What's happened to the Raiders?

There are team owners in sports who know what they’re doing. The Golden State Warriors’ Joe Lacob is a perfect example. And then there are owners such as Mark Davis of the former Oakland Raiders.

As is evident from the way the Raiders play football. 

Mark’s late father, Al, built the team into a Super Bowl champion. But if a franchise is transferred to the next of kin because of the legal system, there’s no guarantee the qualities to make that franchise successful also will be.

Mark, who grew up in Piedmont, the tony suburb of Oakland, just surreptitiously fired another coach late Monday night, a few hours after the Raiders suffered a 26-14 defeat by the ascendant Detroit Lions.

The Raiders, explained Davis, “were heading in the wrong direction.” Which a good part of the group called Raider Nation, would point out the team began to do years ago. Literally. 

When like fugitives on the run they fled the Oakland Coliseum for, well, it’s hard to call the landscape around Las Vegas greener pastures. Only more financially beneficial ones. 

Meaning the 68-year-old Davis and his partners, who cashed in elegantly and wealthily, provided a new luxurious stadium and the upcoming Super Bowl, which, no surprise, will not include the Raiders.

Bill Walsh, the legendary 49ers coach, once told me a problem in the NFL when a team is struggling is the owners’ friends will sit near him during games and belittle the franchise. How embarrassing. 

That the Raiders’ woes with Football shown throughout the nation on ESPN’s Monday Night, was more embarrassing. What to do? What Davis did was fire head coach, Josh Mcdaniels.

And oh yeah, even though he’s still on the team, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, late of the 49ers, has been benched. When he wasn’t injured, he was throwing interceptions.  

In the publication “Pro Football Talk” Mike Florio, a longtime observer and NFL writer, asks a very pertinent question, to which: Who is advising Mark Davis?

“Whoever Davis is listening to,” wrote Florio, “presumably had influence over what he’s done and over what he’ll do next . . . Given his track record of hires since he inherited the team he hasn’t been getting good advice, or he’s ignoring any good advice he’s gotten.”  

The advice Raider fans from an earlier era could have given was to keep the team in Oakland, where it not only was a contender but a major part of the community.

Too late for that, certainly. The Raiders are long gone, leaving only memories and an owner who flew the coop and has been unable to build a winner.