He Might Be on Wrong End of Shell Game

In 1940, as the German armies poured across France, the French general, Maxime Weygand, who had just been made commander-in-chief over the deposed General Maurice Gamelin, flew over the battlefield, then held his head in his hands. “Mon Dieu!” he gasped. “They have handed me a disaster!”

It is my notion Art Shell should know exactly how he felt. Art should get the croix de guerre , kissed on both cheeks, and enrolled in the Legion d’Honneur.

He has just been made commander- in-chief of a disaster--the Raiders. They are in full retreat, they are confused, surrounded, their best hope would seem to be to sue for peace. They don’t need a general, they need a priest.

There is an Irish proverb, “Anyone will give you a burning building.” Art Shell must feel like the guy who’s standing outside a bank when a bunch of masked men come running along and suddenly thrust a bag of money in his hands and say, “Here, hold this!” just as they hear the cops coming.

Lincoln used to tell the story of the fellow who was being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail and someone wanted to know how he felt. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk,” he said.

Art Shell has become a historic American figure. He joins, if not exactly Washington and Lincoln, at least Fulton, Edison, the Wright brothers--the guys who did something first, the guys who made a difference.

He certainly joins Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson, Kenny Washington, Frank Robinson, Bill Russell. Guys who made America live up to its promises. Guys who made America be what America is supposed to be.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

But you get the feeling Art was just standing there when the old coach came flying through the door with his suitcase sailing after him. He was either in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. Time will tell. But he was not groomed for the job.

When Branch Rickey broke the color line in baseball, it was a deliberate, calculated, long-plotted maneuver. He scouted Jackie Robinson for the part. He didn’t just need a second baseman, he needed a talisman, an icon, a symbol, a man for the ages. Jackie didn’t happen to be just standing there.

Al Davis just fired the coach he had picked with tender, loving care. There is no evidence Art Shell was even a candidate. In fact, when a reporter wondered at the press conference announcing the new (white) coach, Mike Shanahan, whether owner Davis was leaving himself open to criticism, Davis bridled and noted that his record on race was above reproach. Al Davis is colorblind, and if you don’t think so, check his wardrobe.

Still, has he handed his new general a disaster? A beaten army? Are the Raiders in headlong retreat? Could even Vince Lombardi stop this bleeding?

The Raiders, historically, have not needed a coach in the mold of Lombardi or Rockne. Their coaches were commonly perceived to be just kind of straw bosses. Shop stewards. The real orders came down from above. Some people thought the running of the team was just a kind of complicated ventriloquism. Al tried not to move his lips but the words--and the plays--were his.

The evidence seemed to bear the theory out. The Raiders went to four Super Bowls under three different coaches in little over a decade--John Rauch, John Madden and Tom Flores. The one constant was the man on the phone upstairs--Al Davis.

The burden of the evidence is not so much that Coach Mike Shanahan disagreed with the advice from above as he ignored it.

You can do a lot of things with Al Davis. Ignoring him is not one of them.

Will Art Shell get the message? Better yet, will he deliver it? Will he be just the answer to a trivia question someday--or a coaching legend?

The chemistry that goes into the making of a successful coach is at least as complicated as the formula for heavy water. Rockne did it with wit and sarcasm and a reliance on the putative wishes of long-dead teammates. Lombardi did it with the all-out bullying emotion of an Italian opera basso. Tom Landry was cerebral, stoic. So was Paul Brown.

Art Shell was a great football player. He almost single-handedly gave Minnesota’s Purple People Eaters indigestion in the Super Bowl. He’s not emotional. He’s not excitable. He’s probably never had to be afraid of anything in his entire life.

The X’s and O’s are not really a problem.

“There are no secrets in this game,” the late Buck Shaw used to say.

The trick is to convince those kids in the silver and black they are being well led, that they are not going to wake up some morning like the French army and find themselves surrounded and their Maginot Line the world’s biggest flower pot.

Every right-thinking person in America wishes Art Shell well. Unfortunately, they can’t block and tackle for him.

What Coach Shell has to do is put the long pass back in the game plan--and put “Yes, sir, Mr. Davis!” right back in the inter-office intercom. Owners are never interim.