Remember Al

Many of my peers and friends in the business can offer much more comprehensive remembrances of the late Al Davis.

All I have is a good first impression.

I covered high school sports for the Dallas Morning News. My first pro assignment was covering Cowboys' training camp in 1989 in Thousand Oaks, Ca. The Cowboys would practice against the Raiders, who trained in Oxnard.

So on my first visit to Oxnard, I was watching the Raiders' defensive backs, when suddenly Elvis appeared. Well, he looked like Elvis. It was Al Davis, wearing his signature white, Elvis-style jumpsuit, gold-framed glasses and slicked-back hair.

Here was the owner and one of the most visible owners in sports, coaching his defensive backs.

I remember Davis' .life the way I remember Elvis', too. He was one of the greats before he slipped into self-caricature. He influenced the merger of the AFL and NFL, creating the NFL as we know it today. And he created the persona of one of the great franchises in sports history, the Oakland/LA Raiders. ``Just win, baby," and ``Commitment to Excellence" became punchlines, as do all slogans when teams lose, but they weren't laughable when the Raiders were winning.

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Jeff Horton should belatedly be named Big Ten coach of the year for 2010.

Also: When Paul Johnson was at Navy, he was considered a Gopher football coaching canididate when Joel Maturi hired Brewster.

I'm told Johnson did not have interest in the Gopher program. Too bad. Johnson has Georgia Tech undefeated this season.

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Covering the Lynx's championship on Friday night, and wrote a piece about Lindsay Whalen for the Sunday paper.

I'm staying in Atlanta to pick up a piece on the Packers that will run in this week's Star Tribune.

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I'm picking the Vikings to win on Sunday, and I'm not sure why. I guess I figure that if two bad teams play each other, you should probably take the home team. Which is why I was silly to take the Vikings last week.

As for Donovan McNabb's assertion that talk of him being benched is ``hilarious," my radio partner Tom Pelissero points out that McNabb said something similar last year...before he was benched.

I understand why Leslie Frazier wanted McNabb. I don't blame him for wanting a veteran in place following a lockout, and McNabb is serving the purpose of keeping the Vikings from rushing Christian Ponder into a pressurized situation.

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Strange how baseball payrolls work. The Twins set a record for payroll, at about $115 million, and had their most disappointing season ever, barely missing 100 losses. Meanwhile the last four teams remaining in the playoffs all rank 10th or lower in payroll.

The Tigers are 10th (at about $106 million), followed by the Cardinals at 11, the Rangers at 13 and the Brewers at 17.

Could be a random event, or it could have two meanings:

1. The largest salaries are paid not to players who are on the rise, but players who have long-established value. That means older players. In the post-steroid era, age is a big deal. Players no longer can artificially extend their prime.

You have to give big money to the right people. There is little dead weight on the rosters of the remaining teams.

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