By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

SAN DIEGO - Where's Al? I have been trying to find Al Davis all week, to hear what the Oakland Raiders' owner had to say before deciding whether to pick his football team to win the Super Bowl.

No Davis at Media Day. No Davis at the press conferences at the team hotel. I was tempted to ask some of the drunken Raider fans in the Gaslamp Quarter Thursday if they had seen him. (I realize the term "drunken Raider fans" is redundant).

Of course, everyone knows he'd rather drop a hot plate on his foot than answer questions from reporters, especially any this week that might start with Jon and end with Gruden.

Plus, he is 73 and the years are showing. His walk is labored. Word has it he is in daily pain.

I asked a member of the Oakland public relations corps - who reminds you of someone trying to protect the date for D-Day - if Davis might have a session with the press this week.

"I don't know," the PR fellow answered.

Well, uh, who would?

"He would."

The Raiders are like that. They don't mind you watching their games, but they'd prefer you not know much else. Except what Davis wants you to know.

No surprise that the Raiders kept the unwashed press waiting nearly an hour at media day.

Or that the press guide is almost non-communicative.

Nowhere is the won-loss record of Oakland's head coaches. But on the back cover in big letters is the Raiders' winning percentage since 1963, and how it is the best in pro football.

1963?

That's when Al Davis joined the Raiders.

His players love him, because he loves them. Tim Brown's wife is expecting twins any moment. Davis has a private jet waiting if he needs it.

Plus, they chortle at the high ransom - four draft picks and $8 million - he pulled out of Tampa Bay for Gruden. The Raiders went to the Super Bowl, and the Bucs picked up the check.

"To those of you who don't have access," Bill Romanowski was saying, "he cares about two things. Winning and his players."

And Rod Woodson went on and on.

"The mystique of Al Davis has never changed. Some of these other owners who know nothing about football - they made their money in the dot com era or had it passed down - they don't have a clue of what this game is about. They'll never get a mystique.

"Everything he's done in his life for the Raiders makes it the image. When you put on that silver and black, you don that image."

As for the rest of us ...

"I don't know if he's a recluse," said Fred Biletnikoff, a Hall of Fame receiver for Oakland and now an assistant coach. "I would think that his life goes from his home to the facility and on the road with us traveling and with us to training camp. Those are the main areas of his life that he travels through."

This could conceivably be Davis' last Super Bowl. Someone even wondered if he might step away soon. Biletnikoff tried not to laugh. Al Davis, he said, will die as the Raiders' owner.

"Absolutely. He's taking this as long as he can take it, and then some."

Davis would love a fourth ring, with Gruden's blood on it. His team has the offense, the experience, certainly the audacity.

But it is the Bucs' defense that is the most convincing.

Tampa Bay 21, Oakland 17.

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