Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was a fan of football. I was more of a Raiders fan, but I knew who O.J. was. I knew The Juice, and I remember the Hertz commercials with him running to the airport and whatnot. So he was a highbrow celebrity in my eyes.
I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of writing novels when I was 8 or 12. I wanted to be a film director. I wanted to make big action movies. I loved movies like 'Die Hard,' 'Predator,' 'Aliens,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'
For me, my mythology growing up was 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' and 'Star Wars' and 'E.T.' and 'Ghostbusters.' That's what I grew up on, and there aren't many people who can write that kind of scale of story, stories that are that big.
Each NFL team has its own policy about their own players dating their own cheerleaders. And in the Raiders there is no policy against it, though it is not encouraged. Yes, there are successful relationships between players and Raiderettes.
My first season with Pittsburgh was 1969. We were still in the old NFL. My second year, we moved to the AFC when the leagues merged. I went to the Pro Bowl that season, and there must have been nine Raiders and nine Chiefs. I got to know all those guys.
When you play for the Raiders and you play for Al Davis, it was always the talk that it was Al Davis against the rest of the league. Some of the calls that we would get, we would always say, 'Oh we got that call because of Al's relationship with the NFL.'
The men and women that are hired to take care of players' health, their salaries are paid by the team. Before games, you would see team docs and trainers, and they're every bit as as excited to, say, beat the Raiders as you are; their emotions are tied up in it.
On our way to the Super Bowl XV Championship, the Oakland Raiders played a frigid 1981 AFC playoff game in Cleveland, in which the temperatures plunged to -35 degrees. I remember looking up in the stands to see a dedicated Cleveland Brown fan celebrating topless.
That's the biggest shame there is, that L.A. doesn't have a team. I was a big fan of the L.A. Rams, and when they left, I lost interest. Then there was the Raiders, and they left. How they can't have a football team in the biggest market in the world is beyond me.
I've often said, 'If I had one drive to win a game to this day, and I had a quarterback to pick, I would pick Kenny.' Snake was a lot cooler than I was. He was a perfect quarterback and a perfect Raider. When you think about the Raiders, you think about Ken Stabler.
I'm a bit surprised that the Raiders turned to Art Shell to be their new head coach, not because Shell isn't a good head coach - he had success before as the Raiders' head coach - but because he's been away from the game so long and the game has changed a lot in those years.
Over a 10-season stretch from 1967 to 1976, eight Super Bowl champions either were the Raiders or had to beat the Raiders in the playoffs. The Jets, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Baltimore Colts, Miami, the Steelers each of the first two times... we all had to deal with the Raiders.
One thing that I always loved about, say, 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', is that Indiana Jones gets the Ark of the Covenant about sixty percent of the way through the movie. And then the rest of it is get-out-alive. To me, that's really cool. Because he's the one you care about at the end of the day.
As I and the rest of my Pittsburgh Steelers teammates prepared that week in late December 1974, we knew one thing: The road to the Super Bowl in the AFC went through Oakland. To achieve your dreams as a team, you had to slay the Oakland Raiders. They were the barometer of what it took to be a championship team.
The Raiders took me fourth overall because they had a certain need, and that was for me to come in and play man-to-man, bump-and-run all day, to guard the best receiver. You understand your job going in, so that's what you focus on. Would I have liked to play receiver and go both ways? Yep, would have loved to have done that.
