Raiders Kicked When Down

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue did his version of an end-zone dance Wednesday, essentially wagging the ball in the face of Raider owner Al Davis and branding his failed lawsuit “outrageous.”

Tagliabue waited until the end of the three-day meetings in Chicago, when most of the owners had departed, to speak publicly for the first time about the legal victory.

“I never viewed the case as a personal attack. . . . [But] the real affront here, the real unfairness, the real insult is to the other owners.”

He said the league will consider taking disciplinary action against Davis.

“Our bylaws are clear that the other owners and the executive committee can evaluate an owner’s conduct to determine whether it’s a breach of the bylaws, then act accordingly,” Tagliabue said.

Davis could not be reached for comment.

Bruce Allen, the Raider senior assistant who represented the team at the meetings, scoffed at the notion of sanctions.

“I think the suggestion is really ludicrous,” he said. “Al was sued by the NFL in 1995. He was just defending himself in a court of law.”

Allen also disagreed that other owners were insulted by the lawsuit, which claimed the Raiders owned the L.A. market.

“I don’t know who [Tagliabue] is talking about,” he said, “because many of the owners came to me to express their best wishes for Al. I’m sure there are quite a few of them who appreciate and remember what he did for them on the TV contract, and expansion fees, and many business aspects of the league.

“Obviously, there are some [owners] who are jealous. When you’re in the Hall of Fame and have been honored by the players and the groups that Al has--this year he was put into the Orange Bowl Hall of Fame--there is some jealousy.”

Tagliabue said owners were angered by Davis’ decision to sue after the Raiders were treated “more generously and more favorably than any other team in the history of the league” in their efforts to build a new stadium at Hollywood Park in the mid-1990s.

He said their claim to the L.A. market “was a pretty farfetched concept, not only legally but in terms of common sense.”

It has been a heady week for Tagliabue, who said the courtroom victory not only buoyed the spirits of NFL owners but probably greased the skids for an unusually harmonious realignment process.

He did not elaborate on how Davis might be punished, but there is recent precedent for doing so. Two years ago, longtime San Francisco 49er owner Eddie DeBartolo was fined $1 million and suspended for the 1999 season for his involvement in a scheme to fix the bidding for a riverboat gambling license in Louisiana. Shortly thereafter, he sold his interest in the team to his sister.

The NFL constitution and bylaws empower the commissioner to fine or suspend an owner for conduct detrimental to the league.

Pittsburgh Steeler owner Dan Rooney, who last week called Davis a “lying creep,” said there is a groundswell forming against the Raider owner.

“I can’t tell you how everybody thinks, but right now I know a lot of people are upset,” Rooney said. “We’re a league. You operate together. . . . We have a responsibility to look at where the issue [of punishing Davis] is, what’s involved, and what are the other possible remedies. And we also need to look at Al himself.”

League rules stipulate if a member team sues the NFL and loses, that team must cover the league’s legal expenses.

Allen declined to say whether the Raiders are planning to appeal the verdict. But he did offer a bit of advice for the NFL, which lost a court battle to Davis in 1982:

“I wouldn’t be bragging about their legal record if I were them.”