by Mike Siani
One night Phil returned the favor to John. They were together at a local bar when Matuszak cracked a joke that the bartender did not find very funny.
“Phil and I were with a couple of the Raiders and we walked into a bar that was normally popular. That night, the place was nearly empty. We were standing around when I looked at the bartender and made a joke.
“‘Hey, this place is really jumping tonight, isn’t it?’
“Not hysterically funny, but a harmless statement, right? Apparently this guy didn’t agree. He reached behind the bar and pulled out a 9mm pistol. He aimed the damn thing about twelve inches from my head and looked crazy enough to shoot me!
“‘There isn’t a judge in the world that would convict me for blowing away an asshole like you,’ he said
“I literally started to sweat. The last place I wanted to die was some bar in Oakland but I wasn’t about to let this guy get away with this. Just as quickly as he’d blown up, the maniac suddenly cooled down. When he lowered the gun, Phil said, “John, it’s not worth it. Let’s just go.” “Thanks to Phil, I lived to see another day.”
CARL WEATHERS
Before he was known as Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies, Carl Weathers was a 6’ 2”, 220-pound linebacker out of San Diego State. Undrafted, he tried out with the Raiders in 1970 and made the team. Even though he only played for two years, he made his mark with the franchise.
“One night at Al’s Cactus Room, I got talking to a fellow rookie named Carl Weathers, a linebacker from San Diego State,” said Stabler. He was 220 pounds of sculptured muscle. Carl, a reserve linebacker, was real quick and a really tough hitter on special teams.
“‘Carl, you’re doing a helluva job on kick coverage,’ I said.
“‘That’s my game for now,’ he said. ‘I like to be the first one downfield.’
“‘A tough job.’
“‘Yeah, and I’m only gonna do it one more year if I can’t play linebacker, too’” he said. ‘This game is not my life’s work. I’m gonna be an actor.’
“Carl Weathers gave us one more year, then went into acting and finally hit it big playing Apollo Creed in the Rocky series. It’s no doubt his height helped him win the role opposite Sylvester Stallone, who is only five-eight or so. I just wish he had a better shot at linebacker with us because he had that mean streak in him that you need to be a good ball player.”
NEMIAH WILSON
Nemiah Wilson was a 6’ 0”, 165-pound defensive back out of Grambling State, who was traded by Denver to the Raiders in 1968.
Monte Johnson was just a clean-cut kid out of Nebraska.
“I was drafted in the second round of the ’73 draft. Coming in from Nebraska, Bob Devaney was my coach and Tom Osborne was an assistant. Our team was disciplined and structured. You said ‘Yessir’ to the coaches.
“I remember one day sitting in the Raiders training room and one of our defensive backs, Nemiah Wilson, was on the phone cursing the person he was talking to. I asked someone, ‘Who in the world is he talking to?’ They said, ‘Al Davis.’ I practically fell off the bench!”
RON WOLF
In 1963, Ron Wolf began his career as a scout for the then AFL’s Oakland Raiders. In 1972 he was the Player Personnel Manager for the Oakland Raiders of the NFL. According to Wolf, “The 1972 Oakland Raider draft was the best by far.
“We never had any restrictions on what program they would come from. We were trying to find football players. It didn’t matter where they were or what their level of competition was. It was how good they were.”
Coach Tom Flores had heard about Wolf long before ever seeing him.
“In camp, I’d walk by this one room where he hung out. It was always dark. All I could hear was the sound of this old Bell & Howell projector. I’d think, ‘Who’s that guy?’ No one knew what he looked like. You just heard about him. But you never saw him.”
According to John Madden, Ron Wolf was a one-man, full time, personnel staff.
“And he was the one man who could be a one man staff. I mean, Ron Wolf knew every player everywhere. Ron Wolf’s mind was amazing. You could ask him, ‘Ron, there’s this junior wide receiver someone told me about at Alcorn,’ and he would know him. He didn’t have to go through notes and read stuff. He’d say, ‘This is who he is, and this is what he does.’ He truly had a photographic mind.”
Wolf just considered himself lucky.
“I was just one of those guys lucky enough to be along for the ride and you are welcome to believe John if you want.
“Al had this desire to always find a sleeper. Someone no one really knew about. We hit with a couple of them. We always tried to pick the best player for the Raiders. There wasn’t anything like need for position or that type of thing. To be perfectly honest, what Al Davis did was design that team in his mold. Those of us who were there can take some credit, but really and truly, with the exception of Lamonica, those were all his trades—from Willie Brown to Ted Hendricks. I look back at the moves he made, and they were remarkable moves.”
NICKNAMES
Nicknames were an important part of Raider life.
“Getting your nickname was a sign that you’d finally been accepted into the club,” said Tatum. “For example, most of the guys called Coach Madden ‘Big Red.’ Madden was a burly guy with red hair, but for some reason Skip called him ‘Pinky.’
“No one is given a nickname; one must earn his title, even Skip. Most of the time we let ourselves go at training camp. We hardly shaved and we never wore fancy clothes. After all, nobody was going to see us except the coaches and maybe the Queen. And who wanted to look good for her?
“One day, Skip was walking over to the practice field looking the way he thought a Raiders athlete should look. His appearance was bad even by Raiders training camp standards. Someone said that Skip looked as though he was coming back from one of his frequent trips to Mars and all points beyond. Bob Brown, our big offensive tackle, saw Skip coming up the path and jumped back ten steps and said, ‘Damn, Skip, you look like death warmed over, swallowed down whole, and spit back out.’ Skip looked terrible, but the next day he looked even worse. After a week of letting himself go, Skip earned the nickname ‘Dr. Death.’
“Everyone who’s been through the wars has a nickname. My friends called me ‘The Reverend,’ not ‘The Assassin.’ They knew that I was a saintly person off the field.
“George Atkinson was ‘The Weasel.’ George got himself into impossible situations but had a knack for weaseling his way out.
“Some of the guys liked to use their mouths a lot. Gene Upshaw, our All-Pro guard, was ‘The Pelican Jaw.’ He fancied himself a politician and kept his jaw moving while talking about the issues. Dave Rowe liked to hear himself talk, too. We called him ‘Radio Rowe.’
“All-Pro wide receiver Cliff Branch ran the hundred in 9.2 seconds. Naturally, Cliff was ‘The Rabbit.’
“Neal Colzie, our punt return specialist, thought he was a ladies man. We called him ‘Sweet Pea.’
“Dave Casper was ‘The Ghost.’ Dave was the whitest white person I had ever seen. At the opposite end of the color spectrum was ‘Black Angus.’ Football fans knew him as All-Pro tackle, Art Shell.
“Mark van Eeghen isn’t black, but his kinky Afro hairstyle started the rumor about his mother running off with a black man. Most of the time we called Mark ‘Black Blood,’ but if he didn’t crack a smile with that nickname, we came back with ‘Bundini Brown, Jr.’ Skip said that Bundini and Mark looked alike.
“Clarence Davis is another man with two nicknames. Most of the time, we referred to him as ‘C. D.,’ but the bigger guys on the team called him ‘The Militant Midget.’ C. D. is only about five-feet nine, and when people get on him about being short, he started making threats about the little people taking over the world and shooting everyone over five-feet ten.
“If you’re going to have nicknames, you must hit Al Davis with one, too. Everyone did call Al a variety of different names behind his back,
but no one said anything to his face.
“As the general manager, Al was the man who controlled the contracts and the money. It’s not that anyone treated Al like a special person, because he really wasn’t, and never put on any airs, but the players had this unwritten law to simply ignore the man. Treat him like he wasn’t there until it was time for contract talks.
“But one night Skip forgot his wallet in the locker room and we drove back to pick it up. Al was in the weight room working out with his skinny arms. Skip started blasting on Al’s physique and it was a heavy scene. Al responded with, ‘Skip, we’re both the same size. You wear a size 44 suit and so do I.’
“The next day at practice, to prove his point, Al came out dressed in a suit, size 44. Seeing how Al is more at home in a size 40, the jacket and pants fit a little loose. That’s all Skip needed. Skip ran over and grabbed Al by the seat of the pants and started poking fun of the baggy suit. Skip was carrying on something terrible, and before long everyone was on the ground laughing, including Al. Finally, after Skip had nearly tugged Al’s pants off, he blurted out, ‘El Bago!’
“And that’s how Al Davis got his nickname.”
SUPERSTITIONS
Superstitions are a part of every Superstitions NFL team. The Raiders were no different. Here Jack talks about the superstitious nature of the team, their coach, and their owner. The Raiders were strong believers in ‘luck’.
“I knew that coaches and players alike believed in luck, and Al Davis, John Madden, and the Raiders were no exception to that rule. The only trouble was that the Raiders carried their luck charms and superstitions a little too far. I’m talking about Coach Madden and Al Davis for the most part, because they really seemed to sail off the deep end when it came to mumbo-jumbo.
“The superstitious phases of Raider mania hit the hardest in 1973, when fifteen or sixteen of the guys wanted to play in a golf tournament instead of practicing. Coach Madden understood, I guess, because the guys went golfing. Then, on Sunday, we smashed the New York Giants, 42–0. That just happened to be the most points we scored all season and the only shutout our defense recorded. After that, Coach Madden encouraged the guys to go golfing and even started a special team golfing tournament.
“The golf tournament was simple compared to the many other superstitious beliefs the Raiders held on to. It’s just throwing salt over your left shoulder for good luck (Al Davis did it all the time) or the team not traveling on the thirteenth day of the month. As time went by, superstitions included eating the same pregame meal (if we won the last game), staying at the same hotel, and coaches wearing the same clothes. If we lost, then everything changed.
“In Denver, we always stayed at the Continental Hotel and we always beat Denver and we always won our division championship. I guess the Denver management also has some superstitious blood in them because they took over the Continental and moved us out. The team never really liked staying there anyway. It was an old, cinder block building, drafty and cold, and not my idea of upper-middle-class living.
“But Al Davis insisted that we beat Denver because we stayed at the Continental. Al fought to keep us there, but the management of the place said we had to go. In 1977, Denver beat us twice and won the division title for the first time in the history of their club. Al Davis went around growling at everyone and saying, ‘I told you so!’
“I didn’t believe in that sort of witchcraft, but then we went to San Diego for a game, and strange things started to happen. In the past we’d stayed at the Stardust Motel and the Chargers hadn’t beaten us in eighteen games. As a matter of fact, San Diego couldn’t muster enough points on the scoreboard to make the games respectable. But just before we played the Chargers for a second time in 1977, their management decided to move their team into the Star Dust and shifted us over to the Hyland. I don’t know if superstition spurred the move or not, but we were quartered on the other side of town and San Diego had our winning motel.
“Al Davis and John Madden were upset over the deal, but it didn’t shake up any of the players. We still went on with a normal pregame night (five wild parties) and showed up at the stadium early Sunday afternoon in time for kick off. The game was simply unbelievable. The Chargers won, 12–7. After that experience, every member on the team started to avoid stepladders, black cats, and new hotels. Every pregame burp and sneeze became a new ritual.”
John Matuszak was fascinated with the superstitious rituals of his teammates. Here he talks about the crazy and bizarre rites they would perform before a game.
“Football is a funny game, all right, and one thing I always found amusing was the superstition. I, personally, didn’t have many, but if a player did something a certain way and his team went on to win, he usually did it that way forever—or at least until a loss.
“When we were on the road, Mark van Eeghen would climb on top of his TV set, and then dive off it onto his bed. If he didn’t do that, he couldn’t fall asleep. But that was only one of his habits.
“He and Dave Casper would get back-to-back, drop their pants, lock their elbows together, and lift each other off the ground. You won’t find it in many astronomy books, but it was the rarely sited double moon.
Jack Tatum had his own unique way.
“Dressing for a game, any game was a ritual with him. He took great care with his shoes. He made sure his cleats were tight and new because he didn’t want to slip. Next he put on two pairs of socks and jammed his foot into the shoe. He wanted a tight fit. Then he taped his shoes on tight so there was no chance of the shoe giving way under the stress of starting and stopping.”
“After that, he taped his wrists and forearms. Once all the gear and tape was in place, he channeled all his attention to the game and the people he’d be going up against.”
“Lester Hayes always wore the same chinstrap he bought in junior high school for a dollar. He used to wear a towel hanging from his uniform belt, and he’d always have to have it taped exactly seven times. If the trainer didn’t tape it exactly seven times, Lester felt naked out there. If that weren’t enough, after every coin toss, Lester would touch the helmets of one of the veterans, usually Hendricks or Upshaw. Since they had been through the wars so many times, Lester wanted to soak up some of their aura.”
THE TWO COKE CUPS
The use of performance enhancing drugs in the NFL has been an ongoing issue since the late 1950s. It wasn’t until 1987 when the NFL finally began to test for steroid use.
But up until there was reported drug abuse on the San Diego Chargers in the early seventies and the league tried to cut back on the use of amphetamines, there was always a big jar of them in the Raiders’ dressing room. Players who wanted some extra energy could just dip in.
Stabler describes the effects of the amphetamines.
“The big Raiders’ candy jar contained gray colored amphetamine capsules that the players called ‘rat turds.’ I had taken some speed in college when I was seeing a girl in Mobile and staying up all night. Typically, it would make my brain race and my mouth so dry I couldn’t even spit. I’d feel like I was so wired with energy that I could go forever and do anything I wanted without having to sleep. As I was a hyper, high-energy guy anyway, I had to be careful with speed.
“I hadn’t seen myself on speed, but I did see my teammates on the sidelines before and during games. Their eyes would get real big and they would have a kind of wild, distant look to them. They would be so wired they couldn’t stop moving their jaws and grinding their teeth. I was standing next to Blanda before one game in early 1970 watching guys seemingly grinding their teeth down to nothing, and I said, ‘They’re gonna have to wear a mouthpiece out to dinner.’
“‘I know. I would never take that shit,’ George said.
“The guys were constantly downing Gatorade because of the chronic thirst from the pills. Everywhere you looked you’d see wild eyed guys guzzling that yellow liquid and moving their jaws like an old man gumming food—but you knew they were ready to play.
“It was all part of the game. If it made a guy play better, or made him think he played better, fine. The team owners and the league itself didn’t care how much speed was taken until the Chargers headlines appeared. Then there was an outcry in the media, public opinion turned against the league, and that worried the TV networks that paid the NFL millions of dollars every year. The networks feared advertising would withdraw from NFL telecasts if the drug situation was not cleared up. So the NFL said it was policing the situation and, therefore, only team doctors could dispense amphetamines and other medications.
“But I played over ten years after the so-called NFL crackdown on speed, and it was always readily available to players. Guys took it for diet reasons, for hangovers, and for that extra jolt they liked to bring with them into games.”
Linebacker Monte Johnson was used to a different kind of performance enhancer.
“It was my rookie year, one of the first games we had. When I was in college, I had a habit of taking salt tablets. So I walked into the training room and I asked someone where the salt tables were.
“‘They’re on that table in the Coke cups,’ someone said.
“I walked over there and grabbed a handful. I’m moving my hand up to my mouth to pop them in, when all of a sudden someone reaches out to grab my arm. My hand opens up and the pills go everywhere. The guy says, ‘The other Coke cup.’
“The amphetamines were nicknamed rat turds and they were just in a jar (or Coke cup) sitting there,” said guard George Buehler. “You could take all you wanted.”
Pete Banaszak doesn’t believe that there were steroids available.
“Sure, there was some of that taken. I ain’t gonna deny that. But steroids? I really doubt it. Hey, our steroids came in a brown bottle. It was Budweiser we loved. Kept your weight up, too. The trainer always said, ‘Instead of Coca Cola, have three or four beers.’ We had to listen to the trainer, right?”
“We didn’t use performance enhancers,” said Atkinson. “I smoked a little weed, whatever, you know, but not none of that steroid shit.”
