NFL's 📺 The Odd Couple: Al Davis & Pete Rozelle.

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is the first Tuesday in May and that means one thing (no, not the tired *NSYNC meme), its rivalry week and In this installment we present the saga of Al Davis and Pete Rozelle. Quite possibly the most significant off-field feud in NFL history, Rozelle and Davis are two of the architects of the National Football League behemoth as we know it, but never did these two contrasting visionaries work well in concert with one another. Join us as we start at the beginning, as Rozelle rises to NFL commissionership at a young age as both his league and American professional football are about to grab a lion share of the sports marketplace. Davis enters the fray as a pivotal figure in the upstart AFL, as both league commissioner and later owner of the Oakland Raiders. The two rival leagues merge in 1970 due in large part to their individual efforts, but the contention stayed live and well. The 1970s and 80s brought it to a fever pitch, where our protagonists spent plenty of time on opposing sides of the courtroom, over both Davis’ Raider players and the renegade owner’s desire to relocate the franchise from Oakland to Los Angeles in a famed anti-trust case. All the backstory, detail and legacy: it’s Al Davis v. Pete Rozelle, this week on the Bill Bradley Collective.