Las Vegas Raiders: Legend Amy Trask belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame
By Keith Ricci
The End of a Hall of Fame Career; Assuring the Raiders Future
On October 8, 2011, Al Davis passed away. A loss that shook the organization and Raider Nation to the core. Can the Raiders exist without Al Davis? Trask immediately became the face of the Oakland Raiders front office. While she handled all non-football business her entire career, now anything major facing the organization had to include her.
Ten days after Davis died, the playoff-hungry Raiders traded two first round picks for quarterback Carson Palmer. A blockbuster deal in attempt to make the Raiders a contender again. While Hue Jackson is often credited with the move, it’s safe to assume Trask was involved in the process and had signed off on it. Her official statement was that it was "a team approach, and it involved a number of people within the organization."
In the previously mentioned interview with Trey Wingo, Trask talked about how she had handled the league-mandated succession planning for Davis and the Raiders. She would be the one to assure a peaceful transfer of power, as his son Mark Davis would assume ownership. She did just that and in 2013 left the Raiders, and the NFL, for good.
“I was a Raider,” she told Wingo, as she explained she did have offers from other teams “I wasn’t an NFL executive, I was a Raider executive.”
Upon resignation, Trask wrote in a press release: "Having honored a commitment that I made to effectuate a smooth transition and transfer of control, I no longer wish to remain with the organization…For over a quarter of a century, it was my honor and my privilege to work for the Raiders. I will forever appreciate the opportunity afforded me by Al Davis."
While we focus on everything she did during Al Davis’ final 24 years, it’s what she did in his last years and after he passed that might be most impressive. The final touches on an incredible career, smoothly transitioning a historic football team from one era to the next, assuring its future.
Mercury News writer Tim Kawakami said it best, “When Al Davis trusted almost nobody in the world — and when the rest of the NFL didn’t trust him — Amy Trask was the executive who (barely) kept the two sides working together.” Kawakami went on talk about the financial decisions she made to keep the franchise afloat, “That’s her legacy: In an enormously difficult time, as the standard-bearer faltered, she kept the franchise from crashing…and directed the transfer (financial and spiritual) to Mark Davis.”