Raiders Hire Mike White, Former Illini and Cal Coach

The revamping of the Raider offense, which began abortively with the hiring and firing of Mike Shanahan, continued Friday with the team’s announcement that it has hired the Bill Walsh-trained Mike White to be an assistant coach in charge of special projects.

The projects are expected to be the Raider quarterbacks.

As a coach at California and Illinois, White developed Joe Roth, Dave Wilson, Jack Trudeau and Tony Eason. Just before leaving Illinois in the wake of an NCAA investigation that eventually land the program on probation, White landed Jeff George, who was transferring from Purdue.

White twice won coach-of-the-year mentions: the first time at Cal in 1975, when his Bears were Pacific 8 co-champions; and in 1983 at Illinois, when his Illini went to the Rose Bowl.

Between his Cal and Illinois stints, he was a 49er assistant. He stayed close to Walsh and was often rumored as a replacement, should Walsh have chosen to move to general manager.

Walsh is a one-time Raider assistant with close ties to Al Davis. When Davis’ experiment of updating his offense by hiring an outsider--Shanahan--backfired, Davis turned to Walsh.

Walsh had set up a camp to teach offensive football in San Jose. The Raiders, the first team to attend, sent Coach Art Shell, quarterbacks Steve Beuerlein and Jay Schroeder and a couple of assistants.

However, they got only 1 1/2 days in before Walsh got a call from his employer, NBC, which felt the camp was a conflict of interest. Walsh stopped in mid-session and the Raiders went home.

Now they have their own chip off the block.