Raiders' Toed the Line in 1960 Training Camp

The first day of the first training camp for the Oakland Raiders came on July 11, 1960, at Santa Cruz High School near Monterey, where 86 players showed up for media day and practiced under the watchful eye of strict Coach Eddie Erdelatz, who formerly coached at the United States Naval Academy.

Fred Fehn, a 256-pound tackle, pulled a leg muscle on the first running exercise of camp, and defensive end Charlie Powell, who formerly played for the San Francisco 49ers and was a professional boxer at one time, pulled a tendon posing for photographers.

“If this keeps up, we’ll be eating out of a phone booth,” Erdelatz, who was big on cardio and drills, not to mention physical conditioning, told reporters. “But, we’ve got a good group of players. There’s been no bed check and I haven’t even seen one of them smoking.

“We might not be the best team in the American Football League, talent-wise, but we will be the best conditioned team and that’s how you win football games.”

Tom Flores, who years later coached the Raiders to victories in Super Bowls XV and XVIII on his way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, became the first starting quarterback for the Silver and Black after playing up the road at College (now University) of the Pacific in Stockton.

Flores and his Pacific teammate, guard Wayne Hawkins, and center Jim Otto, another future Hall of Famer, was there on that first day in Santa Cruz and became the only Raiders to play throughout the 10-year history of the AFL before the merger with the National Football League.

“We had eleven quarterbacks the first day of camp,” recalled Flores, who made the All-AFL team in 1966. “You couldn’t get them all in the same picture. There were a lot of guys out there and you just tried to do your best.

“Off the field, we had no money, so we hung around the hotel or the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. We’d look at the pretty girls on the beach, which is what most guys do with no money in their pocket. We were playing pro football, but there was nothing romantic about it.

“But rules were still rules. (Erdelatz) gave you a lot of leeway, so it was up to you.”

So those Raiders, unlike the later members of the Silver and Black in the raucous years of training camp in the 1970s at the El Rancho Tropicana Hotel in Santa Rosa, were pretty tame in their off-the-field activities.

Of course, as Flores recalled, Raiders players made only $50 per preseason game, “$37 cleared,” according to Flores, after taking advantage of a local check-cashing outfit, and $350 per game during the regular season.

Only three of those quarterbacks were left at training camp by the end of July: Flores, 1959 Green Bay Packers draft pick Robert Webb of St. Ambrose College, and Paul Larson, a former All-American of the University of California in Berkeley.

Tony Teresa, an ex-Hartnell Junior College and San Jose State quarterback who played for the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League in 1956-57, was moved to running back during training camp and led the Raiders in rushing with 608 yards and six touchdowns in addition to catching 35 passes for 393 yards and four scores in his only season with the Silver and Black.

Otto remembers what that first training camp and season were like.

“No alcohol, just a little beer,” said Otto, the only all-star center the AFL had in its 10-year history. “We had to be careful where we were. I didn’t want to be the first one accused of having a soda. ‘If you don’t drink, you’re not going to get in trouble,’ my father told me. ‘If you get in trouble, I’m going to kick your (butt).’

“I wanted to make it with the Raiders in the worst way. So I didn’t go out and do what a lot of the others did.”

That’s one reason Otto, Flores, and Hawkins of the 1960s Raiders are remembered by Raider Nation as three of the greatest to ever wear the Silver and Black.

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