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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED AUGUS T 26 – SEP TEM
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After two years at Adelphi, Davis was conscripted into
the Army. There, too, he coached football (and avoided
being sent to Korea). He seized on the idea of compiling
scouting information on his players and offered to sell
his guides to NFL teams. Impressed by these guides and
by his predictive powers, Baltimore Colts coach Weeb
Ewbank (Hall of Fame class of ’78) hired Davis as a
freelance scout. (Anyone with a thing for symmetry will
note that two decades later the head coach of the same
organization would be the first to employ a young football
savant named Bill Belichick, as a personal assistant.)
Davis parlayed that gig into a full-time assistant position
at the Citadel, where in true Zelig spirit he layered his
Brooklyn accent with a Southern drawl and inflection.
By 1960, Davis had graduated from college to pro
football, taking a job in the fledgling AFL as a receivers
specialist for L.A. Chargers coach Sid Gillman. They
made for an odd couple, Gillman and Davis. Gillman
(Hall class of ’83) was given to wearing bow ties, his
pants pulled above his waist. He delivered his words
in rapid, quick-burst cadences. Davis, in contrast, wore
silver chains, a James Dean hairstyle and spoke leisurely,
not unlike a young Christopher Walken.
Gillman and Davis, though, carved out plenty of com-
mon ground, from their Jewish upbringings to their
almost devotional commitment to relentless strike-first-
strike-often offense. Vince Lombardi, with his power
sweeps, envisioned football at the time as a game of
incremental gains. Neither Gillman nor Davis, though,
had the patience for that. Their football axis was verti-
cal, not horizontal. You stretch defenses. Put up points.
Throw the ball early, often and down the damn field to
players like Lance Alworth (class of ’78), whom Davis
presented a contract and signed for L.A. after racing
onto the field as soon as Alworth finished his last college
game, at Arkansas. If that worldview put Davis at odds
with the traditionalists—among them, fellow Chargers
assistant Chuck Noll (class of ’93)—so be it.
As Davis explained his organizing principles to NFL
Films: “I had to have certain philosophies that had to be-
come part of what I was to do. We weren’t looking for first
downs. We didn’t want to move the chains. We wanted
touchdowns. We wanted the big play, the quick strike.”
UP THE California coast, meanwhile, the expan-
sion Oakland Raiders went through three coaches
in three years and in 1963 were looking for number 4—
someone to right a team that had just gone 1–13. They
turned to Davis. Wayne Valley, then the managing
general partner of the team’s ownership collective, later
stated, “We needed someone who wanted to win so
badly he would do anything. Everywhere I went, people
told me what a son of a bitch Al Davis was. So I figured
he must be doing something right.”
When the Raiders first offered the job, Davis, then 33,
declined, demanding a long-term deal. The team returned
with a three-year proposal and he agreed, earning AFL
coach of the year and leading Oakland to 10–4, which
persists as one of the great turnarounds in football history.
By 1966 the NFL and the AFL were locked in a pitched
battle, competing for players, the former trying to put
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