The Criminal Element

I read a fun article the other night, from the October issue of Playboy, about the glory years of the Oakland Raiders during the 1970s. It really took me back to the time when I loved pro football.

Titled "Bad to the Bone," it's by Kevin Cook, in the form of an oral history, straight from the lips of most of the principles involved (except for Al Davis, the owner and mad genius). "Welcome to Oakland, home of the Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Oakland Raiders--sometimes all three in the same person" was what the players used to say. A sign of Raider Rules hung in the lockerroom reading "Rule 1: Cheating is encouraged. Rule 2: See rule number one." The team was made up of guys nicknamed Dr. Death, the Assassin, the Snake, Ghost and the Mad Stork. George Carlin said, "I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents and fuck-ups, because they have lots of penalties, fights and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked." Chuck Noll referred them to them as the league's "criminal element."

They partied hard and imbibed in several questionable substances, including steroids (they were first NFL team to use them regularly), black-market growth hormones made from the brains of cadavers, horse testosterone, gray amphetamine tablets nicknamed "rat turds."

The team may have stretched the rules of the game, but they were tough sons of bitches, and none was tougher than the center, Jim Otto, number double-zero. He took every snap for 308 games in a row (including long snaps), fifteen years worth. He played with broken fingers, ribs, a broken jaw, kicked-in teeth and pneumonia. He had his nose broken more than 20 times, and had more than fifty surgeries, twelve knee replacements, two artificial shoulders and then, in 2007, finally had his right leg amputated. He said, "I understood the risks when I played. It was worth it."

The memories of some of those games are crystal clear in my memory. There was the playoff game in 1972 that ended with the most famous play in NFL history--"The Immaculate Reception." I saw that game live, but the article reminded me of the details. Ken "the Snake" Stabler had run in a score to put the Raiders up 7-6 with less than two minutes to go. The Steelers, who had never won a playoff game in their forty year history, had a fourth and ten on their own forty, 22 seconds to play. Terry Bradshaw dropped back to pass and just missed being sacked. He heaved a pass to Frenchy Fuqua, who was simultaneously slammed by Jack "the Assassin" Tatum. The ball caromed off them and Steeler running back Franco Harris, trailing the play, plucked the ball in the air just before it hit the ground and ran untouched into the end zone. To this day the Raiders claim that the ball never touched Tatum. In those days, a pass could not legally be touched consecutively by two offensive players, so in that instance the pass would have been ruled incomplete. But the referees, in a bit of prescience, used replay--even though there was no official use of replay then--to get the right call.

The following year the Raiders won one of the most exciting playoff games ever over the two-time defending champion Dolphins, but then lost to the Steelers in the AFC championship. The Raiders would go to six AFC championships in the decade, but only one won, the year they went to the Super Bowl and routed the Vikings. That was coach John Madden's only title, certainly one of the main reasons it took him so long to get inducted into the Hall of Fame. Madden, who is known today as a garrulous broadcaster and TV pitchman for hardware stores and fungicide spray, was a far different kind of cat as a coach. He dressed like the manager of a supermarket, his ID-tag hanging visibly from his belt, stalking the sideline like the worst sort of gym teacher. I remember delighting in watching his expression when the team suffered setbacks. Many were startled to discover his avuncular nature when he went to the TV booth.

As I recall, I mostly rooted against the Raiders, as I have never been partial to black-hats. As a mild-mannered kid who was frequently bullied, they symbolized the worst of bullydom, winning with a villainous, mustache-twirling style. It was Tatum whose tackle paralyzed Stingley (granted it was a legal hit) and then there was the play against San Diego in 1978. Stabler was seemingly sacked on the last play of the game, but he rolled the ball forward, where it was kicked and then pounced on by a Dave "Ghost" Casper in the end zone. This became known as the "Holy Roller" play and has since been outlawed the NFL rules.

But god they were a colorful team, and to me they are a significant reason why football was so much more interesting in those days. They say that the music you like most is what was popular when you were twelve, and it may be that way with sports. When I was a kid I could devote more of my attention to sports, and knew all the players on all the teams, and watched the playoff games with laser-like intensity. Now my interest is mostly casual, and it's rare for me to watch a game from start to finish. I find the NFL nowadays to be a corporate TV show that has lost much of the spirit of the early days. The Raiders, for goodness' sake, had George Blanda as their placekicker, a guy who was a rookie in 1949--he was an actual link to the pre-TV days.

Also, the game was played by normal-sized men in those days. Consider the stats on the Raider offensive line in those years: Dave Dalby was 255, Art Shell, 290, Gene Upshaw 265. Today a decent college team doesn't have a lineman under 300 pounds, and they're fast. Players nowadays, whether by evolution or pharmaceuticals, are something more than people--they're like hybrids of men and bulls. Watching them clash just isn't as interesting. Today football seems to be all about diva wide receivers who complain that they don't get the ball enough. One wishes that Terrell Owens could be transported back in time so he could get clotheslined by Ted "the Mad Stork" Hendricks.

The Raiders won a couple more Super Bowls under Tom Flores, but the free spirits of the Madden years were largely gone--their 1980 championship team had only 11 holdovers from the '77 team, and included a sojourn to Los Angeles for a few years. After their Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay a few years ago the bottom fell out, and they've become the joke of the league. But Carlin, not long before he died, said, "Someday the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome white heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits."