Bad to the Bone

PUfllPED FULL OF HORSE TESTOSTEROnE, "RRT TURDS/' VODKfifiRDRICOTUlE.THE ORKLROD RRIDERS OF THE 1970S QJERE THE HELLS RflGELS OF FOOTBRLL. Rfl URCERSORED ORRL HISTORH OF THE O1ERDEST, DffiTIEST, GHERTIOGEST TEflffl TOUIIfl'

They were football's Klingons, a rowdy, hairy bunch who played hard and sometimes dirty. They lived the same way. Their boss was and still is Al Davis, a sly New Yorker the rest of the league hated. Their coach was a former offensive tackle who threw hair-pulling tantrums on the sidelines. Originally named the Oakland Sehors in a newspaper contest—rigged, of course—the team traded its sombrero logo for one of a helmeted pirate and became the most feared, loathed and envied team in sports.

dave newhouse, columnist and reporter. The Oakland Tribune: I started in 1964, the year after Al Davis got there. Even then there was an atmo­sphere of paranoia, a feeling that the league was out to get the Raiders. That helped them; they were the renegade team. I mean, who else could even match their nicknames—Dr. Death, the Assassin, the Snake, Ghost, the Mad Stork? Police cars would line up

going to shave, aren't you?" So I found some clippers the trainer used to shave our ankles before he taped them—not the most sanitary clippers. I used them to shave everything but my handlebar mustache. JIM OTTO, center, 1960-1974: Ben thought quarterbacks wore skirts. He got a bad rap for being a dirty player, mainly for breaking Joe Namath's jaw. We prided ourselves on hitting harder than anybody, even after the whistle.

Coach John Madden gave the players game-day schedules. In the spot reserved for the kichoffwere four words: "We go to war." Other teams wore sports coats on the road but the Raiders sported jeans, leather jackets—whatever the players wanted.

NEWHOUSE: They were the first NFL team with no dress code for road games. They hung out together, drank with fans, drank with reporters, and

but the Raiders way had already beer set. My rookie year I looked up and there was a sign on the wall: raidef rules. Rule number one was "Cheating is encouraged." Rule number two wa; "See rule number one." OTTO: Madden's second year, 1970, wa.1 historic. The AFL and NFL merged We went 8-4-2, which would have beer 5-9 without George Blanda's magic. GEORGE BLANDA, kicker and quarter back, 1967-1975: It wasn't magic. Daryk Lamonica got hurt, and I went in

The crusty Blanda was 43 years old He had broken in with the 1949 Chicagi Bears, playing behind Sid Luckman. Whei, quarterback Lamonica went down in 1970 backup Blanda went into the huddle. "Shw the hell up," he said. "We're going to kid their ass." Davidson speared Chiefs quar­terback Len Dawson after the play was over triggering an on-field brawl. Blanda Ihet, kicked a 48-yard field goal to salvage a tie

after practice, waiting for the players just in case a war broke out. BEN DAVIDSON, defensive end, 1964-1971: In the first football game I ever played, in junior college, a guy clipped my legs and 1 thought, Man, I could've gotten hurt. I reached into his hel­met and felt his eye. And I gouged it. He screamed and ran off the field. 1 thought. Here's the game for me. NEWHOUSE: Davidson helped set the style with his big menacing mustache. DAVIDSON: I showed up at camp in 1965 with a full beard. In those days a beard equaled hippie equaled com­munist. To his credit Al Davis didn't sav "Shave that." He asked "You're

on Sunday they'd beat people up. And they weren't just mean; they were great football players. Otto, George Blanda, Gene Upshaw, Art Shell, Ted Hen-dricks, Willie Brown, Fred Biletnikoff, Dave Casper and coach Madden—they all went to the Hall of Fame. This was a once-in-a-century sports franchise. matt millen, linebacker. 1980-1988: It all goes back to Al Davis and John Mad­den. People who see John as the video­game guy don't know what a great coach he was. John wanted a big offensive line and a strong running game with a halfback who would block—tough, straight-ahead football. Al fostered an us-vs.-them attitude. 1 came along later.

He won the next game with a 52-yarder. then won the next two with a last-gasp touchdown pass and another field goal.

BLANDA: Quarterbacks called their own plays in those days. I'd call a pass to a guy I knew could get open: Fred Biletnikoff. People say Biletnikoff wasn't fast. Bullshit. Fred was no burner, but he had great ability to fake and get a defender's feet crossed. Quick's better than fast in football. KEN "THE SNAKE" STABLER, quarterback, 1968-1979: Fred was intense. He'd chew his fingernails and smoke a pack of ciga­rettes before a game. And he kept stick-um all over his hands, which was legal then. I'd tell the center, "If Biletnikoif

catches a pass, ask the official for a new ball." You don't want to throw a ball with that goo on it. Freddy was sneaky fast—if the DB sat on him, we'd beat 'em deep. TOM flores, assistant coach, 1972-1979; head coach, 1979-1987: In the early 1970s our quarterback Daryle Lamonica beat man-to-man coverage with deep passes and in-routes. But then the defenses all started playing zone, and Snake Stabler was better against that. Kenny's arm wasn't that strong, but he was much more flexible as a thrower and a leader, with a quick delivery. He could beat you deep or dink three short ones in a row. MILLEN: A major part of every team's character had to do with the quarter­back's guts. Back then you had to practi­cally maim the passer to get called for roughing. So the question was, How much beating could your QB take and still deliver? John Unitas had that tough-

ness, oianua nau 11. anaKe too. You could knock the piss out of him and he'd come right back. stabler: We got Cliff Branch in 1972, and Cliff could out­run the cars in the parking lot. Now I had him on one side and Freddy on the other. FLORES: When we got Branch I told Snake, 'Just fling it as hard as you can; Cliff will run under it." And he'd throw so hard he spun around like a discus thrower. What a com­petitor! Snake would come off the field with snot running out of his nose and down his

beard, with that look in his eye—like he would not tolerate losing. NEWHOUSE: A lot of that Raiders atti­tude goes back to Jim Otto, who loved the blood and guts—a true warrior. One time Otto tore five ligaments in his leg on one play. They flew him to Los Angeles for surgery. We heard he was out for the year, except he sneaked out of the hos­pital, flew back to Oakland, drove his little Volkswagen Bug to practice and limped to the field. Madden threw a fit. "Get out of here!" Jim's leg was black. He said, "Let me practice. If I can't do the job, I'll leave." He played the whole season and made the Pro Bowl. OTTO: I 'm not a complainer. You don't want to be a burden to the team, so you endure. DAVIDSON: We used to say, "Welcome to Oakland, home of the Hells Angels, Black Panthers and Oakland Raiders— sometimes all three in the same person."

PHIL vill API ANO, linebacker, 1971-1979:

Madden treated us like men. and he

knew we'd run through a wall for him.

His rules were "Practice hard, be on

time and play your butt off on Sunday."

OTTO: He got so worked up during

games, pulling his hair and yelling,

turning bright red. We called him Pinky

behind his back.

DAVIDSON: John had some unusual

sayings.

JOHN madden, head coach, 1969-1978:

Don t worry about the blind mutt: just load

the wagon.

DAVIDSON: Nobody was sure what he

meant by that. We were full of strange

dichotomies—thinkers and shouters,

craziness and discipline.

GEORGE CARLIN, comic and Raiders fan:

/ root for the Oakland Raiders because they

hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents and fuck-

ups, because they have lots of penalties, fights

and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked.

VILLAPIANO: It was geared toward winning, and that came right down from Al Davis. You do what it takes. Al may not have bugged the other team's locker room, but they thought he did. Oakland has great weather, but the grounds crew would turn our field into a swamp and we'd come out in long cleats. If the Steelers won the flip, we'd start the game widi a football that was half out of air. Al would sidle up {continued on page 122)

HHIDERS

(continued from page 62) to Joe Greene and say, "We want to trade for you,' to soften him up, make him think we're going to be teammates. The guy who ran the clock at our home games sped it up when we

were ahead. Any little advantage__

DAVIDSON: Our reputation was as thugs, miscreants and degenerates. But we'd out­work you, too, and come from behind in the fourth quarter—things that took character.

The Raiders won six division titles in the 1970s and became the env\ of the league. They were also a band of brigands who stuck together on and off the field.

OTTO: We drank together. Madden had bed check around 11 o'clock—the assis­tant coaches would go around and look in our rooms at the El Rancho Tropicana, this quadrangle motel in Santa Rosa. They might skip Stabler's room. They didn't want to find he wasn't there. Then it'd be, "Don't tell Madden. He'll blow his top!" STABLER: Sure, we had our nightlife. We were a rockin' group of bearded longhairs, just like the A's, who were baseball's world champions. But we were ready to play on Sunday, weren't we?

OTTO: They called me Pops or Company Man because I was a good citizen—never got fined, never missed a bed check. So one night we were drinking at Melendy's Lounge in Santa Rosa, and the rookies decided to get Pops fined. They picked up my VW and plugged the bar's front door with it—the only door. I crawled out the bathroom window, picked up the front of the car, moved it a little, went around, picked up the back and moved it till I could drive away. And I made bed check. FLORES: One day a nude woman streaked practice. She was sprinting. Everyone was cheering, but she didn't realize how long the field is. Around midfield she started running out of gas, like a lineman running back a fumble. Finally she staggered away. GERALD IRONS, linebacker, 1970-1975: We were a bunch of guys who loved the game and each other, not like die players today with their laptops and BlackBerrys. We didn't even have cell phones. Everything was face-to-face.

Tackle Dan Birdwell had set the tone by coming off the field with blood and bits of the enemy's skin under his fingernails and pop­ping his blisters at his teammates. Once, after polishing off half a gallon of vodka the night before a game, lie took his stance and puked on the ball. At parties, the players sucked expen­sive substances from female fans' nai'els. Sta­bler and his roommates festooned their suite at the El Rancho with bras and panties, and fought crabs with I'xrinate A-200 ointment. Under a sign in their bathroom they stuck a Pyrinate label that read combat yovr tststr.

VILLAPIANO: One year Biletnikoff talked Carol Doda into being queen of the air-hockey tournament, held on the last day of preseason at Melendy's. The famous strip­per with the enormous breasts—she was a major Raiders fan.

CAROL DODA, exotic dancer, 44-25-35: Everybody loved the Raiders. 1 dated Fred Bik-tnikoff and got in on some of their wild times. As queen of their air-hockey tour­nament, I exposed my upper extremities. They were well received. VILLAPIANO: We had her block the goal with one of her breasts. There was no way the other guys could score.

For all their success the Raiders couldn 't get over the hump. They had the Pittsburgh Steelers beaten in the 1972 AFC play-offs until they were screwed by a miracle: the Immaculate Reception.

FLORES: It was a cold, cold day in Three Rivers Stadium. Snake ran 30 yards for a touchdown to put us up 7-6. On fourth and 10, with 22 seconds left, Terry Bradshaw threw toward Frenchy Fuqua.JackTatum hit Fuqua, and the ball went flying end over end. OTIS SISTRUNK, defensive end, 1972-1978: I was chasing Bradshaw. Almost got him. VILLAPIANO: I was covering Franco Harris. Bradshaw sprinted out to the left side. Franco and 1 were on the right. 1 left Franco when Bradshaw threw the ball. Now I was going toward Fuqua and Tatum. They collided, and the ball bounced right back over my head. OTTO: I saw Franco Harris reach down for the ball and thought, Where'd he come from? FLORES: It's one of those times when you're not sure what the hell you're seeing. Franco ran into the end zone. Our guys were stunned. Madden was going crazy. The fens were going crazy. The rule at the time was that two offen­sive players couldn't touch the ball without a defender touching it in between. OTTO: It should have been no catch. VILLAPIANO: A replay would have shown that Jack never touched the ball. And if you know Jack Tatum, you know he didn't want to knock the ball down. He likes to hit. But the officials saw thousands of Steelers fans swarming the field, out of control. OTTO: Those fans were about to riot. I was looking for a place to hide. FLORES: The official went to the sideline and talked to somebody on the phone. I still don't know why he did that. There was no instant replay in 1972. Then he signaled touchdown. So the ruling was that Tatum touched the ball. It's hard to tell—and some of us have watched that play 100 times. But Fuqua later admitted he had a bruise on his biceps—where the point of the ball hit.

Oakland reached three straight AFC title games from 1973 to 1975 but lost each time. The snarling, self-styled Team of the 1970s hadn't been to a Super Bowl since the second one. in I96S. Hut the pieces were coming together.

VILLAPIANO: We got Ted Hendricks from Green Bay because he hated the Packers. But somebody had to go to Green Bay for him. Well, he was a Pro Bowl linebacker, and so was I. I kept hearing it would be me. I was waiting for the shoe to drop, playing like shit, when Madden called me in. He said, "Phil, what the fuck's wrong with you?" I told him I didn't want to go to Green Bay. He said, "If you go, I'm out of here too. But you didn't hear me say that." John was a real player's coach. He wouldn't

talk about your fucking footwork—you're a pro already—but he was a master at the psychological side of the game. FLORES: Hendricks was six-seven and last—the most dominating defensive player I ever coached. His arms and torso were so long that blockers couldn't get to his body to block him. He was so tall he could see over them. He'd wait for a ballcarrier to get close, then throw his blocker aside. STABLER: He came to his first Raiders practice riding a horse. We looked up and saw Hendricks in full uniform, waving a traffic cone as if it were a lance. He rode up to Madden and said, "Coach, I'm ready to play some football."

TED "THE MAD STORK" HENDRICKS, line­backer, 1975-1983: That kind of stuff didn't faze the Raiders. We were a team of individualists.

DAVIDSON: I was retired by then, but Ted asked permission to wear my number, 83. He came to me with his head down, as if he were a kid, as if he needed my blessing. I said, "I can't think of a better guy to wear it." STABLER: His nickname was the Mad Stork, but we called him Kick 'Em—Ted "Kick 'Em" Hendricks, short for Kick 'Em in the Head. Before one game he smashed his own head into a locker and caved it in—the locker. FLORES: Otto had retired—the original Mr. Raider. Here was the center who had made the snap on the franchise's first play in 1960, when I was playing quarterback. Nobody was tougher than Jim. He'd get so dinged up he didn't know where he was. We'd prop him up in the huddle till the cobwebs cleared. OTTO: I did every snap for 308 games in a row. Long snaps, too. I practiced those till I could get the ball to the holder in seven tenths of a second, spinning just right so when he caught it the sweet side of the ball—the side away from the laces—was facing the kicker. I made every snap for 15 years. I played with broken fingers, ribs, a broken jaw, kicked-in teeth and pneumonia, and I broke my nose more than 20 times. I've had more than 50 surgeries, 12 knee replacements, two artificial shoulders. I broke my back twice and then, in 2007, had my right leg amputated. But I understood the risks when I played. It was worth it. SISTRUNK: Otto was so tough. You've got to play nicked up—I'd play after getting 125 cc of blood drained out of my knee—but after seeing Otto, you wouldn't complain. FLORES: Before Otto retired he wanted one last play, so Madden put him into a pre­season game. Now, Otto had a huge head; his helmet was size 8'A>, the biggest on the team. He snapped the ball and just labeled the guy across the line—drove the label on the front of that big helmet right through him. Then he hobbled off the field with a smile on his face. One last hit.

Oakland went 11-3 and made the play-offs again in 1975. During a regular-season blow­out of Denver, Madden got the only penalty of his coaching career. "You blind bastard," he yelled at a line judge who had flagged free safety Jack Tat um for a hit on running hack Floyd Little. When the official asked who he was calling a blind bastard. Madden shot back, "You're the only one here!" The ref hit him with a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike

conduct. Madden said he was the only man ever penalized for answering a direct question. In the play-offs, his Raiders lost another AFC title game to the Steelers. who went on to win their second straight Super Bowl.

VILLAPIANO: Madden was so pissed we lost to Pittsburgh again. The next year at camp, he gave a speech. He wanted everybody to hear what we were going to do. "We're gonna play a cover-three"—a rotating zone toward the weak side. "And a cover-one." That's a man-to-man. "We're going to trap block and run the ball down their throats," he said. "This is our year." MADDEN: 77m is our year. Ist's not get fancy. ljjt s just kick ass.

During that 1976 season the Raiders signed John "the Tooz" Matuszak—a hulking head case who helped anchor their defensive line.

VILLAPIANO: We had some guys hurt, so I told Al, "You gotta get us a defensive end." He signed Matuszak, a lunatic. The next day Al said, "Phil, I got you your fucking defensive end." NEWHOUSE: The Tooz came from Kansas City, where he'd overdosed on drugs and booze. Paul Wiggin, the Chiefs' coach, was with him in the ambulance when Matuszak's heart stopped. Wiggin pounded on the Tooz's chest until it started up again. FLORES: We went to a three-man line that year because we had more quality lineback­ers than defensive linemen. Matuszak and Sistrunk at DE gave us an awesome front. Tooz bench-pressed close to 400 pounds. Off the field he required some handling. I remember waving my finger up at this monster of a man and talking to him as if he were a two-year-old: John, you've got to behave." He was hanging his head, saying, "Aw, I'm sorry, coach." VILLAPIANO: Davis rented a house for Tooz, and it was my job to look after him. We'd go straight from practice to the bar at the Hilton. The bartender knew what to pour: left sides for Tooz and me, since that was our side of the defense, and right sides for Sistrunk and Hendricks. Left sides were giant triple scotches; right sides were giant triple Crown Royals. We'd have three or four of those to get warmed up for a night out.

One day Art Thorns and I went over to Tooz's house. No Tooz. We moved all his furniture—put the bed in the kitchen, all the kitchen appliances in the bathroom. We took his record albums and lined the yard with them, gave the yard and the house a border of record albums. We came back a week later, and the albums were back in the house—Tooz loved his tunes—but the fur­niture was still where we left it. "I like it," he said. He thought it looked unique.

With Stabler completing 67 percent of his passes. Oakland went 13-1 in 1976. On defense. Matuszak and Sistrunk stuffed the run and chased quarterbacks while four line­backers, including Hendricks and I illapiano, filled holes or backpcdaled into coverage. But the heart of the best Raiders team yet was the Soul Patrol: fast, ferocious defensive backs George Atkinson, Millie Brown, Jack "the Assassin" Tatum and Skip "Dr. Death" Thomas. (When Tatum bowled over a Raider-

etle on the sideline, he sent her a note read­ing. "You've got a nice booty.")

CEDRICK HARDMAN, defensive end, 1980-1981: 1 was with the 49ers in 1976. Every­body in the league thought Oakland was devastating on defense and sometimes dirty. Atkinson hit the Steelers' Lynn Swann with a forearm smash when Swann was nowhere near the ball. Knocked him out. That's when Chuck Noll, the Steelers' coach, called Oak­land the league's "criminal element." OTTO: It's a man's game. But Swann was a crybaby. He didn't have the guts to catch a pass over the middle.

MILLEN: Tatum set the standard for what a Raiders defender was supposed to be. VILLAPIANO: Tate lived to hit. We all liked to. Some of us wore special pads on our forearms. They were similar to a plaster cast. You hit a guy with that and he feels as if he got clocked with a brick. 1 had a smaller one for the base of my hand that I'd hide under a black glove. We wouldn't wear this stuff in warm-ups because the referees would check, but after warm-ups we'd go get our special pads.

After taking revenge on Pittsburgh in the AFC championship, the Raiders went on to

Super Bowl XI against tlw Minnesota \ ikings. The nation's top sports columnist saw the matchup as a collision of opposites.

JIM MURRAY, l.os Angeles Times: The Vikings pta\ Joutlmtl like a guy laying carpet. The Raid­ers play like a guy jumping through a skylight zt'ith a machine gun.

STABLER: We were tough. We were free spirits. And we had a monstrous offensive line. Our center, Dave Dalby, was the light­est at 255. We had Art Shell, 290, blocking Jim Marshall, 225. We had Upshaw, 265, on Alan Page, 235. That shows you how the game has changed. Look at college football: Last year Alabama's offensive line went 3*IH. 310, 315, 320, 318—all of them fast. But I fell good behind that line of ours. FLORES: In our last practice before the Super Bowl, Snake threw pass after pass, dozens of throws, with the defense trying hard, and not one ball hit the ground. It was eerie. It was making John and me ner­vous. Finally John claps his hands: "Okay, that's enough!" We were ready. STABLER: In the Super Bowl we moved the ball our first two possessions but got only three points. Maddens running his hands through his hair, bitching and moaning that we haven't scored enough. 1 said, 'John,

don't worry. There arc more points where those came from." We got touchdowns our next two drives.

In the second half. Assassin Tatum hit likings receiver Sammx White so hard White's helmet flew five yards. Tatum looked disappointed that White's head wasn't still in it. Hiletnikoff ran a Stabler pass ?> yards, then ran out of steam like the training-camp streaker. Hack in the huddle he said. "I was looking for a gas station along the way." Final score: Raiders >2, \ikings 14.

HENDRICKS: We should have won three straight Super Bowls. Not that I'm com­plaining. You should see our rings. Did you know the diamonds in Super Bowl rings have meaning? Ours had 10 little ones on the outside, representing the Raiders' 10 years in the AFL. Sixteen bigger diamonds were inside those, for the 16 games we won that season, and a really big diamond was in the middle because we won the big one. STABLER: The counterculture longhairs got it done.

FLORES: I'll never forget watching the Tooz dance at our Super Bowl party. For a huge man, he had great rhythm. If you'd seen him play you wouldn't believe you were standing in a hotel ballroom after Super Bowl XI, watching John Matuszak do the jitterbug. When everyone else got tired he was still out there—the Tooz on the dance floor by himself, jitterbugging.

Every Thursday night was Camaraderie Night, when the players got drunk together. But Stabler and t\fatuszak made every night Cama­raderie Night. They rented a house and set a team record by packing the hot tub with sei'cn naked women. Matuszak asked, "If I put two more on my shoulders, will that count as nine. Snake?" When a team staffer drove him to a party, the Tooz kept asking the staffer to put his hand in his girlfriend's crotch and tell him how it smelted. Prodigious drinker Matuszak also loaded up on cocaine, steroids and speed.

FLORES: Tooz wasn't destructive to the team, just to himself. He wore his body out.

In 196 3 the San Diego Chargers became one oj the first professional football teams to systematically use steroids. The team kept them on the training table. Growth hormones came later—including a potentially deadly black-market Gil made from pooled cadaver brains, liy the 1970s players were grabbing gray amphetamine pills called "rat turds" from a jar in the Raiders' locker room. According to a team doctor, some were low-dose amphetamine users, "and those guys were called crop dusters. Others indulged more heavily. They were called 747s. The Tooz was called John Glenn."

OTTO: You could tell who took uppers from their dilated eyes. I took prescription pain medication and muscle relaxcrs. Growth hor­mone was there too—even horse testosterone. ROB HUIZENGA, M.D., team physician, 1983-l'.)'.)0: 1 lorse testosterone is very similar to the human kind, except for the picture of a horse on the label. Did they take less than a 1,000-pound horse would get? Maybe not. Football

players think that if one is good, three is bet­ter. Sure, you can say they were out of their minds, but if they didn't take drugs their per­formance could suffer, they could lose money and their teammates would look down on them. The bigger problem was doctors who were out of their minds, thinking of Super Bowl rings. In some positions half the players in the league were taking steroids, which were legal with a prescription. There were "steroids teams" and "growth-hormone teams." STABLER: It sure wasn't modern corporate football Our fullback Marv Hubbard got so hyped up when we played the Chiefs, he'd tell them the play. He'd point at Willie Lanicr, a great, great linebacker, and yell, "Comin' right at you, Willie! Here I come!" I could have changed the play, but I'd hand Marv the ball and let him get killed. HARDMAN: Guys put petroleum jelly on their jerseys to be slippery. Lester Hayes, the tornerback, was the opposite. He used more stickum than Biletnikoff. You didn't high-five Lester or you'd literally bond with him. I saw him pick up a football with the back of his hand. One pass hit the inside of his arm and stuck there. DAVIDSON: Some of our fans were pretty crazy too. There was Dirty Ed, a roller-derby pro who'd been a POW in the Korean War. There was Mexican Guy in a Cape. We spoke Spanish with him. When one fan's dog bit him, we had the team trainer patch him up, then a bunch of us stormed out to the parking lot. "We're gonna kill that dog!" He thought we were serious. HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 14011/0 Raiders Ian: Every game was a tenijyhig adventure, win or lose, and the Haiders of the 1970s usually won. Haider Xation is beyond doubt the sleaziest, rud­est and most sinister mob of thugs and warkos ever assembled in such numbers. DAVIDSON: The closest we got to real war off the field was when the Hells Angels beat up I'lliI Villapiano.

VILLAPIANO: It happened outside a bar. This Hells Angels guy was sitting on the hood of" my car. I said something, he said something, and you know what? Those guys don't fight fair. His buddy comes up behind me, bang. I took a hammer to the head. Then it got ugly. I was laid up for a month. NEWHOUSE: Now, you do not mess with the 1 lells Angels, but the Raiders decided to go after them. Jack Tatum, Art Shell and Gene Upshaw formed a war party. DAVIDSON: But Madden defused the situa­tion. He said, "I'liil's all right. He played a couple of ball games all at once, but he'll be okay." So the Raiders didn't go to war with the Hells Angels.

VILLAPIANO: We had a game to prepare for. I said, "Guys, I'll heal."

In the 1978 preseason the Assassin smashed l\itriots receiver Darryl Stingley on a play that left Stiiiffley paralyzed from the neck down.

NEWHOUSE: It wasn't the hit that did the damage, a legal hit. It was when Stingley hit the turf. What always stuck with me was that the Patriots were going to fly home and leave him in the hospital alone. Madden caught their team plane before it took off. He said, "You've got to leave somebody with him." So a PR guy stayed. But do you know who spent

as much time as anyone in that hospital? Mad­den. He and his wife, Virginia, became real friends with Stingley's family. John would get back from a road game exhausted, go to the hospital and sit with Darryl Stingley.

Early in 1978 Oakland trailed the Chargers 14—20 with 10 seconds on the clock. San Diego's Woody Lowe hit Stabler for a game-ending sack—but Stabler fumbled the ball forward, triggering the game-winning Holy Roller stunt.

STABLER: For me, that's the play that defines us. It was a drop-back pass. Standing over center I was thinking, Don't get trapped with the ball. Lowe sacked me, so I just rolled the ball out there. Now it's bouncing around. Pete Banaszak bats it toward the end zone. Then Dave Casper inadvertently kicks it. Three times. Casper finally picks it up for a touchdown. We just wouldn't accept not getting to the end zone. That's the Raiders way: You find a way to win.

The 1978 Raiders went 9-7 but missed the play-offs. Madden was burned out. For years Stabler saw him vomit prcgame, halftimc and jioslgame. According to Matuszak, the coach was "living on Maalox and Rolaids. hut his ulcer zcasn V responding." Madden left coach­ing for the TV booth in 1979, retiring with a career record of 112-39-7.

FLORES: I took over from John as head coach. He was colorful, and I was boring, but I'd played with some wackos. After seven years as an assistant I knew our guys. Todd Chris-tensen, who joined us that year, was die philo­sophical type. I was trying to get him to huddle up when he quoted Thoreau. I said, "Get your ass in the huddle—that's a quote from Tennessee Williams." Todd said, "Touche!" VILLAPIANO: We were Raiders, and we made thiil mean something. Guys on other teams told Raiders stories. They wanted to join us. Lyle Alzado used to call me and say, "Phil, can

you get me on the Raiders?" By the time Al finally got Lyle, he'd traded me to Buffalo. A lot of things changed in 1979.

Davis sent Stabler to the Oilers after another 9-7 season. Other stars of the 1970s teams would retire or play out the string else­where. The 1980 Raiders bounced back to win the Super Bowl ivith Flores as head coach, Jim "Chunky" Plunkett at quarterback and Cedrick Hardman joining the defense.

HARDMAN: I'd played in the 49ers flex defense. It was complicated: a four-man front with the other defenders near the ball in four-point stances, the middle line­backer calling the basic defense, options for the outside linebackers and tackles. Then I came to Oakland, where we had more freedom. We had a basic run defense called Orange, with a three-man front. In our free-form pass rush, Pirate, the basic idea was "Go get the quarterback." FLORES: That Super Bowl was a great way to start the 1980s, but it wasn't the same old Raiders. We had only 11 guys left from the 1976 Super Bowl team. NEWHOUSE: Their top draft pick in 1980 was Marc Wilson from Brigham Young. Wil­son wore Mormon underwear, a two-piece white temple garment. It had to test his faith to look around the locker room at the wild men around him—the ones who were left.

The Raiders won another Super Bowl in 1983, hut by then they were the Los Angeles Raiders. Davis had moved the franchise the year before, leaving behind fans in T-shirts reading oaki.asd traitors. The Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995, but their gory glory days were long gone.

Today Al Davis, 80, still runs the Raiders.

John Madden, 73, retired from broad­casting this year. His ElA Sports video games have earned more than $2 billion.

Ben Davidson, 69, went on to movie roles

in MASH and Conan the Barbarian and had a cameo as a bouncer in the porn classic Behind the Green Door.

Jim Otto, 71, made millions running Burger King franchises in California. He walks on a computerized right leg "with a hydraulic piston in it. I can hit a button and go faster, but it won't get me back on the field."

Tom Flores, 72, went 97-87 as a head coach, with two Super Bowl victories. He now broadcasts Raiders games on San Francisco's KSFO radio.

Ted Hendricks, 61, runs charity golf tournaments and sells NFL merchandise on his website, tedhendricks.com.

John Matuszak died at the age of 38 after overdosing on a painkiller.

Matt Millen, 51, one of the most reviled NFL executives ever during his 2001-2008 stint as CEO of the Lions, has returned to the TV booth.

Jack Tatum, 60, never spoke with Darryl Stingley after the 1978 hit that paralyzed him. Stingley died in 2007. Tatum, a diabetic, lost the lower part of his left leg in 2003.

Legendary stripper Carol Doda runs Carol Doda's Champagne and Lace Linge­rie Boutique in San Francisco.

Raiders fan George Carlin died in 2008, though not before making this prediction: "Someday the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome white heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits."

Phil Villapiano, 60, is vice president of a shipping company in New Jersey. In 2001 he gave his 1976 Super Bowl ring to a fan who was disabled by a broken neck, saying, "Give it back when you can walk again." With help from Villapiano and a grueling Raid­ers rehab program, the fan walked across a room and handed the ring to Villapiano.

Ken Stabler, 63, whose grandchildren call him Papa Snake, works with a team that runs a silver-and-black car in NASCAR races.

STABLER: You know, a writer once read me a Jack London quote. It went, "I would rather be a meteor, every atom in me a magnificent glow, than a sleepy and per­manent planet. The function of man is to live, not exist." The writer asked what that meant to me. I thought about it, then I said, "Throw deep."

"The Vikings play football like a guy laying carpet. The Raiders play like a guy jumping through a skylight with a machine gun. "—Jim Murray, Los Angeles Times