He's holding a press conference for the first time in 2 years. Since Sean Payton is going to be announced tomorrow, I expect that this press conference will deal more with the "State of the Union" in Raider Nation.
Love him or hate him, you must respect him. Love him or hate him, you're going to miss him when he's gone. The 74 year old Hall of Fame coach and owner with 50 years of professional football experience sat down and opened the microphones to anybody who wanted to ask him questions today. There aren't many *owners* in professional sports that will take on all questions from the media for an hour, broadcast nationally. This guy didn't buy the Raiders after making his money in Home Depot or some other business and then later in life decide that he wants to be an NFL owner. HE BUILT THE RAIDERS FROM THE GROUND UP. Al Davis has no peers in my opinion. If there is a pantheon of football gods, Al Davis is certainly one of them. He did great today, and I'm very confident that the Raiders will be back at the top of the NFL before he's gone. Someone asked him if Sean Payton would be his new coach. Al said that he hadn't made a decision yet. I believe him, since (I talked about this in a previous post) he usually interviews the final candidates at least 3 or 4 times, and it usually takes several weeks from the moment the previous coach was fired. Why did Dennis Green and some others decide to take themselves out of the running for the Raiders head coach position? Al explained that those guys and their agents refused to wait that long. Al won't be hustled into a decision, he leaves no stone unturned when deciding the fate of his team for the next 4 or 5 years. Now, Sean Payton's camp is saying that Al formally offered him a job. Funny thing is, there hasn't been an official announcement by the Raiders confirming the hiring of any coach yet. I think that it's now obvious who is telling the truth. Al made it abundantly clear today that he does not want to hire a coach who is primarily a disciplinarian type. Jokingly, he said,"I know I wouldn't like working for a disciplinarian". He's looking to hire a coach who is younger, inspired, and knows offense. I kind of expected him to say that. Why did he fire Callahan? "Bill lost track of what rules that we were going to follow". He explained it a little more, and it will probably make it into a paper tomorrow. Basically, Callahan was a stickler about some rules, but others he blew off. That not only rubbed Davis the wrong way, but the entire team as well. Does anyone remember the incident that happened at the last game of the season with Garner and C-Wood? Callahan directly defied what Davis asked him to do when he suspended those two for that game. Basically, the punishment did not fit the crime, but Callahan was the only one who didn't see it that way. Earlier this season, Callahan told his players,"I didn't ask for this job, it was given to me." Callahan will make a fine college football coach. He's really into discipline, and is brilliant in the technical aspects of football - X's and O's. Pro football, on the other hand, is not for him. In closing, I must note that there is this guy named Ralph Barbieri who has a spot on a local sports talk radio station. I catch his show every day while he's talking beside Brent Jones and a couple other guys. The guy is constantly spitting venom at Al Davis and the Raiders with all of the Bay Area listening. As I left the place where I watched the Al Davis news conference (props to the NFL Network for airing that) during my late lunch today, I immediately turned the radio on in my car to hear the aftermath. There was a group of about 5 people talking about the Al Davis press conference and one of them was Ralph Barbieri. Ralph immediatly starts bitching, saying (in his whiny, nasally sounding voice akin to Cartman on South Park) that "nobody had the balls to ask the question that I wanted to hear somebody ask Al Davis..." One of the other guys pipes in and asks,"Well, Ralph, why didn't you go to the press conference and ask him, we all did." About 5 seconds of silence followed while a different person changed the subject. LOFL!!! I guess you just had to be there.
