland and Coliseum officials were not at the game, but rather at an NFL owners’ meeting in Phoenix trying to convince NFL owners and officials to approve the location of an expansion team in the city, he said.

In the Coliseum’s lease to the Invaders, Davis said, the terms gave any NFL franchise that might play there first priority for use of the stadium.

On other subjects, Davis said he been “surprised” to learn NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle in late 1984 told Alfred Taubman, then owner of the USFL franchise in Detroit, that Taubman was the type of owner Rozelle would like in the NFL.

“I didn’t think it was proper,” Davis said. “I would think that was some kind of enticement.”

In his testimony earlier in the trial, Rozelle described the incident as “just dinner conversation.”

Davis also said after Leon Hess, owner of the NFL New York Jets, announced in 1983 he was moving the Jets from New York City to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the NFL owners’ had a “understanding” a third NFL team would not be put in the New York area.

A new New York City stadium was the focus earlier in the day in cross-examination of USFL New Jersey Generals’ owner Donald Trump.

Trump, who has been designated as the developer for construction of a new football stadium in Queens, was asked about a Feb. 27 meeting he had with business owners fighting construction of the stadium in their community.

Members of the Willets Point Business Assn. sat through Trump’s testimony, and later--outside the courtroom--said Trump had asked them to muffle their opposition and he would eventually get the site of the stadium changed.

“He said if he could get the Generals in the NFL, he virtually guaranteed the stadium wouldn’t be built in Willets Point,” said Richard Musick, president of the group. Trump said he would get into the NFL “by winning the lawsuit,” he added.

When asked during his testimony about making such guarantees, Trump avoided answering the questions directly. Finally when pressed to answer yes or no, Trump said he could not do so.