Angry Pope
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Where Are They Now: Ben Davidson: Image, humor everything for 'Big Ben'
Hulking ex-Husky became a big star
By DAN RALEY
P-I REPORTER
Ben Davidson used to bring down quarterbacks and the house. He delivered punches and punch lines. In or out of uniform, he had great timing.
At 65, the former Oakland Raiders icon and almost-forgotten Washington Husky is two inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter, and no longer terrorizes everyone as this cleverly invented football villain, a persona that could have been pulled from the comic books or pro wrestling.
The natural comedian just keeps people laughing wherever he goes. He's good at it.
Last Friday, Davidson turned up at Renton's Yankee Grill as guest speaker and a year-late inductee for the Northwest Football Hall of Fame luncheon, an event attended by a half dozen of his 1960-61 Rose Bowl teammates and one-time Raiders running mate Otis Sistrunk, among others.
Explaining why he was absent when honored by the group 12 months earlier, "Big Ben" quipped in his trademark growl, "I think I had a paid deal somewhere else."
For the next half-hour, a room full of people sat mesmerized as Davidson recounted his football career, putting a humorous spin on each stage.
He didn't play the game in high school. He didn't pull on a uniform until 1957, when he was attending two-year East Los Angeles College in his old neighborhood. The son of an LAPD officer wasn't exactly sure what to do on the field until an opponent clipped him from behind, and he reacted in a manner that might have gotten him arrested by his father. At least that's the way he tells it.
"I reached into his helmet and there was his head, his face and right under my thumb I felt something like an eye socket," Davidson said of his football debut. "I gouged his eye a little. He screamed and ran off the field. That's when the light bulb went on in my head and I said, 'I can do this.'
"I think that's when I became a Raider."
Actually, Oakland was still three years away from landing a pro team and using silver helmets that sported the black decal of a man wearing an eye patch.
Davidson joined the Huskies first and did more sitting than playing for a pair of victorious Rose Bowl teams. During two seasons in Seattle, he rotated between the second and third units. He started just two UW games, one as an injury fill-in. He was tall and skinny back then, barely resembling the 6-foot-8, 280-pound behemoth and four-time Pro Bowl player he would become.
Somebody noticed the potential lurking inside the huge frame, because Davidson was drafted higher than any of his fellow Huskies, going in the fourth round to the New York Giants. Even as a substitute player, he was an All-Coast honorable mention pick.
He never felt slighted or overlooked at the UW. It just wasn't his time yet.
"I never looked at it that way," Davidson said. "I didn't play high school football, so I had a late start. I was young, too. I came out of high school when I was just 16, out of college when I was 20."
He also was selected for the college all-star team that annually played against the reigning NFL championship team in Chicago. He remembers riding around that city on the L train with another physically imposing pro prospect, 6-9, 300-pound Ernie Ladd.
"People thought killers were on the loose in the subway," Davidson wisecracked.
The pros still weren't sure what they had. He was traded in training camp and spent his rookie season with the Green Bay Packers. He was waived, and played the next two years for the Washington Redskins.
After he was cut again, the Raiders claimed him. The franchise and player were meant for each other. He was an extroverted personality joining an already unruly cast of characters. For the second of his eight seasons in the Bay Area, he showed up with a handlebar mustache when facial hair was frowned upon around the league. Since 1965, he's never been without it.
His football timing was always perfect. With the Packers, he appeared in the '61 NFL title game. With the Raiders, he played in Super Bowl II. Against Joe Namath, he was credited for breaking the cheekbone of the high-profile quarterback when Oakland teammate Ike Lassiter was responsible, and his reputation took off.
Namath had publicly complained that the Raiders were a bunch of cheap-shot artists before playing them. He got leveled for it. Yet all anyone remembered from that game was a classic photo taken by Life Magazine -- one of Davidson throwing a forearm and knocking the helmet off of the New York Jets quarterback, a visually compelling yet far less lethal play.
"Isaac did it, but I got all the publicity," Davidson said. "Isaac figured if the stupid reporters had got it right, he would have been doing the Miller Lite commercials, not me."
The TV and movie cameras couldn't resist Big Ben. Once his football career ended unceremoniously with the WFL's Portland Storm in 1974, he made his cinematic debut in the movie "M*A*S*H." He appeared in another film, "Conan The Barbarian." He turned up on countless TV shows, among them "Charlie's Angels," "Fantasy Island," "Dukes of Hazzard," "Happy Days" and "CHiPs."
Davidson's greatest exposure came as a popular character on Miller Lite beer commercials, which featured pro athletes in humorous situations. He made 27 of these ads. He was identified so strongly with the beverage that corporate outings were encouraged, and he turned that into another job that mushroomed. He's been to every state except Delaware and a long line of countries pitching beer.
Today, Davidson lives near San Diego with his wife of 45 years, Kathy. They met in a UW accounting class. They raised three daughters, one of whom lives in Bothell. They've dabbled in real estate ever since he took his '61 NFL title game bonus check of $5,194.78 and invested it in a South Seattle apartment building.
Davidson looks trim and healthy. He walked away from football with a sense of humor and his body fairly intact. He wisely used the Oakland image as a shield.
"Playing for the Raiders was pretty safe," he said with a sly smile. "People knew if they did something to you, something might happen to them."
