COMMENTARY : Al Davis Has to Do It His Way, So He Heads for Highway

They said he would never leave. They said he was merely negotiating through the press. They said he was simply greedy, seeking leverage for an ever-richer deal.

They were wrong.

And now that the Raiders have left for Oakland, the same people who criticized the Rams for taking the money and running are criticizing Raider owner Al Davis for running away from the big money.

But most people don’t understand Davis. Certainly not most people in Los Angeles. That’s why he’s taking his team elsewhere.

It is difficult to describe the essence of this man without resorting to all the time-worn cliches about winning. But, in the end, “Just win, baby,” corny as it may sound, is not a cliche for Al Davis. It is the guiding principle of his life.

Above all else, it is the overriding reason he is going back to Oakland.

To all those who still snicker at such logic, explain why Davis accepted the Oakland deal, rewarding to the Raiders as it is, over the far more lucrative Hollywood Park proposal, which would have been one of the top two or three richest stadium deals in the NFL. Explain why Davis has lowered the value of his franchise by moving it from large-market Los Angeles to small-market Oakland.

There are few, if any, owners who would have made such a move. But Davis has always been nothing more than a coach in owner’s clothing.

While other owners spend their afternoons meeting with accountants and lawyers, plotting the next increase in ticket prices, Davis prefers to spend his time on the sidelines at practice, yelling at a defensive back to keep his eye on the ball.

He would rather be in the locker room than the board room.

So while all his financial advisers patted him on the back in recent years and told him how much his franchise had grown in value by relocating to Los Angeles, Davis would look out at row after row of empty seats in the Coliseum and frown at the thought that his team was suffering from the lack of a true home-field advantage.

To be sure, Davis could have done more to create that advantage. The product he put on the field in recent years was not worthy of sellouts. And Davis did little to market the team. He was certainly no Jerry Jones with a microphone.

But that wasn’t Davis. He preferred to focus on the X’s and O’s.

So he went about rebuilding. He signed free agents, drafted well and put together a solid team for 1994.

But it still wasn’t good enough to even make the playoffs.

Davis did a lot of soul-searching after last season and decided to take what had to be a most difficult step--the firing of his loyal coach, Art Shell.

Then, Davis went even further, giving new Coach Mike White the green light to radically alter the Raiders’ much-criticized offense.

Had Davis done everything he could to give his team a chance to win?

Even in the best-case scenario, his club would be stuck for the next two seasons in the Coliseum, where he was convinced the cavernous structure and small crowds offered little advantage to the home team.

In the worst-case scenario, an environmental impact report, or an earthquake or other natural disaster, or construction problems at Hollywood Park, would leave Davis sitting in the Coliseum as 1997 turned into 1998 and, perhaps, 1999.

When he left Jacksonville, Fla., last month after having received a favorable vote from his fellow owners on the Hollywood Park project, Davis headed to New York for a memorial to sportscaster Howard Cosell. That caused Davis to again focus on death, a subject on his mind in recent years.

He is 65 and believes time is running out. He believes he will judged, after his death, by how many Super Bowls he has won.

He desperately wants to get back to the Super Bowl in the 1990s to have made it there in each decade of his years with the Raiders.

All of that played on his mind as he juggled the Hollywood Park and Oakland proposals.

He told friends he felt he was costing his team four to six points a game by not playing in Oakland, where he felt sure the fans would again fill every seat and let their emotions spill out onto the field.

Davis came close to signing up with Hollywood Park. Close enough for race-track officials to call a news conference for a Saturday morning three weeks ago.

Davis was there. But he couldn’t pull the trigger. He couldn’t put the gnawing doubts out of his mind. He refused to sign.

Three days later, Davis flew north to inspect the Oakland Coliseum. All the old memories came flooding back. This was where he had won, and this was where he was convinced he could win again.

The big money and the big market be damned. He was going home.