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Read BadAsses

“I never felt it was us against the world; I thought we were better than the world,” Al Davis tells me, his voice soft but his words hard. His eyes turn to meet mine and bore right through me; they are not eyes to be defied, or questioned.

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“John competed in the golden era of great coaches,” says Davis. “In his 10 years he coached against many who are enshrined in the Hall of Fame: Shula, Noll, Brown, Tom Landry, George Allen, Weeb Ewbank, Bud Grant, Marv Levy.

“And remember now: this was John’s first professional head-coaching job, and he did what we could call the impossible. He won more games than he lost against every Hall of Fame coach. His total record against them was 36–16 and two ties.” I do not ask Davis whether he knew this by rote or had to look it up. I suspect the former. Just as impressive to Davis is Madden’s Monday-night domination: an astounding 11–1–1.

“Now, no question,” Davis concedes, “someone had to get those great players. But someone had to coach them. And you worked together.”

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“I was coaching at a time when you had to wear white shirts and ties,” Madden told me. “Well, you don’t have to wear white shirts and ties. Facial hair? That has nothing to do with winning or losing. Those things weren’t important to me. I didn’t give a damn. Some teams were making their decisions based on stuff like that. ‘I got to get rid of that guy because he has a mustache’? I always thought that was dumb.”

How could you not love a coach who let his players express themselves as individuals? Who saw the idiocy in thinking that conformity could instill pride or encourage camaraderie? That very freedom off the field bound the Badasses.

“Any rule or regulation on the Raiders had to do with nothing but winning,” says Mark van Eeghen. “Otherwise it was not a regulation.”

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Down in Oakland, the mantra was one for all and all for one. On Sundays, the revelry always started with the weekly post-game party, hosted by Davis, win or lose—in the earliest years, at a place called the Edgewater West Motel.

“That was one seedy place,” Villapiano says now. “I mean, this was a dive.” In a time when salaries were closer to minimum-wage than white-collar, a free, all-you-could-eat-and-drink meal was like manna from the gods. The party was as highly anticipated as the games, not just because of the generosity of Davis, but because of the chance for 40-odd families to hang and get to know each other: the neighborhood cocktail party writ large.

“But, remember, the NFL was just getting started, and these teams didn’t have a lot of money to spend,” Villapiano recalls. “The Raiders were the only team that threw a full-fledged party for all the players and their friends. And if you didn’t go, someone would be down your fucking throat. We all went, we all had a good time…and shit happened.”

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‘We want to take our first two picks and draft the best tacklers in college football. I’m tired of missing tackles.’ You can teach it and coach it, but you can’t practice live tackling. So if you can’t practice it, you better go get it. We drafted Tatum one and Villapiano two, and we never had a tackling problem after that. All you need is a couple of them, and everyone else feeds off them. He was a hell of a linebacker.”

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“I heard about Wolf long before I saw him,” Tom Flores recalls. “In camp, I’d walk by this one room where he hung out. It was always dark. All I could hear was the sound of this old Bell & Howell projector. I’d think, ‘Who’s that guy?’ No one knew what he looked like. You just heard about him. But you never saw him.”

“Ron Wolf was a one-man full-time personnel staff,” Madden says, in near reverence. “And he was the one man who could be a one-man staff. I mean, Ron Wolf knew every player everywhere. Ron Wolf’s mind was amazing. You could ask him, ‘Ron, there’s this junior wide receiver someone told me about at Alcorn,’ and he would know him. He didn’t have to go through notes and read stuff. He’d say, ‘This is who he is, and this is what he does.’ He truly had a photographic mind.”

“I was just one of those guys lucky enough to be along for the ride,” Wolf says now, and you are welcome to believe him if you want. But the consistent excellence of those Raider drafts, from the mid-’60s until he left in the late ’70s, suggests otherwise.

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“People said, ‘How do you draft a punter in the first round?’” says Madden. “Because every defensive guy wanted him because he helped the defense. Because every offensive guy wanted him because he helped the offense. And of course everyone on special teams wanted him.”

---

Guy had been standing five yards deep in his own end zone when he kicked the ball. It landed somewhere around Ole Miss’s 20, then bounced through the end zone. Officially, it was a 93-yard kick. Unofficially, the football traveled more than 120 yards before it came to rest against a fence.

This was not just a punter; this was the Roy Hobbs, The Natural, of punting, although in college his talents weren’t limited to kicking. As a defensive back, Guy intercepted 18 passes in three years at Southern Mississippi. It was during his sophomore year that he began to gain notice with his punts, as he grew to 6'4" and some quirk of kinetic leverage kicked in. By his senior year, he was an All-American.

But if he’d had his way, Guy would have been starting at safety for the Raiders—or quarterback, a position to which he was named all-state in high school in rural Georgia, where he grew up on a farm. Ray Guy was a stellar small-town athlete who happened to be too good at punting to allow him to pursue his dreams of being a full-contact guy.

“Ron Wolf told him he could play safety when he signed him,” Madden recalls. “The first day we practice, I look up and we have Guy in at safety, and I tell him to get the hell out of there. He said, ‘But Wolf told me that if I signed with you I could play safety, too.’ I told him, ‘Ron Wolf lied.’ We never had another conversation about him being a safety.”

Madden would let Guy practice with the safeties over on the side, but not in a team drill or scrimmage. He was way too valuable. “See, he was a hyper guy. He couldn’t just stand around. He’d always want to jump in and help, play defense against the receivers when you were walking through practices. He could throw the ball farther and harder than any of our quarterbacks, so then we started letting him throw the ball, which was safe, and it got his energy out of him.”

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Irons vividly remembers his first exposure to the team, as a rookie in 1970: a seminar in the Raider way of doing things. He’d expected professionalism. He just hadn’t expected the level of commitment he encountered. “It was my first practice. Madden blew the whistle, calls the whole team up: ‘Great practice, guys. Go get some lunch. See you this afternoon.’ I felt good. I take off running to the locker room, and suddenly he called me back: ‘Irons, where you going? Turn around and look at where your teammates are.’”

None of his teammates had left the field. They’d all stuck around to get in some extra work. “Biletnikoff had his 20 or 40 balls with Stabler, working on his timing. Tatum and those guys are working extra on pass coverage. I was the only one going into the locker room.”

That was the day when Irons discovered another key to the Badass’ success at their craft: they took it more seriously because they seriously enjoyed the game. Football was far more than a job. The lesson stuck with Irons the rest of his career. “After that, I was out there with them, every practice, after morning and after noon, for 30 minutes at least, working on blitzing, working on shedding blocks, on wrapping up the tackle, on covering guys out of the backfield. Little things you don’t get a chance to work on during practice, right down to things like keeping your feet in bounds, tiptoeing on the sidelines. You’d always get a couple of other guys there to help you improve. That was just the Raider way.”

“Guys would always help each other out,” says Madden. “Branch would help Shell on speed rushes. Or if a defensive back wanted more work to prepare for a guy who had a good inside move, someone would stay after to help the DB get his inside foot up. During the regular season, you can’t get a lot of repetition, so that’s where they’d work on the extra stuff. Biletnikoff would stay out ’til no one was left to throw to him. Then he’d use the Jugs machine. But everyone did stuff like that. Guys would always practice after practice. They enjoyed it. They had fun doing it; that was the key. Because they were all friends. They loved each other.”

Irons would be a stalwart at linebacker until he was traded to the Browns. Eventually he would be named one of the top 100 Browns of all time. But today, it’s not Cleveland he wants to discuss: “Even if you go to the Cleveland Browns, you’re always a Raider. Once a Raider, always a Raider. That’s a beautiful legacy. We were the class of the league.”

I've actually read two books in the past couple of months. "Badasses" by Peter Richmond:

https://www.amazon.com/Badasses-Legend-Maddens-Oakland-Raiders/dp/0061834319

and "Just Win, Baby: Al Davis and His Raiders" by Glenn Dickey:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151465800/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and I also have on my shelf 'Slick: The Silver and Black Life of Al Davis' by Mark Ribowsky. I have not started this one yet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0026025000/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

​

Badasses covers the team mostly through John Madden's years up through 1976 and a few words through the '78 season, I believe. It was actually a really good book if you want to know more about how the Raiders established themselves and finally broke through after losing the eventual champions for so many years. I loved it. Absolutely one of the best football books I've ever read and a key to understanding the establishment of what it meant to 'be a Raider'. It was published in 2013, so it's certainly a bit more recent than either Al Davis biography.


Dickey's book is centered strictly around Al Davis with plenty of anecdotes, mostly from the viewpoint of an old beat writer. It felt a little light at times but makes for a great continuation from what 'Badasses' established. From memory, it really focuses on the more high profile incidents involving Davis including the feud with Rozelle around the Raider's move to LA and it does a GREAT job of highlighting the negotiations between Davis and Oakland and Davis and LA. You have to keep in mind that the Raiders wouldn't return to Oakland until 1995 and this book was published in 1991.


I believe Richmond cited Ribowsky's book quite a bit in 'Badasses'. As mentioned, I haven't read it yet, but it looks a bit more dense than Dickey's book. It seems like it was released at the same time as Dickey's book and perhaps was a bit of competition between book companies based on the fact they were both released about the same time.


As far as being 'hit' pieces, 'Badasses certainly isn't, as it is centered around the team more than Davis himself. Dickey's book was fair enough and reads like an Oakland beat writer wrote it. Nothing that really made me stop and think, 'Well, that was a unnecessarily harsh.'

Minimalist Wallets (sometimes also called "Slim Wallets" - but they're not always the same thing) are even better.

You can hold ALL your needed cards and even some cash (if you actually still carry cash around..) and it takes up way less space - you can literally just fit them in either your front pocket, or better yet, the small extra front pocket present on almost all pants (the one that we never seem to actually make use of, despite it being there).

The Radix One is one that's a really great one, very slick, modern, sleek and easy to use (here's a non-affiliate link to it on Amazon) - I have nothing to do with them, it's just a nice wallet. I've never had a single issue with any cash I may put in it (ex: going to an event) falling out - the tension and friction from the band holds it in just fine.

Get one and never look back. Seriously. You'll wonder why you lugged around a bulky, clunky wallet all those years. It also has the bonus feature of being way less likely to be pick-pocketed since 1) pick-pocketers generally aim for traditional wallets, which are generally in your back pocket, and 2) somehow managing to pull these minimalist wallets out of your small front pocket without you noticing would be much harder to do (they'd have to get right in front of you, generally lift your shirt up a bit, and pull it out of a front pocket which has a higher tension band/seam going into it).

You'll also stop fading and wearing down your pants where your old wallets used to be.

Do You Love Football?: Winning with Heart, Passion, and Not Much Sleep

Just ordered a copy.

I am guessing/hoping that Vegas will have plenty of packaging deals that include Raiders tickets.

Until then you can still get somewhat affordable tickets by buying way early and sitting in a not so great seat. I would drive to the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station and take BART to the Coliseum Station. Bring your rolling cooler and enjoy some tailgating. I usually bring a good amount of snacks and water inside the stadium and I've never been hassled about it. (The cooler may not make it inside but you could also have a backpack. It's also fairly easy to find an RV group that will let you stash your cooler until after the game.)

Good luck try to catch them in Oakland so you can just say you did.

I'm reading a great book right now it's called Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden's Oakland Raiders by Peter Richmond, and it's fucking awesome and a great read. I'd totally recommend it.

Heres a good one:
Americas Game the Super bowl Champs 1976 Oakland Raiders

http://www.amazon.com/NFL-Americas-Game-RAIDERS-Super/dp/B001CRD5SY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1456790507&sr=8-2&keywords=americas+game+1976+raiders

This is what I picked up a couple months ago, super happy with it. OP's looks similar, not 100% sure if its the same though

The entire game is on this Raider complete history DVD and a great watch. I highly recommend it.

I have some ideas

Stadium light up sweater

Raiders Zubaz Zebra pants

A subscription to The Athletic The Athletic is a new, premium sports news outlet. It has more in-depth coverage and well written articles than you’d find in the paper or on most sports related sites. The Athletic has national and regional coverage (including the Bay Area).

Funko Pop vinyl figures are cool. For example, Bo Jackson

A framed print of the stadium or framed memorabilia of some sort.


NFLShop, Fanatics, and Raider Image are good sites to buy Raider gear from. I know that Dick’s Sporting Goods and Big5 generally have some stuff in-store too.

Older than my son. 1986. Haha. I have it on audiobook. I would also like an original print of this to go with my copy of Badasses.

So much of my memorabilia has been lost in moves, or destroyed by lack of care and time.

I wish I could go back and vacuum seal my stuff and bury it somewhere to protect it from my old careless self.

Edit: formatting error and also: Snake

66 left, we better get on it

This is pretty good and written by Howie Long:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Football-For-Dummies-4E-Howie-Long/dp/1118012615

I wish he would of issued a statement as to why he took Umcka. Did he take it as cold medicine like it's sold by Nature's Way on Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Way-Umcka-Original-Alcohol/dp/B00185OHAK

Or did he take it consistently when he wasn't even sick knowing it would give him some sort of advantage?

If the latter -- you gotta be real careful with that shit or things like this can happen.

Ha! This is totally the band! I just found the the CD on Amazon. I remember this tracklist like it was yesterday. Thank you so much!

Snake is another good one. Autobiography of Kenny Stabler, our qb in the 70s. Great read, very insightful, and funny as all hell.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074P89F8K/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_gKRODb2JA7T15

I love this one. I get looks for wearing it in public.

i've had this version of monopoly for something like 8 years now. my dad got it at shop that sold sports trading cards. definitely my preferred Monopoly skin. close 2nd is the Marvel board i picked up from Comic-Con.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UPJTO6C/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_49ysyb9R3DRPS

It's actually really nice quality. I wore it to a meeting with our vp on Monday as well

Yep. My favorites:

https://www.amazon.com/Funko-POP-NFL-Action-Figure/dp/B01EUSBJDO.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01EUSBO7K/ref=pd_aw_fbt_21_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=9J754X51FEGJS410P6MF

Thanks!

I found it on amazon in case anyone else is looking for it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1607301229/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A31Q3R4VEAJYPZ

This would be a good start then.

Ah, the Mr Burns of the NFL... Ever read Badasses? http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0061834319/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1404521045&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40

What about the Pop! figures? There's a Carr and Coop; thought I'd seen Mack but I cannot find it now.

https://www.amazon.com/Funko-POP-NFL-Action-Figure/dp/B01EUSBJDO

https://www.amazon.com/Funko-POP-NFL-Cooper-Action/dp/B01EUSBO7K

Here you go.

First off Mr. Kluwe, please go read Badasses to get a feel of where the legacy of the Raiders began. Get insight into the insane world of the Snake, The Assassin, and The Ghost. Only when you come from that place can you begin to bleed the silver and black.

To tackle your questions:

1. In my opinion the division hate goes in this order. Broncos, Chiefs, Chargers. However, for myself, Phillip Rivers is the most loathsome individual in our division. If you get close to him tell him that Charles said he is a douche. We used to really hate the Steelers because of all the 70's playoff games that includes the scam of the Immaculate Reception. That has been waning. I'm am largely of the opinion that every true Raider fan should hate the 49ers and those rooting for them in the playoffs last year should get shanked.
   
   
2. You are not risk of getting stabbed. 49er fans don't stab. We stab. That is a clear distinction that needs to be made. If you walk around in a Raiders hat in SF you may notice people get out of your way as you walk down the street. This is especially effective if you have a teardrop tattoo.
   
   
3. I think stabbed and shanked are both completely appropriate. To put it another way, you stab someone but you get shanked. I would argue that shived is more of a prison stabbing, but considering the large number of Raider fans in prison, I can see how this one would catch on.
   
   Last tip, your first regular season game at home walk to the Black Hole. Keep your helmet on, this is important. The with arms wide lean into the rugged arms of men with painted faces and liquor on their breath. I wish that I got that experience.