Few owners in the history of the National Football League made more of an impact on the league as a whole than legendary Raiders front man Al Davis, who guided the Silver and Black as both managing general partner and general manager for nearly 40 years until his death Saturday at the age of 82.
Among the many areas in which Davis was well ahead of his time was in the hiring of minorities into prominent positions within the organization. Davis was the first owner to hire a Latino as head coach, naming Tom Flores, who would win two Super Bowls for Davis, coach in 1979, and was the first owner to name a female CEO when he hired Amy Trask for that position in 1997.
Davis also broke the head coaching "color barrier" in the NFL, naming the first African-American head coach of the modern era when he appointed Art Shell to lead the Raiders in 1989.
Shell was an eight-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman with the Raiders who had been a part of two championship teams, and with the team then in Los Angeles and attempting to right itself after the Mike Shanahan debacle, Davis likely saw the hiring of Shell as a way to link the Los Angeles Raiders back to their Oakland glory days. While Davis understood the implications of the hiring, he also, as always, was most concerned about winning.
As he told the New York Times shortly after Shell's hiring, "''If this is an historic occasion, it will really only be meaningful and historic if he is a great success.''
Shell did have some success with the Raiders, going 54-38 and winning AFC Coach of the Year honors in 1990, but he was let go after the 1994 season. He later returned to coach the Raiders for one disastrous season in 2006.
However, the true of impact of Al Davis hiring Art Shell 22 years ago wasn't felt on the field in Los Angeles or Oakland, but instead across the NFL in the years that followed, and that impact can be measured in the names of the African-American coaches who have made their marks on the National Football since then. Coaches such as Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin, Dennis Green and Leslie Frazier, the former two of which won Super Bowls, owe at least a bit of their success to the trail Al Davis blazed.
Al Davis was many things, but he was certainly never afraid to buck the conventional attitudes that prevailed at a certain time and do things his own way, and the National Football League will be forever better for that.
St. Louis Cardinals Washington Nationals Jonathan Albaladejo Andrew Brackman A.J. Burnett Steve Garrison
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