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.