Raiders talk with NFL Senior VP Ray Anderson about front office job

There have been rumblings for a while the Raiders would be looking to add a position that could very well be that of a team president - a position they don't currently have. Several names had been bandied about and Anderson was mentioned as a team president candidate for several job openings across the NFL but nothing materialized until today.

The team is holding discussions with Ray Anderson who is the senior vice president of football operations for the NFL. His exact title with the Raiders has yet to be determined but it would figure to be team president.

If that were to happen, Anderson would be the first African American Team President in NFL history. It's just the kind of hiring that would have made Al Davis proud. Mark would be following in his father's footsteps. Al being the man who hired the first Latino head coach (Tom Flores), first African American head coach (Art Shell), and first female Chief Executive (Amy Trask).

Anderson's resume is a long one. Much of that experience came in the Bay Area so accepting a position with the Raiders would be a homecoming of sorts for him.

He is a Los Angeles, California native who attended Stanford University on football and baseball scholarships. Anderson earned a BA in political science from Stanford in 1976 and a jurist doctorate degree from Harvard Law School in 1979.

A year after graduating from Harvard Law School, he returned to the Bay Area to co-found the prominent San Francisco sports law practice at Heller, Ehrman. He entered the sports agency business in 1984 when he opened the West Coast office for Sports Advisors Group. In 1987, he launched his own agency, AR Sports, specializing in the representation of NFL coaches and players and later adding Major League Baseball players.

As an agent, he represented several high-profile sports names such as Tony Dungy, and Dennis Green and in 2000 was named agent of the year by Black Sports Agents Association. Two years later, he would join the Falcons front office where he was named to Sports Illustrated's list of the "101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports". He stayed with the Falcons for four years before the NFL offices came calling.

In recent seasons, Anderson has become most well known as the guy you don't want to hear from as an NFL player. He is the guy who lays out the discipline for illegal hits and the like which include fines and suspensions. The Raiders already had their lowest penalty numbers (108) since 2001 (107). Adding Anderson would figure to continue that trend for a franchise who set a new NFL record for penalties and yards in 2011.

For Mark Davis and the Raiders to be able to reel in Anderson would be quite a coup. It would continue with the restructuring and new philosophy that began last offseason with the overhaul of the front office including the hiring of General Manager Reggie McKenzie.

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