Raiders' Assistant Hospitalized in “Coach-Fight”

We're barely one game into the exhibition season, but the Raiders already have the wildest, craziest scandal of any NFL training camp. One of their assistant coaches has been hospitalized with a jaw injury after a violent training camp brawl -- with another coach.

If that's not crazy enough for you, then get this -- Nancy Gay is reporting at AOL Fanhouse that the punch was thrown by none other than head coach Tom Cable.

Terdell Sands completely approves of this method of conflict resolution.

Napa police have been brought in to the matter, but have refused to provide the identity of the assault victim because of confidentiality concerns.

Good luck with that in the Internet era.  The National Football Post reported today that the victim was Raiders defensive assistant Randy Hanson. The incident actually took place on August 5, but the police report just became public.

But the bombshell here is that the allegation that the Raiders head coach actually beat up one of his own assistants. "Two NFL sources have told FanHouse the attacker was Raiders' first-year head coach Tom Cable," writes Ms. Gay, a longtime Raiders beat writer, "and 'that Hanson never saw it coming.'"

I can't emphasize enough that it is currently just an allegation based on unnamed sources. But if so, let's acknowledge the elephant in the room here -- Is it a bad thing to be excited that your head coach would punch somebody? And one of his own assistants, at that?

After all, these are the Raiders. This is the outlaw team of the NFL, the team with a pirate and two deadly weapons on their helmet, the team that never does anything by the book and still makes it to the Super Bowl at least once every decade. This is the team of John Matuszak, Jack Tatum, and Bill Romanowski. In a sense, having a head coach who punches guys out is very much in keeping with the Raider mystique.

But again, we don't know for sure that Coach Cable was actually the one who threw the punch. Coach is expected to clear up the matter in a press conference following Monday afternoon practice.

 Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who is currently praying the rosary that the next time Cable punches someone is during the live broadcast of an actual game.

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