Al Davis (at left), the owner and general manager for the Oakland Raiders from 1972 until his death on Oct. 8, 2011, affected WAY more than just sports. Eminem, EA Sports, President Barack Obama, Rodney King. What do they all have in common? Al Davis started them all. Well, maybe he didn’t start them all. But he played a major role in the initial development of each, changing American society as we know it.
HIP-HOP/RAP: Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Tupac. Watch the 30 for 30 documentary produced by Ice Cube. Called “Straight Outta LA”. He admits, straight up, that if Al Davis hadn’t moved the Raiders to LA, his rap career would have never taken off. “The hood” had no identity, no unity. Gangsta rap’s identity was the Raiders, according to Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and rap pioneer Ice T.
Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s infamous “gang”, NWA, strictly wore Raiders gear in public. That was their theme, their gang colors. “Our identities, the Raiders and NWA, were one in the same,” Ice Cube said. NWA created gangsta rap, and gangsta rap’s colors were silver and black, as seen at right.
Then the snowball starts to take shape. With no Raiders rebel attitude to adopt, NWA could have faltered. Without NWA, we may not have Dr. Dre. Take Dr. Dre out of the equation and there’s no Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and the highest selling solo artist ever, Eminem.
AMERICA'S RACE RELATIONS. So we have established that without Al Davis’s hand in creating and marketing the Raiders as America’s “rebels” and moving them to LA, we would not have Dr. Dre, and therefore all his protégés, including Eminem.
Eminem’s impact on American society, whether for good or for evil, has been incredibly profound and undeniable. Generation Y’s (today’s 25 to 40-year-olds) “White America” would not have been comfortable voting for a black president if an outspoken white boy hadn’t pushed us into black culture nearly 15 years ago. Martin Luther King Jr. brought political equality for African-Americans. But no legislation could force a generation of white kids to suddenly accept blacks in public leadership roles. Such accomplishments had to be ushered in by a black knight in white skin, as if to say to the younger generation “Hey, your parents may disagree with this, but I promise these folks won’t bite.”
Abraham Lincoln was that knight. So was Branch Richey. So was Eminem. Al Davis was that knight for football leadership.
Regardless of how you feel about Eminem’s ultimate role in society, whether he damaged teenage minds more than he blended races, you cannot deny his impact on society. And without Al Davis thwarting NWA and Dr. Dre into the spotlight, there would be no Eminem. Of course, without the LA Raiders, we also wouldn’t have the terrible movies that Ice Cube produced. So there’s that.
RODNEY KING RIOTS. Also portrayed in “Straight Outta LA”, the Rodney King riots were a direct result of growing gang violence and anti-authority attitudes in LA. And the growing violence was a direct result of NWA and the city’s identity as outlaw rebels, an identity they pushed with the Raiders. As one LA native and hip-hop history expert noted, it was a perfect storm that created the Rodney King riots, a delicious fruit smoothie blend of gang hostility, anti-police attitudes as provoked by NWA, minority divisiveness, and a face/logo/identity marketed by the country’s outlaws: Al Davis’s Raiders. Take any ingredient from the King Smoothie and it never exists.
EA SPORTS. Quick, name any game created by EA Sports. I asked my mom to do that – a woman who has never watched a full football game in her life, nor has she ever played any video game. First word to come out of her mouth was “Madden.” She then proved her lack of knowledge in the subject by continuing with “basketball, baseball, and I think they make football games, too.” (Thanks Mom, but Madden IS the football game.)
Electronic Arts’ first signature game was Madden NFL Football. Madden skyrocketed EA’s first subdivision, EA Sports, into national popularity. It currently ranks 6th among the all-time best-selling video game franchises in the world. John Madden oversaw all aspects of the game. If it had his name on it, he wanted it to be the best. It later went on to dominate the video game landscape. TV series have even chronicled the lives of the best Madden players in the world.
Who is John Madden? Al Davis’s biggest diamond in the rough. (Madden is shown below lighting an "eternal flame" in honor of Davis at the Raiders first home game following Davis's death.)
Before 1969, nobody had ever heard of John Madden. At 32 years old, he had never played a down of professional football. He had never been a head coach. Not even a defensive coordinator. He had been the Raiders’ linebackers coach for just two years, a position he had never even played in college or high school.
But Al Davis saw potential in the witty, fiery Madden.
Electronic Arts may still be in business without the Madden franchise, but possibly not. John Madden himself created a lot of that game, demanding that it have real plays and real playbooks, a full 11-man field, and realistic ratios of successes, despite the EA honchoes’ disagreement. Without Al Davis, though, John Madden would have never been given a chance as a head coach and no one at EA would have demanded such lofty expectations for a 1980s video game, which likely would have killed the franchise, and possibly even the company, in its infancy.
SO WHAT?
When Al Davis created the infamous Raiders shield in 1963, he had no idea what it would come to represent: danger, violence, rebellion, evil. ESPN anchors love to make fun of the Raiders while they hide behind an LCD TV screen because they know what would happen if they said anything ill to a member of the Raider Nation in person. Al Davis, the Original Gangster, may have affected the world in a lot of negative ways, but there are some positives to be had, too. Regardless, his legend extends far beyond the scope of Sunday’s NFL lineup.
