After all, it's impossible to make a commitment to excellence when you cannot commit to a head coach.
The "commitment to excellence" has been the longtime motto of Al Davis and his Oakland Raiders, but after five straight losing seasons and seven coaches in a 10-year period, excellence appears to be distant memory.
However, Davis, the Raiders' owner, strongly believes that his team's return to glory is just a season away. After firing head coach Lane Kiffin, concluding weeks of speculation on their coaching situation, I can only conclude that Davis is completely insane and needs to distance himself from the head coach hiring process entirely.
Davis -- along with his outfits (Was that a gray poncho sweatshirt under his leather Raiders jacket?) -- is living in the past. He wants to remember the Raider Nation's good ol' days, and the 1967 to 1984 era, when his team won 10 division championships and three Super Bowl rings. With John Madden at the helm, Oakland was a team of renegades and Hall of Famers.
The Raider football brand was notoriously brash, much like its owner. Davis was a swashbuckling executive and businessman with a take-no-prisoners attitude. But today, the 79-year-old Davis looks more pathetic than powerful. His team is gasping for life in a league that no longer has a distinct place for their style of football. Their aggressive attitudes are no longer uncommon, but rather practiced by much of the league. The only difference: other teams are actually successful.
Lane Kiffin was not going to lead the Raiders to a Super Bowl. Kiffin certainly would not win the AFC, and likely would not even win Oakland's division.
But in reality, what did Al Davis expect when he made the hire? Kiffin was unproven and youthful, having never paced the sideline of an NFL game before. He had been successful as an offensive coordinator at Southern California on the college level, but had not yet done anything that would warrant his presence on the list of hopefuls to fill coaching vacancies.
Davis said he "did not hire the guy he thought he was hiring." Did he think he was hiring Tony Dungy or Bill Belichick? Maybe he was confused about the coaching staff at USC and thought Pete Carroll was Kiffin. After all, Davis is getting old.
Though it's hard to imagine why the expectations for Kiffin were set so high from the beginning, Davis kept the leash short and actually drafted a resignation letter for Kiffin to sign after his first season on the job. It's unfathomable that Davis would expect Kiffin to turn around the Raiders franchise in one season.
Throughout the duration of the press conference, Davis accused Kiffin of trying to get fired, conning Raider fans and disgracing the Raider organization. Davis said that he was embarrassed to watch the Raiders play under Kiffin.
Bad news, Davis: The Raiders were an embarrassment long before Kiffin was hired. The Raiders have been an embarrassment, not just a losing team, since Rich Gannon was hurt early in the 2003 season. Davis has not only refused to allow consistency in his program in the past decade; he has also refused to allow his head coaches to make, or even contribute to, important decisions.
Kiffin strongly objected to drafting JaMarcus Russell and was never sold on Daunte Culpeper. Davis insisted on the draft selection and made sure that Culpeper saw time on the field. Though their input is almost always welcome, owners who choose their team's starting quarterback are few and far between in today's league.
Davis has also not yet let go of Kiffin's conviction to trade Randy Moss. After seeing Moss flourish again in New England, Davis has never failed to blame Kiffin for his dismissal, ignoring how emotionally discontent Moss was and how poor he was for locker room spirits.
But what is even worse than failing to see why Kiffin wanted Moss gone is the hypocrisy in Davis' irritation. Davis must have forgotten that he once held the contract of Jon Gruden in his hand. Rather than pay the money to renew the agreement, Davis instead opted to let Gruden slip away, a decision that hurt the silver and black in the following season.
Gruden led his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to a Super Bowl win over the Raiders in Super Bowl XXVII. In the Raiders organization, it appears as though a decision can only be questioned if someone other than Al Davis makes it. However, even if Davis makes the final call on something that fails, he can always just pawn the scrutiny off on someone else and fire them.
Just what was Davis' response to Kiffin's complaints about personnel decisions? Deal with it and coach the team on the field.
Defending Kiffin's coaching ability is a difficult task, because, quite frankly, he's undoubtedly a subpar NFL play caller. However, the way Davis sat at the lecturn and pointed fingers at Kiffin, essentially saying he was the reason the Raiders were terrible, is comical.
In an interview with ESPN, Kiffin said that he was actually embarrassed for Davis. Kiffin called out Davis on the letter he chose to put on a projector for all to see stating that, "Just because you put something on paper doesn't mean it's true."
Imagine Kiffin sitting in his home watching this news conference on television, having talked to Davis the night before when he was terminated. Kiffin may have been able to predict that Davis would make his firing a spectacle, but he could not have anticipated that Davis would say things that could ruin any chance Kiffin might have at coaching in the NFL again.
Maybe Kiffin deserved to be fired, and maybe Gruden, Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell and Joe Bugel were all not right for the Raiders organization. Or maybe Davis should step up and acknowledge that he does the hiring, and thus he deserves some blame.
The closest thing Davis said in his news conference to holding himself accountable was that he was conned by Kiffin. As far as I know, the selection process for hiring a head coach is not the same as choosing players for a team in pickup basketball. Davis himself is guilty of trying to con the media and Raider fans.
Al Davis has furthered the disgrace of the team owner role in the NFL. He needs to step up, hold himself at least partially responsible for the mistakes he has made in hiring and have faith in the next coach he hires.
Making an elaborate scene with the media will only hurt his search for a qualified replacement, if recent history had not already.
Above all, Davis must find consistency in his organization, as the cycle of hiring and firing coaches will not result in success.
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