Davis family will retain ownership of Raiders


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Oakland Raiders CEO Amy Trask talks with Mark Davis son of Raiders owner Al Davis at the Raiders training camp in Napa Thursday July 24, 2008. Thursday July 24, 2008. Photo by Lance Iversen / The Chronicle


HOUSTON -- For the first time since 1963, there will be someone else running the Oakland Raiders.

Owner Al Davis died Saturday morning, but not before he helped map out a plan for the team's future. Though there has been speculation that his wife, Carol, and son, Mark, would sell the controlling interest in the team once he died, that is not the case.

"The team will remain in the Davis family," chief executive Amy Trask said Saturday night. "There is a succession plan in place in that regard."

Carol and Mark Davis were grieving and unavailable for comment. Trask said there is "a good structure in place."

Mark Davis probably will hire a general manager, but in the short term, Mark Davis will make football decisions, along with head coach Hue Jackson.

Al Davis had said control of the team would go to Carol and Mark when he died, and also mentioned in a 2006 news conference that former Raiders head coach John Madden might have a role.

"If something happened ... to Al, I'm sure (Madden) would be someone that Carol Davis and Mark Davis would call, along with several others who have been Raiders most of their lives and still have a tremendous loyalty to it," Davis said.

Trask seemingly will take on an even bigger role on the business side, like continuing to work on a new stadium plan. The Raiders had preliminary talks with the 49ers about possibly partnering on a stadium in Santa Clara, but nothing has come of it as of yet.

Trask said that the team will go into more detail in the coming days, but that members of the organization were all shaken and drained from a very sad and trying day.

More probably will be revealed with regard to Mark Davis' plans when NFL owners meet Tuesday in Houston.

Mark Davis, 56, graduated from Chico State and has been around the team more the past couple of years.

In 2008, Al Davis said his son didn't want to get too involved in the football side of the operation.

"He's business and perhaps he's doing some work on the stadium - business and stadium. He doesn't want to get involved in football. He used to know all the players. He still does. ...

"He never understood how I could let someone go. He just doesn't want to get into that part of it. But he will own it someday. That is ... if they let me go to my maker."

Al Davis had owned 67 percent of the Raiders, but that dropped to 47 percent in 2007 when he sold a 20 percent interest to a group of investors led by East Coast businessmen David Abrams, director of the Abrams Capital investment firm, Paul Leff, founder of the Perry Corp. money-management firm, and Dan Goldring, managing director at Perry Corp. The deal gave the group no control of the franchise at the time of the sale or in the future.

Last month, Forbes magazine valued the Raiders at $761 million, second lowest in the NFL, behind only the Jacksonville Jaguars.

E-mail Vittorio Tafur at vtafur@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle


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