Mark Davis reflects on his father's legacy and love for Las Vegas

Jul 04, 2025 at 10:00 AM

Paul Gutierrez

Raiders Columnist

Memories, and irony, floated through the air like cigar smoke on a recent humid summer night at the Eight Lounge.

Raiders Owner Mark Davis was recounting how Las Vegas had long been in his family's DNA and why, with the team having already called Southern Nevada home since 2020, the seemingly-sudden marriage was more than one of convenience.

It was meant to be.

After all, Las Vegas used to be Al Davis' birthday playground, what with friends, family and Raiders alumni gathering at such old school and long-gone resorts like the Riviera or the Desert Inn back in the day, or the Bellagio more recently, for a few days of celebration before the grind of training camp hit.

And with today marking what would have been the late iconoclast owner's 96th birthday, the reminders are everywhere.

And nowhere.

"That's the bittersweet part of all of this," Mark Davis told me. "He would have loved this."

Brooklyn to the bone, Al Davis made the East Bay his home but always had a soft spot for the desert.

"He loved Las Vegas," Mark Davis said of his father. "He loved sitting out in the sun. He'd bring his weights with him, his barbell and weights, because they didn't have gyms in the hotels back then. That's how he'd travel.

"He'd work out. Relax. He and my mom would go to a nice dinner and see a show. All right before training camp. It was a great time. My dad was treated very nicely by the people."

In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, a young Mark Davis and his family saw Jimmy Durante go through his paces on stage, watched Don Rickles insult anyone and everyone in the audience and was wowed by the voices of Cher and, in more recent years, Celine Dion.

But it was the birthday parties that were the stuff of legend.

"It was great, it went on for two or three days," Mark Davis said. "The guys, they'd sit around and shoot the [breeze] and golf."

Hall of Fame coach Tom Flores told me the gatherings had a certain reunion feel to them, with a dash of a roast.

"Everybody had a chance to get up and talk about how great Al was," Flores said with a laugh. "There was the welcome party and food, and golf and afternoon sessions with the guys. A late lunch. That's when we'd talk about Al and what he meant to us. It was great.

"First class all the way."

But while the elder Davis and his traveling party were re-tracing the steps of the Rat Pack in the sun, the teenaged and freckle-faced Davis was more of a lone wolf.

"That's how I learned about Las Vegas as a kid," he said with a laugh. "I didn't golf, so I'd just burn up."

Mark Davis also joked that he'd had an eye on Las Vegas since 1964, when he was 9 years old.

That's when the Raiders, with Al Davis as general manager and coach, Flores at quarterback, Clem Daniels running the ball and Art Powell catching it, played the Houston Oilers at old Cashman Field in an exhibition game on Aug. 29, and Davis challenged Sin City's then-segregated hotels with the AFL's integrated roster.

Not only did Davis and the Raiders help desegregate Las Vegas, the Raiders also won that day, 24-20, before a standing-room only crowd of more than 12,000.

Mark Davis still has his game program from that day.

Is it any wonder, then, that Allegiant Stadium sits on the aptly-named corner of Al Davis Way and Dean Martin Drive?

The location is a "confluence" of Raiders and Las Vegas history, the younger Davis said, the stadium less than three miles away from where Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo to usher in the first wave of Las Vegas as a destination and tourism stop.

"And now," Mark Davis said, "we're here,"

Indeed, Allegiant Stadium has played host to the Pro Bowl, the Super Bowl and WrestleMania with the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford title fight in September and the Final Four coming in 2028.

Yeah, the elder Davis would have liked this.

And, since taking over the franchise upon his father's passing in 2011, Mark Davis wants to keep his Las Vegas memories alive in Las Vegas as well.

Such as after his father's passing, when he held a birthday celebration in his memory at Lagasse's Stadium in the Palazzo.

"It was a phenomenal party," the younger Davis said.

Or, four years from now, in 2029, on what would be Al Davis' 100th birthday.

"Las Vegas was always the entertainment capital of the world," Mark Davis said. "Now, it's the sports and entertainment capital. And being part of that is really, it's fun to be a part of that. It's two different eras of Las Vegas."

One bridged by a certain birthday.