Silver and Black Turns to White : Walsh as a Witness Makes Strong Case

Mike White was a popular football coach in Illinois because he went to the Rose Bowl with a team that prided itself as “the Raiders of the Big Ten.” He was an unpopular one in Michigan because opponents there, including the coaches, thought the Fighting Illini players played so dirty that they openly called them the Biting Illini.

Did the Raiders get the right guy? I couldn’t say, but Bill Walsh could.

Mike White is “one of the most charismatic, one of the most intense, one of the most demanding coaches I’ve known,” Walsh, the former San Francisco 49er and Stanford coach, said Thursday of someone he has known for more than 30 years.

“We’ve been the closest of friends. We began together from a standing start. And let me tell you something about Mike White--he’s more than a motivator. People follow him. They go where he leads.

“He’s inexhaustible, he’s intense and he’s got a great sense of humor. I think he’s ideally suited for what Al Davis and the Raiders are looking for. I don’t think they could have gotten a better coach.”

The man in the smart gray suit with the “W” on his belt buckle has assumed command here in the land of the Raiders of the Lost Art, where he will need every trait Walsh claims he has. In taking over for Art Shell, who has never worked for anyone else, White has to figure out what’s wrong with this team and do something about it, fast.

Hip to current events in Los Angeles, the new Raider coach reacted to preliminary compliments by saying, “This is sort of like the opening remarks at a trial, right? They don’t mean a darn thing. What matters is the evidence.”

Spoon-fed the job gradually, little by little over several days, White was finally validated by a phone call from Davis after the funeral of a former Raider, broadcaster Bob Chandler. It was the call he had been waiting for--”I’ve prepared for this job my whole life,” White said--and news that particularly tickled a 21-month-old infant, his granddaughter, Hannah, who already is as familiar with the team’s one-eyed emblem as she is Big Bird or Barney the dinosaur.

“She calls him ‘the Raider Man.’ ”

White laughs at that and thanks a guy for mentioning Hannah in advance. The irony is not lost on him, of course, that it is he who is now the Raider Man. It is he who must organize the disorganized (“This team’s motto is ‘Commitment to Excellence’ but you can’t just put that up on a wall”); must reduce the penalties (“I’ll have a whole slew of officials at practice every day, if that’s what it takes”); must revive the 1993-model Jeff Hostetler (“I don’t know what caused him to come apart”) and, naturally, must love/honor/obey Al Davis (choose one) as he sees fit.

“What I’ll never understand is, people talk about Al Davis as a negative ,” he says. “As though his presence is going to keep you from doing something. My feeling is just the opposite. Al Davis is the edge I need. Al Davis is an advantage, not a disadvantage.”

When you coach pro football, you play owner roulette. White knew this when he was offered the New Orleans job before Jim Mora was (according to Davis) and when he applied for similar positions in Indianapolis and Cleveland. Everywhere you go, there are owners. They pay you, they annoy you, they assist you, they dismiss you.

“The difference with this guy is, Al Davis is the most knowledgeable owner in the NFL and it isn’t even close. Why not hear what’s on his mind? You eliminate the middle man. You know where you stand. With Al Davis, he’s going to be involved, he’s going to express himself, he’s probably going to give me a tongue-lashing now and then. But you sure as heck would rather have an owner who’s knowledgeable than just a fanatic like some of these owners are. All they do is create more problems.

“It’s obvious Al Davis expects and demands success, and we feel equal to that task.”

That task being . . . well, again, ask Walsh.

To improve, to reach that 49er level, Walsh says, “Mike has to score touchdowns, simple as that. I have visited with Al Davis and heard him complain, ‘The team just doesn’t score.’ And he is absolutely right. The team doesn’t score. You watch the Raiders and they just don’t punch the ball into the end zone. They settle for field goals and then they find themselves at the mercy of losing a low-scoring game. That just isn’t Raider football.

“Mike’s got to figure out ways of chewing up bigger chunks of yardage. Otherwise, your team is in danger of being beaten by one last-minute play, like Pittsburgh in the playoffs. I know Al is exasperated about this, and he should be.”

Chunks of yardage. Sounds like a new motto to hang on the wall, between Commitment to Excellence and the Raider Man. One only hopes White can get this team chunking along the way he did as Walsh’s aide in San Francisco or on campus with a cavalcade of quarterbacks that included Joe Roth at Cal, Jim Plunkett at Stanford and Jack Trudeau, Dave Wilson, Tony Eason and Jeff George at Illinois.

At one point of his career, he had Vince Ferragamo and Steve Bartkowski competing for the same job at Cal. Ferragamo left because of White, transferring to Nebraska, and looking back White admits that he probably wasn’t suitably experienced to be a coach.

“I’ll tell you this much,” he says. “Art Shell did a hell of a lot better with his first head-coaching job than I did with mine.”

Now the transition begins and White must do what he can. Someone must coach (more like revive) the Raider offense and at the mention of Jim Plunkett’s name, White says, more than half-seriously, “Jim, if you’re listening, send me a letter!” He is aware of Al Davis’ oft-stated battle cry to ATTACK VERTICALLY and of his newly stated objective to “control that group up in San Francisco,” meaning the 49ers.

It’s a lot to ask.

“Crazy business, this coaching,” Mike White says.

This concludes his opening statement.