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| Al Davis | vs. | William Clay Ford |
| 368-264-8 | Record | 281-374-13 |
| .569 | Winning% | .411 |
| 21 | Playoffs | 9 |
| 4 | Champions | 0 |
Sports Illustrated is running a feature right now on the best and worst owners in sports, and for the most part, the lists are well-reasoned and interesting. But there's one huge problem: SI claims that Oakland's Al Davis is the worst owner in the NFL, worse even than Detroit's William Clay Ford. And that's just wrong.
To suggest that Davis is a worse owner than Ford is to willfully ignore everything that both men have accomplished. The table above is repurposed from the SI owner rankings, and it speaks for itself: How could anyone look at those records side by side and suggest that Davis is a worse owner than Ford?
And the disparity between the two is even greater when you look beyond those numbers: Davis is a football man through and through, a man who was the Raiders' head coach for three seasons and was unanimously selected as the AFL's Coach of the Year in 1963. When he moved from the sidelines to the front office, he remained the Raiders' chief personnel man, and they won three Super Bowls with players Davis chose.
Ford, meanwhile, became the Lions' owner because he was a rich guy in Detroit who wanted something to do with all his money after leaving the family-owned car company. He has never known how to run a football team effectively, and he has never hired anyone who knows how to run a football team effectively.
So why is Davis atop SI's list of the worst owners in football? Because it has become fashionable in recent years to make jokes about Davis, who (like Ford) is getting old and seems to have lost some of his mental faculties but (unlike Ford) will still face the media and answer questions about his team's failures.
If you want to kick Davis whle he's down, fine. But don't try to claim he's a worse owner than Ford, who has never been up.
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