My first road trip with the Raiders was in 1990. That was a big deal, I was told, as it was the first time that a woman – other than a wife who joined her husband on road trips – had traveled with the team to a game. I was determined not to screw this up – not for myself or for anyone else.
Teams hate what they label “distractions.” How could I be a distraction if no one knew I was there, I thought. I made a commitment to myself that I was going to keep the lowest profile imaginable. I was going to be so low profile that no one would even know I was there.
As part of my low-profile plan, I decided that I wouldn’t take one of the chartered buses from our facility to the airport. Instead, I would find a ride and arrive at the airport early. I’d sit in a corner of the boarding area, away from everyone else. Then, once on the plane, I’d sit down, pull out a magazine, shove it in front of my entire face, and stay that way the whole flight. No one would know I was on that plane.
My “low-profile plan” hit a bit of a snag when I arrived at the airport and the underwire in my bra set off a detector. As my bra caused the detector to ping, I turned and saw the first busload of players and coaches heading up the escalator and the stairs towards security. I pleaded with airport officials: “Do whatever you have to do, pat me down, unhook my bra, take it off. Do what you want but let me through before everyone sees what’s going on.” My pleading didn’t work. The players and coaches caught up to me and after a bit of an awkward moment, we all laughed.
Once through security and the boarding area, I again implemented my “low-profile plan.”
My strategy upon landing was to board one of the buses waiting for us on the tarmac and to sit by myself, quietly, during the ride to the hotel. Once there, I planned to go directly to my room, and to stay there until game day. Low profile.
So, I got to my room and ordered room service. When I learned that it would take a while for the food to arrive, I decided to take a bubble bath. I was so prepared to hibernate from Friday night to Sunday that I’d packed my own bubbles.
Just as I got out of the tub, there were three really loud knocks on the door. BAM – BAM – BAM.
I remember thinking, Wow, room service is really early. I hadn’t even had a chance to put on clothes. I was wrapped in a towel with another towel wrapped as a turban around my head.
That knock was loud, I thought as I started moving toward the door. Just then, before I could reach it, the door flew open and Coach Brown shouted “BED CHECK” as a hotel security official stood behind him.
I stood at full attention – in my towel, with my turban, like an absolute dork – and said: “Yes, sir, Mr. Brown, I’m here, in my room, Mr. Brown.” I all but saluted.
Coach Brown was, of course, Willie Brown, a great former Raider, one of the best cornerbacks of all time, and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In Super Bowl XI, Willie intercepted a Fran Tarkenton pass. NFL Films captured that moment – during which the Raiders’ radio play-by-play announcer roars “Old Man Willie Brown” as Willie returns that interception 75 yards for a touchdown – and it remains one of the great moments in league history. Whenever I introduced Willie publically or felt like teasing him a bit, I’d refer to him as Old Man Willie Brown. He feigned annoyance, but he I always knew that he loved it.
The moment he left, I called my husband. I was thrilled and excited and proud. I had to share this moment with him. When he answered, I yelled, “I’m part of the team! I got bed checked! I’ve been accepted! I’m really part of the team!”
“That doesn’t sound right,” my husband said.
“Oh yes, yes, it means I’m part of the team,” I said. I was sincerely thrilled.
“That doesn’t sound right,” he repeated, adding, “lock the door.”
It was many years later that I learned that after he banged on my door, burst in, shouted bed check and then left with the security guard in tow, Willie was laughing so hard at his prank that he had to stop and lean against the wall in the hallway to keep from falling over.
It wasn’t a bed check; it was my rookie welcome. Not only was Willie not bothered that I was “a girl,” he was comfortable enough that he played a prank on me, including me in a rookie tradition. I know this because Willie and I discussed and laughed about this for decades. Our only disagreement: to this day, when Willie tells the story, he says I was naked. I was not, I was wrapped in a towel.
That lighthearted, silly disagreement (about whether I was wrapped in a towel or not – and I was) aside, there wasn’t a moment during my time with the Raiders in which I sensed that Willie was at all concerned with my gender. Our discussions of press coverage, corner blitzes, bump-and-run, single high safety, defensive back hip technique, jamming a receiver, upcoming opponents, player personnel, tendencies, and wins and losses were all without consideration of my gender. Willie Brown is now in his mid 70s – it was a tremendous paradigm shift for him to work with a female colleague – but it didn’t bother him.
While Willie was never bothered by my gender, I understood that others may have been. I just didn’t care. Why waste my time or energy worrying about my gender or whether it bothered others? Others could waste their time and energy, not me.
* * *
I again failed at my planned low-profile approach to team travel on another trip later that season. We landed in Denver and sat on the tarmac for what seemed to me to be an interminable amount of time. Because we were on a charter, most people stood up and started walking toward the plane doors well before it taxied to a halt. So, by the time we had stopped on the area of the tarmac on which the buses were waiting, the aisles were packed. Well, we stood and we stood, and we stood. I was close to the plane door, which was open. I edged my way past a few people and squished right up to the door, leaned over, and looked down. I could see the ground, I could see our buses, I could see our advance man speaking with airport personnel – but there were no stairs pulled up to the plane or anywhere near it.
“GET US OFF THIS PLANE,” I shouted. After a few moments had elapsed, I again shouted: “FIND SOME STAIRS AND GET US OFF THIS PLANE.” I don’t have a dainty voice – I speak too loudly as a general rule – and in this instance I was shouting very loudly in order to be heard over all of the airplane and airport noise. I didn’t realize how loudly I was shouting until the stairs arrived and we started moving and I heard people talking and laughing about how loud and forceful I was in my directives. I heard Al say, “She got it done.”
She got it done.
I subsequently learned that I had angered and offended our advance man, whose job it was to arrange all team travel, by inserting myself into what he (and others) considered his domain and “none of my business” and by being so brash and so loud. But my unabashed willingness to insert myself and my bold, brash manner had had resonated with Al. She got it done.
My booming directive to “get us off this plane” was entirely instinctive on my part – I didn’t think it through before I acted. This wasn’t a calculated decision, designed to assert or insert myself or to send any sort of a message – it was, quite simply, me being me, for better or for worse. In this case, me being me was both for better and for worse. In retrospect, I realized that while this incident suggested to Al that I would not be hesitant to involve myself in an effort to help solve problems, it offended and alienated many of my coworkers, all of whom had been with the organization for far longer than I and most of whom were put off by my commandeering the situation. Players, though, told me that they were impressed.
Not long after I started traveling with the team, I abandoned my attempts at my low-profile plan. As a general rule, I’m not so good at a low-profile approach to life and it wasn’t working, anyway.
I figured out that team charters offered a terrific opportunity to interact with players and other coworkers with whom I didn’t work on a daily basis. Sometimes, we used the hours on the plane to conduct business. Other times, we simply chatted while congregating in the galleys and aisles.
At one point well into my career, on a trip to Philadelphia, I found myself in the galley with quarterback Rich Gannon, who, unprompted, offered me some worldly advice: how not to order a Philadelphia cheesesteak. I listened and absorbed all of the coaching Rich offered. “Amy,” he began, “don’t order like you’re you, don’t say ‘none of this, none of that,’ or ‘extra this, extra that.’” Rich’s impression of me was as accurate as it was hilarious. He had perfectly mimicked the precise manner in which I order food.
Rich went on to explain that I should walk up to the vendor and, as would someone from Philadelphia, say only: “Yo, load the bitch up.”
The next day, I was out in Philadelphia with two others on staff, saw a cheesesteak vendor, and decided to buy them snacks. With Rich’s advice in mind, I strode up to the vendor and said: “Yo, load it up, bitch.” Oops. I had never seen my two coworkers move as quickly as they did when they saw the look on the face of the man I had called “bitch.”
* * *
In kindergarten, I was labeled a behavior problem and the label stuck through high school. I didn’t listen, I talked when I was not supposed to, I talked back to teachers and other adults, and I misbehaved (or so they said). Many would say this label is still appropriate.
There were times I was sent to stand in the corner just after we said the Pledge of Allegiance and required to remain standing there until class ended. I spent so many hours during kindergarten and elementary school standing in the corner, that I have often marveled that I’m not cross-eyed. Being forced to stand in the corner and then, in higher grades, being kicked out of the classroom to stand outside, went on for many years.
I was not a good student, I was told. I was a problem, they added.
I remember my sixth-grade teacher summoning my mother to school to meet with him. I also remember that I recognized at the time that this was not a good thing. He told my mother that he was aware that my older siblings were very smart, but that I was not and that I was not destined to go to college. I was in the sixth grade – college was a long way off – but he was convinced that I wouldn’t get in. He informed my mother that she needed to have entirely different expectations for me than she did for my siblings and that trade school was the only realistic expectation for me. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with attending – or aspiring to attend – trade school, of course; nothing at all. But elementary school is not the time for someone to make any determination or reach any conclusion about any child.
I was standing in the hallway outside the classroom – but the transoms (that’s what they were called – transoms) were open – and I overheard the entire conversation, including my mother’s response, the sum and substance of which I remember to this day. Her voice was controlled, but I knew she was angry. No one, she explained to this teacher, should ever label any child. No one, she added, should ever preconceive what any child is capable of achieving. She told him that as an educator, he should know better.
Perhaps because I was labeled a behavior problem in kindergarten or perhaps because from the time I can remember, my mother expressed her disdain for labeling people, I have always abhorred them.
Labels are a cheap, lazy convenience.
Labels are often attached to players. One label I abhor as much or more than any is “thug.” That label is not only offensive for the simple fact that it is a label; it is offensive because it is insidious.
I periodically share my strongly held views about the use of this label. Toward the conclusion of the 2013 season, Richard Sherman was labeled a thug by many. As I said then and as I have repeated many times since, if Richard Sherman is considered a thug, then I am proud to call myself a thug, too. Each time I have said this, people have playfully responded that there are some in league circles who may, in fact, consider me a thug. Well even if that is true, that’s fine; I will proudly stand (as a pearl-wearing) thug alongside many others who have been labeled as such.
I do think that that being labeled a behavior problem – or, actually being a behavior problem – is one of the reasons I fell in love with the Raiders.
While I was a student at Cal, the Raiders were still in Oakland and I attended a few games. Something about the Raiders resonated with me – the players were branded renegades, outlaws, and criminals. The owner gave second (and third and fourth) chances to those who wouldn’t get a chance on any other team. The owner didn’t seem to care whether a player had been labeled (or was) a behavior problem. The owner didn’t seem to care about labels at all. Raiders players were zany and different.
What better team for someone who had been branded a behavior problem in kindergarten to pick as her football team?
The Raiders moved to Los Angeles the same year I graduated from Cal and moved back to Los Angeles to attend graduate school. (Actually, the organization had tried to move two years earlier, but was ordered back to Oakland by the court.) I attended a few games while in graduate school, as I had while in college. In fact, one of my earliest dates with my husband was to a game in the Coliseum – we purchased the only seats we could afford, smack dab in what was referred to as the “peristyle end zone” (the end zone that was about a hundred miles from the field).
* * *
Just as I wasn’t a particularly good student in elementary school, I wasn’t a particularly good student in junior high school. By my family’s standards, I was a crummy student. I didn’t do homework. I didn’t even bring my books home from school; I left them in my locker. I didn’t do well on tests – really, very poorly, by my parents’ standards – and I received what my parents considered very disappointing grades. I just didn’t care about school. I was able to get by without doing anything, and I had no desire to do more than that.
And then, in my first year of high school, came a magnificent teacher who changed the trajectory of my life. That’s not an overstatement; she really did. Her name was Jeanne Hernandez and she was my 10th-grade English teacher. One day during the first month of high school, Mrs. Hernandez, disgusted by yet another of my obnoxious responses to a question and my obnoxious, disinterested attitude in general, pointed a finger directly at me (it looked to me like a talon) and motioned to the door. It was clear that she was directing me to leave the room, which I did. She walked out with me and as we stood on the outdoor walkway that ran in front of all of the classrooms in that area, she told me that she was not going to stand for my attitude or my behavior, that she expected more of me, and that she would not accept less than she believed that I could achieve. That was it. Discussion over. I was stunned and initially, I was angry. But then I realized that I also felt good. Mrs. Hernandez saw reason to challenge me – she was going to demand more of me than I had ever demanded of myself – she cared. That was the first time I didn’t talk back or mouth off in school. Mrs. Hernandez walked back into the classroom, as did I.
It is said that a teacher can change a child’s life and Mrs. Hernandez changed mine. From that day forward, I paid attention, I tried, I believed that I could do better, and I did do better. Because of her, I got better grades and I went to college.
A number of years after I began working for the Raiders, I wrote a letter to Mrs. Hernandez and sent it to the then-principal of the high school I attended, with a note asking him to forward it to her. I don’t know if she ever received that letter, but I hope she did. In my letter, I explained that she changed my life – that she altered its course – and I thanked her.