was also named head of football operations. From this day onward, Davis was operating head of the franchise; Valley and McGah largely left the Raiders in Davis' hands. On the field, the team Davis had assembled and coached steadily improved. With John Rauch (Davis's hand-picked successor) as head coach, the Raiders won the 1967 AFL Championship, defeating the Houston Oilers 40–7. The win earned the team a trip to Super Bowl II, where they were beaten 33–14 by Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. The following two years, the Raiders again won Western Division titles, only to lose the AFL Championship to the eventual Super Bowl winners—the New York Jets (1968) and Kansas City Chiefs (1969). In 1969, John Madden became the team's sixth head coach, and under him, the Raiders became one of the most successful franchises in the NFL, winning six division titles during the 1970s. In 1970, the AFL-NFL merger took place and the Raiders joined the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the newly merged NFL. The first post-merger season saw the Raiders win the AFC West with an 8–4–2 record and go all the way to the conference championship, where they lost to the Colts. Despite another 8–4–2 season in 1971, the Raiders failed to win the division or achieve a playoff berth. Raiders ownership In 1972, while managing general partner Valley was attending the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Davis drafted a revised partnership agreement that made him the new managing general partner, with near-absolute control over team operations. McGah signed the agreement. Since two of the team's three general partners had voted in favor of the agreement, it was binding under California partnership law at the time. Valley sued to overturn the agreement once he returned to the country but was unsuccessful. Valley sold his interest in 1976 and from that point none of the other partners played any role in the team's operations, despite the fact that Davis did not acquire a majority interest in the Raiders until 2005, when he bought the shares held by McGah's family (McGah died in 1983). At the time of his death, Davis owned about 67% of the team. In addition to serving as owner, Davis effectively served as his own general manager until his death — longer than any football operations chief in the league at the time. When he died, he was one