Honoring Steve Jobs and Al Davis

I think it is appropriate to show some appreciation for two people who changed the sport industry and communication industry.  As we have discovered, sports and communication go hand in hand.  Lets take a minute to think about where sports and communication would be today had it not been for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, both who passed away this month.  These two men are very well respected in their subjective fields of service, Jobs in the communication world and Davis in the sports world.

Steve Jobs was a visionary, and due to his vision of technology, he has changed the communication world.  Jobs pioneered the concept from items such as the personal computer, clicking images with a mouse, the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.  These are all products are used on a daily basis, and are essentials to many businesses.  They have also changed the way that we receive and use digital technology.  I recently ran into an old friend and college teammate, who is currently an assistant basketball coach at Thomas Moore University.  I saw she had an iPhone and I asked her how she liked it.  She responded by saying that she loved it and she has everything that she needs on it.  She was explaining that she has a recruiting application and it can track her calls to recruits, notes on what they talked about, the length of the call, the number of times she called the same recruit, and information about the recruit.  She said at any time, no matter where she is, she is able to relay this information to the head coach.  This is just one small example of how the iPhone is used in the sports industry and its impact on how we store and relay information. 

Just like Steve Jobs set the foundation for Apple, Al Davis set the foundation for the NFL.  Davis started out as being the Oakland Raiders coach in 1963, and three years later became commissioner of the AFL.  After talks about merging the NFL and AFL, Davis resigned as commissioner and went back to the Raiders organization.  Davis then became sole owner of the Raiders and soon had absolute power in the front office.  In 1976, Davis won his first Super Bowl with John Madden as the coach.  When the AFL and the NFL merged in 1970, the Raiders were looked at as a powerhouse in the NFL because Davis had a reputation of getting the right players who followed his criteria and instilling a competitive attitude in them.  Off the football field, Davis is remembered for breaking barriers, when he broke both race and gender barriers by hiring the first African-American coach, Art Shell, and the first Hispanic-American coach, Tom Flores.  Al Davis also hired a woman to the executive front office, Amy Trask.  Davis will go down in history in the NFL as an icon due to all of his achievements on and off the field.  It takes a special man to be the defining force in a single franchise for more than 30 years.

Steve Jobs and Al Davis will be greatly missed in their respected companies, but their impact and legacy that they are leaving behind will have them living on for many more years.