Davis’ Top Choice Was Los Angeles

Dressed in silver and black and proclaiming the enduring greatness of the Raiders, Al Davis took the stand Monday and declared that--before returning to Oakland--he wanted to be in Los Angeles and he wanted the Raiders to stay in Los Angeles.

Testifying in the team’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit against the NFL, the longtime Raider owner said he worked long and hard on a deal to build a privately financed stadium at Hollywood Park.

But the terms kept changing, he said, and in three key days in June 1995, the terms changed yet one final time--allowing for the possibility of a second NFL team beginning play at Hollywood Park at the same time the Raiders would begin there.

Davis, 71, called that an “impossible” business situation, even “suicidal.” He said he had a heated telephone call at the time with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, telling him, “The deal was dead.”

And Davis said he told Tagliabue, “You’re the guy who’s killing it.”

Davis’ version of events went unchallenged Monday because he was being questioned solely by Raider attorney Joseph M. Alioto. “Thankfully, in our system we get to cross-examine,” NFL attorney Allen Ruby said later outside court.

Cross-examination could begin as soon as today. The case revolves around the team’s claim that the league interfered with the Hollywood Park deal, forcing the Raiders out of L.A. and back to Oakland. The team played in Los Angeles from 1982 and 1994. It also claims that it still owns the L.A. market. In all, the Raiders claim damages of more than $1 billion. The league denies any wrongdoing.

The trial has been ongoing for five weeks--all devoted to the Raiders’ presentation of their case, all building toward Monday, the day Davis took the stand.

Dressed in a black pinstriped suit, black shirt, silver tie and black patent leather shoes, Davis was sworn in at 9:33 a.m., the diamonds in the pinky ring on his right hand sparkling as he swore to tell the truth.

It then took him only eight minutes to proclaim the Raider catch phrase, “commitment to excellence.”

It came as he related for jurors the progression of his long and storied career: College coach. Raider coach and general manager in the old American Football League. AFL commissioner. Then back to the Raiders, as the team’s owner in the NFL.

“I wanted to build the finest sports organization in sports history,” he told jurors, adding later that his “boyhood dreams” later became an adult philosophy of a Raider franchise that would be “more than a team.” He explained: “They’d be a family. They’d be a life.”

He also said, “I do believe in tradition. I do believe in history. I do believe in loyalty.”

In the early 1980s the Raiders moved from Oakland, their longtime home, to Los Angeles.

The move prompted an antitrust lawsuit, won by the Raiders. Later, the league and the team settled. The judgment was by then worth $64 million. The league paid $18 million. The $46 million “offset” gives rise, as Davis explained, to the Raiders’ view that the team paid the difference for the rights to the Los Angeles market.

Meantime, Davis said, it soon became apparent in the increasingly competitive business environment that is the NFL that the Coliseum--which lacks luxury suites, club seats and other new-stadium features and amenities--was an outmoded facility.

Nonetheless, he declared, “I wanted to be here, in Los Angeles. I wanted the Raiders to be here.”

In 1994, heading into 1995, the Raiders focused seriously on the Hollywood Park possibility. It would have catapulted the Raiders, according to a document now shown repeatedly to jurors, to the league’s top tier of local revenue-producers, about $99 million when the stadium opened in 1997, with “commensurate profitability.”

“It was just a great area, a great place,” Davis testified. “I could just picture the tailgating.”

To make the financing work, however, Hollywood Park needed multiple Super Bowls, Davis said.

By early May 1995, Davis said, he believed the league had committed to a minimum of two Super Bowls. Later that month, however, the league’s owners formally voted to OK only one Super Bowl, conditioning a second on an option for a second NFL team at Hollywood Park.

Davis said repeatedly Monday that he didn’t want a second team there, citing marketing, scheduling and other issues.

Nonetheless, at that May 1995 owners’ meeting, Davis voted for the resolution that conditioned a second Super Bowl on the option for a second team.

Why? “That’s a good question,” Davis said, explaining moments later, “I wanted Hollywood Park. I wanted Los Angeles, at that time.”