Time To Fix the Oakland Raiders...Before It's Too Late

I’ve had some fun with Oakland Raiders fans in the past, but it’s time for me to come clean. Secretly, I admire Raider fans. I really do.

And I’m not being sarcastic.

Go back to the late 80s and early 90s. The Patriots of that time were the Raiders of today. We were terrible every season. Bad management held us down.

It wasn’t pretty.

Every season, my friends and I told the world we were the best 1-15 or 2-14 team in NFL history. Next season would be our year. It was coming.

All hail Dick MacPherson, because he’s going to hug his way into the Super Bowl next season!

The thing is, there were a couple of my friends, me, and a few other guys like this. For the most part, the Patriots were the forgotten team in New England.

The Red Sox hadn’t won in 80 years and everyone around here still loved them. The Bruins were run by a guy who paid his GM based on profits instead of wins, yet people around here still loved them.

The Celtics don’t count, because they dominated in the 80s and were still living off the Bird era at the time.

Foxboro was a ghost-town on some Sundays. We couldn’t sell out games. I actually had to listen to a Patriots-Dolphins game on the radio one Sunday afternoon because it was blacked out in New England.

Think about that. We couldn’t sell out a game against a division rival.

Worse than that, we didn't even care. Well, I cared. But nobody else around here seemed to.

No matter how bad the Raiders get, their fans still care. And I'm not talking about a small group of die-hards telling the world that it’s wrong and that the Raiders will be better next season.

There is an entire nation of rabid, blind-faith filled Raider fans who scream it to the world every pre-season.

I envy that type of loyalty. It just doesn't exist in most places.

Someday the Patriots will go through another late-80s, early-90s type stretch. New England may end up back in the days where people could potentially stop caring again.

While I’d like to think that won’t happen here again, I know it’ll never happen in Oakland.

Raider Nation deserves a team that’s going to prove them right every once in a while. They’ve earned it.

Jeff Little did a great job looking at what the Raiders should do this off-season to improve their team. While I’m sure I can’t do as good of a job as he did, I figured I’d throw my two cents in.

Sometimes, getting an honest outside perspective is good.

There’s something every winning team in the NFL has in common. Good ownership.

I’m not going to use this as an opportunity to bash Al Davis. God knows, I’ve done enough of that in the past.

And really, Al Davis isn’t that bad of an owner.

As a matter of fact, he’s 2/3 of a good owner. Being a good owner in the NFL takes three things:

You must be a fan of your team

To a good owner, owning an NFL team isn't just a business. It can’t be just a money making venture.

You must live and die for your team.

Say what you want about Al Davis, but he lives and breathes Oakland Raider football. In this respect, he’s the perfect owner.

You must be willing to spend money

I’m not sure anyone (except maybe a few of his former head coaches) has ever accused Al Davis of being cheap.

Last off-season, he was the opposite of cheap. He spent money as if he owned the New York Yankees.

A cheap owner doesn’t give $16 million in guaranteed money to Javon Walker.

A cheap owner doesn’t give $50.5 million to Tommy Kelly, $18 million of which was guaranteed.

A cheap owner doesn’t give $24.5 million in guaranteed money to DeAngelo Hall or $16 million guaranteed to Gibril Wilson.

Which brings me to the third quality of a good owner.

Let the football people make the football decisions

There’s an old saying. A lawyer who represents himself has a moron for a client. In the NFL, the saying is a little different.

The owner who hires himself as a GM has a moron as a general manager.

Al Davis loves his team and he’s willing to do, presumably, whatever it takes to make them winners. It’s become clear to everyone outside the organization what needs to be done in Oakland.

Al Davis needs to fire himself as GM.

He needs to hire someone like New England’s Scott Pioli or the Dolphins’ Bill Parcells. He needs to give them the keys to his office, a checkbook, and a signature stamp.

He’s willing to spend money on players. He just needs someone to tell him which players are worthy of his money.

When the NFL needed someone to stand up and say enough, it’s time to settle with the players and sign this collective bargaining agreement back in 2005, it was Al Davis who convinced his fellow owners that locking out the players would be a death blow to the NFL.

Now someone needs to convince Al Davis that keeping himself as GM will eventually be a death blow to the Oakland Raiders.

Fixing the Oakland Raiders is simple. Let Al Davis be the great owner that he is, and let someone else be the great GM that the Raiders need.

Because nobody wants to see Raider Nation turn into that little group of friends I was a part of in the early 90s in New England.

Sean Crowe covers the New England Patriots for Examiner.com and writes a bi-weekly column for Sports-Central.org.

He is a Senior Writer and an NFL Community Leader at Bleacher Report. You can email him at [e-mail]. His archive can be found here.