Ask a fan who the NFL’s worst owner is. Or what franchise is run most poorly. 90 percent of those you ask will probably respond Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders.

But I have to wonder, are they really right?

I won’t counterargue the opinion Al Davis seems senile at times and his decisions seem to have no rhyme or reason and the Raiders are in deep trouble with him calling the shots and hiring head coaches. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: his hasn’t been the worst franchise the past decade.

The Detroit Lions, who most recently became the first team in NFL history to finish a season with an 0-16 record (interestingly, one season after the New England Patriots became the first to finish 16-0), haven’t been to the postseason since 1999. Say what you will about Al Davis and how he runs the Oakland Raiders but while the Lions have been enjoying 4th place in the NFC North (and prior to that, Central), Davis’s Raiders have won a Super Bowl and gone to the postseason three times. Granted, they haven’t played in January since 2002, but the point is this: if the measurement of a franchise’s success is wins or postseason berths or Super Bowls, Davis’s Raiders have more in the last ten years.

You can blame Matt Millen and the philosophies he brought to the franchise, but at some point it comes back to the owner and higher ups who employed Matt Millen and even extended his contract after far too many consecutive losing seasons. It’s led to a dramatic downfall, best summarized by saying the team hasn’t had an identity since the days of Barry Sanders. In 2007 things completely unraveled after Jon Kitna guaranteed 10 wins and collapsed alongside his teammates while the Lions dropped seven of its final eight games.

Of course the Lions fired Millen during the 2008 season, but it’s too little too late. The Lions don’t have the personnel to rise above any of its division rivals, and agreeing to coach the Lions may wind up a worse decision than Schwartz hoped. Because he’s walking into a messy situation and given the NFL’s treatment of head coaches, Schwartz may only be given three seasons to show serious progress. While it’s not particularly difficult to improve on last season winless record, it may be difficult to get the Lions up to where they’ll need to be so he’s not fired.

It doesn’t matter how you slice it; the Lions have been mishandled for a long time now. Are they the worst run franchise in pro football? Yeah, I think the argument could be made. While I’m hardly a fan of Al Davis and his antics, it’s a little frustrating to read editorials criticizing him as the NFL’s worst owner and fans complain the Raiders can’t have success while he’s in charge. Let’s all remember how the Lions have done lately under the watch of William Ford, who’s owned Detroit longer than Al Davis has owned Oakland and it’s time to consider how many rings the Lions since he bought the franchise in 1964: 0.

I feel bad for Raider-nation. I really do.

After months of rumors that he was attempting to force head coach Lane Kiffin to resign, Al Davis has finally gone through with it and fired him. In the past, Kiffin wisely said no to Davis’s pleads to quit coaching, expecting to receive some sort of payment because the franchise was breaking contract. Unfortunately, Davis and the Raiders franchise believe they have found a way around that, terminating Kiffin without further pay.

This is not the way to run an NFL franchise.

Forget for a second that Kiffin was the eighth Raiders head coach since 1994 at the time of his hiring. Forget for a moment that Al Davis decided not to take the high road, absolutely trying to destroy the credibility of Kiffin during his press conference by flat out calling him a “liar” on several occasions. Forget that Al Davis hasn’t fielded a winning franchise for more than half a decade.

Just consider this: Kiffin was improving the team. They were getting better. Don’t look at the record; that’s deceiving. In 2007, Kiffin made a lot of good moves and started steering the offense - which the season before, under Art Shell, had been one of the worst in NFL history - in the right direction. Oakland was 1-3 this season, but they were playing their best football since 2002. The running game was established, thanks to rookie Darren McFadden and a pair of other virtual unknowns. JaMarcus Russell wasn’t making a lot of mistakes in the pocket and the offense, as a whole, was functioning relatively soundly. This was a team that led in the fourth quarter in two of its three losses, and, for the first time in many seasons, fans could at least take solice in the fact that this team was competitive.

So I guess, considering all that above, the only logical thing to do was fire the head coach. That should solve the, er, “problems” he’d been causing. After all, it was only a matter of time before Kiffin started winning more games and turning the Raiders into a respectable a team on the field. Then what could Davis do? He’d have to fire a winning coach because he didn’t like him. Just imagine the media frenzy; what could people possibly get more upset over? Oh, wait, I know: Davis going out of his way to take personal attacks on Kiffin, releasing letters that he apparently wrote to the coach, and, all-in-all, trying to destroy his character so as to affect the way other owners and football programs look at him.

Kiffin was in the worst possible situation. He showed up to work every day, knowing that Al Davis was interviewing others for his job and spreading rumors that Kiffin’s time was running short. Assistant coaches, those who weren’t even picked by Kiffin, which, in itself is strange, were having meetings behind his back, and the team was drafting players he flat out didn’t want.

No, Al Davis screwed up here. Not because, in his words, he “made a mistake” and “picked the wrong guy” but because he picked the right guy, someone who could have turned the Raiders, a team that was so screwed up and backwards by the time he arrived, into a respectable, competitive team. Davis even admitted during the press conference that he wasn’t necessarily firing Kiffin because of performance, but instead due to “cause,” which apparently means that he believes that Kiffin broke contract.

“There were a lot of people who believed that … he wanted to be fired, but he wanted to be paid,” said Davis. Can you blame him? He wanted to leave because it’s been proven time and again that Davis is the worst owner to work under; he’s an impatient, over-involved, hovering, senile owner who demands perfection even when he doesn’t live anywhere near his own standards. So, sure, maybe Kiffin wanted to be fired and paid. Why would he rather quit without pay, while he was holding up his end of the contract?

Davis now faces the reality that he will have to hire a new coach in the offseason. It won’t be a high-profile coach because no one in his right mind would want to coach under Al Davis. He’s impossible to get along with, and he’s impossible to trust; his press conference said that much

During that press conference, Davis related that a reporter asked him to tell his side of the story. Davis apparently told the newspaper writer, “I don’t want to win in the press, I want to win on the field.” Sadly, he’s losing in both counts.