Brown Signs Just So He Can Go to Camp

How great a day was it here?

One of the finest in Oxnard’s now-jeopardized life as a National Football League (training site) city.

The sun shone. The weather was warm. All 13 Raider draft choices reported on time, for the first time since the team left Oakland. Tim Brown, No. 1, wanted to be here so badly, he signed a makeshift one-year contract, which he says will be torn up next week when he signs his real contract. This should give him the fastest renegotiation in NFL history.

Said Brown: “You got that right.”

You want to hear something really incredible?

A source says that Brown’s contract, reported to the NFL Players Assn., was for a paltry $450,000--a $300,000 signing bonus plus $150,000 in salary. Because of the friendship between Al Davis and Brown’s agent, Marv Demoff, Brown, who is thought to be in line for at least a $2.8-million, four-year contract--or $700,000 a season--actually signed a binding, one-year deal for just about half that, trusting Davis to tear it up.

What’s next? Will he pawn his Heisman Trophy and give the money to Davis to buy a quarterback?

“We just put some numbers up that looked good to both of us,” Brown said Thursday. “Since you have to have a contract to go to camp, we did it this way.

“I did it for football reasons. I just felt if I wanted to come here and compete with the Raider wide receivers, I had to be here every day. The veterans won’t come in for a week, so I feel I’ll have a little jump.”

Brown says he’s ultimately going to sign the four-year deal for, he hopes, $2.8 to $3.1 million.

“That would definitely be the ballpark,” Brown said. “The reason everybody says that, that’s about what Aundray Bruce (Falcon linebacker, chosen first in the draft) got. I said all along, I wanted to be right up there with him. To say I don’t want to be near Bruce would be a flat-out lie. So, $700,000 a year wouldn’t be a bad guess at all.”

It was known before that Demoff was a friend of Davis. Just how good a friend, no one knew until Thursday.

Oxnard could use a good day. The Raiders, of course, were just about to pull out for Northridge, claiming the weather here is too cool.

When that eleventh-hour move didn’t work out, they found themselves in a misunderstanding with the Radisson Hotel, the all-suites resort alongside their practice facility, over when they were arriving.

In Raider style, it wasn’t a quiet misunderstanding, either.

“Raiders in Rift with Radisson,” read a headline in the Ventura Star Free Press after the Raiders’ John Herrera took his dissatisfaction public.

“I just said we didn’t get a lot of cooperation,” Herrera said Thursday.

The hotel booked other business for this week, and the Raiders have had to put some of their players in the nearby Hilton. The Radisson went so far as to offer exhibition tickets to patrons willing to switch hotels, and the Radisson is also paying to have the Raider rookies bussed over from the Hilton.

Still to be determined is whether this is the Raiders’ last tango on the Gold Coast. It was sunny and 75 degrees Thursday, but it was an easy 10 degrees warmer in Thousand Oaks, and you could just feel that weight falling off those Dallas Cowboy rookies.

“A lot of things would have to go right,” Herrera said when asked if the team will stay.

And their lease with the city that runs through 1989?

“We’ve pretty much worked that out with the city,” Herrera said. “If we don’t feel it’s conducive for our training, we’ll amicably part our ways after this camp.”

Speculation: Unless the Raiders win 10 games this season, look for them to train elsewhere. In other words, Oxnard is going off as a longshot.

Raider Notes

The Raiders are expected to complete a deal today with the San Francisco 49ers for linebacker Milt McColl. 49er Coach Bill Walsh said Thursday that a deal has been made but wouldn’t identify the other team. A Raider source says McColl is coming here. McColl started 16 games in 1986 and 12 last season, but the Raiders are reportedly looking at him as a backup. . . . First estimates on the contracts of the other two Raider No. 1 picks: $1.9 million over four years for Terry McDaniel, the cornerback from Tennessee, and $1.18 million over three for Scott Davis, the defensive end from Illinois.