NFL maverick, face of Raiders

Al Davis, 82, the renegade owner of the Oakland Raiders whose battles with the National Football League gave him an outlaw image matching that of his silver-and-black-clad team, died Saturday.

The Raiders announced his death on their website, without providing any further details.

While imploring his players on the field to "Just win, baby," Davis ran some of football's biggest sideshows.

He first faced off with the NFL in the 1960s when, as the hard-charging commissioner of the rival American Football League, he escalated a tug-of-war for top players. The two leagues merged months into his tenure.

As owner of the Raiders, the team he coached as far back as 1963, he moved the franchise out of Oakland and to Los Angeles, then back to Oakland 13 years later, in a bid for a better stadium.

The Raiders won Super Bowls in 1976, 1980, and 1983 as well as 15 AFC West titles during an extended reign as one of the league's best teams from 1963 to 2002. More recently they were among the league's worst, winning 29 games and losing 83 from 2003 through 2009, before posting an 8-8 record in 2010. Oakland has a 2-2 record this season going into Sunday's game in Houston.

Forbes magazine estimated the franchise's value at $761 million in 2011, higher than only one other team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, in the 32-team league.

"History will dictate what my legacy is," Davis said in an interview for Straight Outta L.A., a documentary directed by rapper Ice Cube for ESPN in 2010. "Maverick is fine, 'cause I am. Outlaw I'm not. But if believing in what you believe and sticking up for your rights and sticking up for the rights of others from time to time - do it your way. Don't let the culture tell you what do. That's being a Raider."

Regarding the team's recent run of ineptitude, he said, "We slipped tremendously, and it's my fault. I'm the custodian. I'm the Raiders, at least the face of it."

Davis was inducted in 1992 into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which hailed him as the only person to work in professional football as personnel assistant, scout, assistant coach, head coach, general manager, commissioner and team owner. "I love the game, I love the league, I love my team," he said at his induction ceremony.

In 1960, he coached receivers for the Los Angeles Chargers in their inaugural season in the AFL. Before the 1963 season he became head coach and general manager of the Raiders, who had won just nine games and lost 33 in their first three years. Davis turned the team around, winning AFL coach of the year honors after a 10-4 season.

AFL owners named him commissioner in April 1966. He pledged to fight the bigger, more established NFL for top players and declared himself uninterested in merging the two leagues.

Within months, though, back-channel negotiations among owners of the two leagues produced a merger agreement and, in January 1967, the first game between NFL and AFL champions - what would later become known as Super Bowl I.

Davis, "feeling betrayed and made to look foolish" by the merger, according to biographer Mark Ribowsky, returned to the Raiders as part-owner and managing general partner. The team earned a spot in Super Bowl II, losing to the Green Bay Packers.

During the next two decades, Davis first outmaneuvered one partner and then outlived another to become the franchise's majority owner and sole general partner. His ascendancy coincided with that of the team. The Raiders cruised through the 1976 season on the way to their first championship in Super Bowl XI, winning again in 1980 (over the Eagles) and 1983.