Al Davis: Mad, bad and dangerous to know

If the Oakland Raiders were to be magically reborn as an English football club, moving from the eastern shore of San Francisco bay to a gritty district of, say, south London, they'd almost certainly be the sort of club where fans chant: "No one likes us... we don't care."

For almost 50 years, the club have been run according to "The Raider Way," a win-at-all-costs philosophy which sees its players and supporters reviled and revered, in equal measure, as the bad boys of the game.

This modus operandi has been the life's work of one man: the Raiders' owner, Al Davis. He's a bombastic Brooklyn boy, who has spent half a century as one of the most recognisable power brokers in US sport and, as the old cliché goes, might very well bleed silver-and-black if you were impertinent enough to cut him.

Davis created the Oakland franchise in his own image as coach in the 1960s and guided it to five Super Bowls, winning three in a glorious eight-year stretch that began in 1976.

A roller-coaster ride it has been, too. Over the years, Davis has fallen out with the game's authorities on an almost constant basis, and been at the centre of a long line of personal disputes that have kept his lawyers busier than a 20st linebacker.

He moved the Raiders to Los Angeles for most of the 1980s and then back again, upsetting not one, but two sets of fans and causing endless litigation with the authorities in both cities. He hires and fires at will.

Two weeks ago Davis gave his hard-pressed legal team their first big job of the 2008 season. In one of the more extraordinary moves of his career, he called a press conference to announce the sacking of the Raiders' head coach, Lane Kiffin.

The occasion was bizarre in the extreme. Sitting behind a table, wearing a strange cardigan and Raiders jacket and clearly suffering from poor health, 79-year-old Davis read out an open letter to Kiffin. His words were projected on to a 15-foot screen behind him.

He called the former manager "a flat-out liar" who had been fired for "bringing disgrace to the organisation" by leaking information to the press (an accusation Kiffin denies) and failing to show sufficient respect to "ex-Raiders". Because he was firing him "for cause," Davis added, the young manager would not receive any of the $3.5m (£2m) still remaining on his employment contract.

"I realised when I hired you that you were young and inexperienced and that there would be a learning process for you," read one passage. "Your mistakes on player personnel and coaches were overlooked, based on our patience with you. But I never dreamt that you would be untruthful... in statements in the press as well as so many other issues."

The occasion was at best strange, at worst bonkers. And despite America's relaxed attitude towards workers' rights, the fallout already has employment attorneys licking their lips in greedy anticipation.

Yet behind the theatre – and the Raiders were thrashed by the New Orleans Saints last Sunday in their first game since Kiffen's sacking – lies a longer-running soap opera Put simply, Davis is facing a growing rebellion at the heart of his fiefdom. Increasing numbers of fans and pundits are calling for an end to his reign. Their frustrations go back to "The Raider Way".

To understand this phenomenon, you must head to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum one game day during the season that runs from September to February. There you'll encounter 60,000 of the most devoted fans in US sport, many of them wearing leather biker gear and skull-and-crossbone tattoos.

The pirate motif celebrates the club's renegade status, and the supporters who wear it are raucous and sometimes unfriendly. Above all, though, they have an overbearing thirst for success evident in the catchphrases they parrot, most of which Davis invented: "Just win, baby!", "Pride and Poise" and "The Greatness of the Raiders."

Recent times haven't exactly seen Oakland Raiders being very great, though. At present, the club are on the wrong end of a five-year losing streak. Since 2002, the last year they were any good, the Raiders have failed to win more than five of the 16 games that make up each regular season. Their record over the period is 19 wins and 61 losses.

To a growing number of fans, the buck for this stops with Davis. The Raiders have parted company with four head coaches in the five-year losing streak (no small loss in a sport that thrives on organisation and logistics) and abjectly failed to live up to the winning philosophy he helped create. This season, they have managed just one victory in the opening four matches. On Sunday, under interim management, they will face a tricky away game at New Orleans.

Part of the problem is Davis's ego. For years, he's found it impossible not to interfere with the day-to-day coaching operation. Departing coaches have complained about him peering over their shoulders in training and calling plays in the middle of a game.

This wouldn't matter so much if Davis was still the coaching genius he once was. Unfortunately, the game has changed beyond recognition in recent decades, and Davis, who last won a Super Bowl in 1984, looks increasingly like a relic from the sport's past.

As a man-manager, Davis has also failed to modernise. In the old days, the Raiders were famous for hiring down-on-their luck players – some coming back from suspension, others just out of prison. The policy generated loyalty to the club, which was a huge portion of what made the Raiders tick. But today, professional sport is all about money; player loyalty seems quaintly outmoded.

From a financial perspective, the old Raider Way is also a handicap. In the era of corporate sponsorship, where dollars buy success and only the obscenely profitable can flourish, the traditional renegade image is a red light. Few blue-chip companies from nearby Silicon Valley want to associate with a team that has a habit of signing former convicts.

The final nail in the Al Davis coffin is that he seems to be losing the support of his fans and the media. In the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, Bill Dwyre, the newspaper's respected columnist who has followed the Raiders for most of their history, said that it was time for Davis to step aside.

"Ten years ago, if I'd written that, I would have got 17 death threats," he said. "Now my mailbag is full of notes saying, 'You're right, the guy has got to go'. I tried to be as gentle as I could. Davis has done some very good things... but boy, he's now just lost it."