remembering hank stram - national football...

REMEMBERING HANK STRAM

2005 CLIPS

Monday, July 4, 2005

NFL loses a true pioneer -- the charismatic Stram

By Len Pasquarelli ESPN.com

When it was brought before the Hall of Fame board of selectors in 2003, even in a year when the roster of possibilities was regarded as a relatively weak one, the candidacy of Hank Stram for entry into the hallowed shrine was the subject of considerable discussion.

In a pantheon that includes five head coaches with more than 200 victories each, after all, Stram's 136 career wins seemed a little on the light side to some of the voting members.

But what was never debated, and the element which ultimately swung several selectors toward Stram, was his inarguable role as an innovator.

That word, innovator, was clearly the most oft-used description of Stram in all of the early reaction pieces authored Monday evening following his death earlier in the day at age 82. It is, when discussing football, an easy term (much in the manner my kids resort with far too much facility to the word great to describe anything remotely beyond the ordinary) to toss around. In Hank Stram's case, though, it fit even better than the finely-tailored blazers with which he once graced the sideline.

In truth, the history of professional football includes but a handful of innovators, at most. Sid Gillman. Paul Brown. Clark Shaughnessy. Tom Landry. Maybe Stram doesn't quite belong in the same pew as those guys, way up front and close to the gridiron altar, but he does merit membership in the same elite congregation.

Because the little man -- perhaps his stockiness added some gravitas to the Stram persona but, truth be told, he was short of stature -- contributed to the game in a big way. It might have been, ironically enough, because Stram was so preoccupied with size. And about all of its possible implications when applied to his beloved sport.

Think, for just a minute or two, about the principle nuances Stram is most credited with introducing to the game. The moving pocket. The stacked defensive front. The penchant for bigger, beefier offensive linemen. All of them dealt with either size or, in some cases, with an ingenious way to overcome a lack of it.

The moving pocket was incorporated by Stram because he needed to find a way for his quarterback, Len Dawson, to locate passing lanes amid the swarm of arms in front of him. Stram wanted behemoth linemen because he actually felt that diminutive tailbacks such as Mike Garrett would get lost behind them on misdirection runs and screen-passes, creating a human camouflage that led to big plays. He stacked his linebackers behind the down lineman to disrupt age-old offensive blocking schemes, and to allow them to flow to the football without having to cut through a lot of trash.

Given his own stature, Stram had a soft spot for vertically-challenged players, no doubt. At the same time, though, he was fascinated by raw size. He brought the tallest player in NFL history, 6-feet-10 tight end Morris Stroud, into the league in 1970. Not only did he design red zone plays specifically to create size mismatches for Stroud, but Stram also positioned him under the goal posts, where he was instructed to try to swat away long field goal attempts.

Little known is that Stram once spent several hours attempting to convince the splendid seven-footer Wilt Chamberlain to give the NFL a try.

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It's often said that there is nothing new under the football sun. But the fertile football imagination that resided in Hank Stram's cranium was the fecund breeding ground for a universe full of inventive chalk-board doodlings. Yep, beneath one of the worst and most ill-fitting toupees ever witnessed in the NFL was a football mind matched by very few.

Make no mistake, the faux-erudite Stram could be creative with language, too. His entreaty to his Kansas City Chiefs players during their victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV, to keep "matriculating" the ball up the field, boys, is certainly one of the most unforgettable moments in the NFL Films archive. In truth, it is just a masterful bit of malapropism, since "matriculate" means to enroll at a school of higher education, not to advance a football.

Funny thing is, for a man who loved language the way Stram did, and who relished the verbal badinage with the media, he employed precious few words to articulate his own football philosophy. "Simplicity plus variety," Stram once announced, with little pause for consideration, when asked about his designs.

One of his contemporaries, George Allen, who entered the Hall of Fame one year ahead of Stram, was noted for his love of ice cream. But it was Stram who actually mastered the Baskin-Robbins approach to the game, figuring a way to cram all those varieties into one game plan. And, in a manner that endeared him to the many media members with whom he was so generous with his time. Stram wasn't particularly shy about reminding we ink-stained wretches of his imaginative flair.

Too weak of flesh to even deliver his Hall of Fame induction address in 2003, Stram had previously used up millions of words talking football with anyone who called him during those years spent in retirement. Just say "hello," and you guaranteed yourself a minimum of 20 minutes on the phone. They were typically, until the last few years, an insightful 20 or so minutes.

There is a phrase too frequently employed during the course of the annual Hall of Fame deliberations, usually by someone presenting the case for a candidate, and the hyperbole generally goes something like this: "You can't write the history of pro football without including [fill in the name of the particular candidate]."

In truth, maybe someone really could author the history of professional football with only scant reference to Hank Stram. But if they did, it would be missing a few colorful chapters, for sure.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. To check out Len's chat archive, click here .

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Sunday, August 3 Updated: July 4, 8:41 PM ET

Stram limited by diabetes, other health issues By Wayne Drehs ESPN.com

Editor's note: Hank Stram died Monday at the age of 82. The following story was written for his induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003.

CANTON, Ohio -- He never spoke. He never stood up and walked over to the wooden podium to address the waterlogged crowd. And that says something, for Hank Stram was one of the most colorful, vibrant personalities the game of football has ever seen.

But on this day, plagued by diabetes and a host of other health problems, the 80-year-old was unable to waddle to the front of the makeshift stage and do one of the things he used to do best -- talk.

Instead, he sat in his wheelchair and watched a series of video highlights as Hall of Fame organizers blasted a pre-recorded acceptance speech over the PA system. It was the first time in the Hall's 40-year history that an attending member didn't give his acceptance speech.

But it didn't matter. In this case, words were cheap. Everything you needed to know about Stram was visible in his former players' faces here Sunday. And if that wasn't enough, the emotions were evident across Stram's own wrinkled skin.

For the players, it was a never-ending stream of tears. For Stram, an endless smile that seemed impossible to wipe away.

"There wasn't a dry eye amongst one of us," former Chiefs running back Ed Podolak said. "And anybody who didn't cry probably has something wrong with them."

On a weekend in which Marcus Allen and James Lofton, two of the premier players from football's modern era, were formally enshrined into football immortality, one where 115 of the 221 Hall of Fame members were in attendance, one in which Allen's stirring acceptance speech reduced him to tears, it was Stram's story that stole the spotlight.

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On Saturday night, as each current Hall of Fame member walked across the Canton Memorial Civic Center stage to greet the Class of 2003, Stram cried. At the event's conclusion, when Allen, Lofton, Elvin Bethea and Joe DeLamielleure surrounded Stram in a tight group hug, prompting a thunderous standing ovation, each of the men wiped away more tears.

Stram doesn't say much these days. But this weekend, he didn't need to. That Saturday night moment -- enveloped by four of the greatest football players to ever live, formally ended a 25-year stretch in which the Hall of Fame voters kept the coach from football's permanent resting place.

"It was very emotional for me," Bethea said of the hug. "He has waited so long, oh so long. And I felt good for him. For all he did, for all he built and he stood for -- he finally got his moment in the sun. When he broke down, I did, too. Everybody did. They couldn't help it."

And it was just the beginning. On Sunday, some sixteen years after Stram introduced Len Dawson prior to the quarterback's Hall of Fame induction, Dawson returned the favor.

"This is harder than the day I stood up here and talked about myself," Dawson said.

As Dawson spoke of his former coach's passion, ingenuity and hunger to succeed, Stram sat patiently, smiling up at his former offensive leader.

"I wear a Super Bowl ring on this hand," Dawson said, pointing to his right hand. "And I wear a Hall of Fame ring on the other hand. And I can tell you that I wouldn't have either one of them without this guy, Hank Stram."

When Dawson's speech and the video tribute both concluded, Stram struggled out of his wheelchair, stood upright and hugged Dawson. He smiled to his wife Phyllis in the front row.

"You can just see how much he's enjoying this," Stram's son Henry said afterwards. "He's just so happy today."

Many of Stram's former players had planned to join him for his 80th birthday in January, but instead decided to make the trip to Canton. After the induction, Henry Stram walked around the stadium with a vintage Chiefs helmet, asking any and every former Chief he could to sign the hat, "for Dad." Each interaction preceded a flood of memories. Like when Henry bumped into former defensive back E.J. Holub, who reminisced about giving Stram's son chewing tobacco.

"We used to give those kids a hard time," Holub said. "And they just loved hanging around all the football players."

“ There is not one person that was more deserving of being here than him. The second we heard that he was in, all of us made our plans to be down here. ”



After spotting Holub, Henry immediately grabbed him and walked him over to his father, who was sitting in his wheelchair surrounded by his family. "You gotta see Dad," Henry said. "He'd love to see you."

Holub leaned over, gave his former coach a hug and teased that he still had a bag of chewing tobacco if coach knew anybody who wanted some. They laughed. Smiled. And as Holub walked away, he cried.

"It's hard. It's emotional," Holub said, wiping away a tear. "But if something ever does happen to him, at least he's got this moment. At least he knows how much he meant to all of us.

"That man was more than a football coach. More than a friend. He was like a father. He was such an icon for our football team."

Joining Stram's family and his former players was Gene Kilroy, the former business manager and close friend of Muhammad Ali. Ali and Stram have been friends for 30 years and the former heavyweight champion had hoped to support Stram in person, but his own health issues kept him at home in Michigan. So he sent Kilroy instead.

"The man has a ton of friends," Holub said.

Stram, the winningest coach in AFL history, developed the moving pocket and the two tight-end set. He coached the Chiefs to a 23-7 victory over the Vikings in Super Bowl IV, a win that solidified the importance of the AFL-NFL merger. To a younger generation, he's known as the charismatic creature that became the first head coach to wear a microphone during a game.

Stram allowed NFL Films to mike him for Super Bowl IV and the coach's lively personality didn't disappoint. He picked on referees. Laughed when the Chiefs scored a touchdown. And told his players to, "pump it in there."

Ultimately, he exposed an aspect of the game that was previously undiscovered to the outside world.

There were no such unveilings on Sunday. Just the ultimate overflowing of appreciation for a man who was able to bring gridiron giants to tears.

When it was all said and done, when Allen wrapped up his speech and the 3½-hour ceremony came to an end, Stram was nowhere to be found. Rolled out of the stadium in his wheelchair shortly after his speech, he missed the final ovation for the Class of 2003.

But it wasn't a problem. Stram was likely resting somewhere with his family, hoping to find some energy in his reserve tank to shake hands and enjoy the company of everyone around him.

"There is not one person that was more deserving of being here than him," Podolak

—Former Chiefs running back Ed Podolak, on coach Hank Stram



said. "The second we heard that he was in, all of us made our plans to be down here. And now we're going to make the most of it."

Wayne Drehs is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

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Posted on Tue, Jul. 05, 2005

Legendary Chiefs coach changed face of pro football

Hank Stram, 1923-2005

By RANDY COVITZ The Kansas City Star

Hank Stram’s greatest legacy as a coach was as an innovator.

Breaking the mold from the staid, predictable style that NFL teams played for 40 years, Stram devised wrinkles that produced three AFL titles and two Super Bowl appearances for the Chiefs/Texans franchise.

“I don’t know if there is anything ever new in football, but we were doing things in the ’60s that teams are doing now,” said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson. “Hank came up with so many new twists and doesn’t get the credit he deserves.

“He wasn’t afraid to try things. Back in those days, guys didn’t try anything. They pretty much stayed with what the Green Bay Packers or New York Giants were doing. Well, Hank decided let’s do some things different. We were playing the West Coast offense before it was the West Coast offense.”

Stram, who died Monday at age 82, created the “Offense of the ’70s” with a moving pocket as a way to keep mammoth defensive linemen such as San Diego’s Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison away from Dawson.

He came up with the Tight I Formation, lining up the tight end behind the quarterback and shifting to one side or the other, creating a moment of indecision for the defense. He created the Triple Stack defense, putting tackles Curley Culp and Buck Buchanan over the center, which disguised the front and enabled Culp to manhandle undersized Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff in one of the key matchups of Super Bowl IV.

And Stram deployed zone defenses in the early 1960s as a way to combat the wide-open passing games of the AFL when teams were loathto defend receivers in anything but man-to-man coverage.

Stram attributed that defense to the Texans’ intercepting five passes in the 1962 AFL championship win over Houston.

Stram also was one of the first coaches to devote more than cursory attention to special teams and weight training.

After the Chiefs won the AFL championship in 1966 but lost to Green Bay in the first Super Bowl, Stram hired a strength coach, Alvin Roy, and introduced a weight-lifting program, long before weight training became a routine practice.

“We didn’t have people who lifted weights,” Dawson said, “so the guy Hank had to convince was me. I was the quarterback, and the rest of the players would follow my lead. Hank had to do the sell job on me, and frankly I don’t know how he did it because I didn’t lift anythingover 12 ounces. He said he had to have me (lift weights) for the good of the team.

“I said, ‘You expect me to lift the same weights as Ed Budde and Buck Buchanan and those guys?’ He said, ‘Oh, no, yours will be much lighter. But you still have to go through the program with the rest of them.’ ”

Stram’s reasoning was that if he could sell the weight training to the leader of the team, everyone else would follow.

“Hank was a great salesman,” Dawson said. “As a coach, you have to sell what your approach is, what your philosophy is to the people you’re working with, and Hank was able to get that done.”

Stram not only was an innovator on the field but also was progressive off the field. The Chiefs encouraged diversity 30 years before it became a significant issue.

In the early 1960s, when NFL teams had an unwritten and unspoken limit on the number of black players, Stram culled some of his best talent — including Buchanan, linebacker Willie Lanier and wide receiver Otis Taylor — from historically black colleges.

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“He didn’t care what color, what creed, whatever,” said linebacker Bobby Bell, the first Chiefs player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “If you could play football and play under his rules and regulations, that was cool. That’s all he asked, to give him 120 percent out there. Anytime you wanted to talk to him, he’d talk to you about it. If you had a problem, you could let him know, and he said, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ ”

Lanier, the first starting black middle linebacker and second Chiefs player inducted in the Hall of Fame, said during Stram’s induction at Canton in 2003: “My first memory of Hank is he created opportunity. It was 35 years ago, my coming to Kansas City, and it was as if Hank already had the concept and understood diversity. He sought the best talent.”

To reach Randy Covitz, sports reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4796 or send e-mail to [email protected]

Page 2 of 2Legendary Chiefs coach changed face of pro football


Posted on Mon, Jul. 04, 2005

Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram dead at 82 By RANDY COVITZ Kansas City Star

Hank Stram, known as one of the most imaginative coaches in pro football history and the dapper figure who paced the sidelines during the Kansas City Chiefs' glory years, died Monday at a hospital in New Orleans.

He was 82.

Stram's 17-year Hall of Fame coaching career was highlighted by the Chiefs' two Super Bowl appearances_a 35-10 loss to Green Bay in Super Bowl I and a 23-7 victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV.

"Hank was the most important coach in the history of the American Football League," said Chiefs founder and owner Lamar Hunt, who hired Stram as the club's original coach when it began play as the Dallas Texans of the AFL in 1960 before moving to Kansas City in 1963.

Stram had been in declining health for several years and had been battling diabetes.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August 2003 and to the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1987.

"You talk about a blessing," one of his sons, Stu Stram, said of the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. "It validated his entire life. Not that he needed the Hall of Fame to do that, but it was a validation of something he was so passionate about all his life, and he was very blessed to be there and receive the honor like that."

Stram is survived by his wife, Phyllis; and six children, Hank Jr., Dale, Stu, Julia, Gary and Mary Nell. Services are pending.

Stram, known affectionately by his players as "The Mentor," served as the Texans/Chiefs head coach during 1960-1974 and won more games than any coach in club history. Stram, who wore his signature red vest while clutching a rolled-up game plan on the sideline, had a 124-76-10 regular-season record with the franchise - the second-best mark in pro football during that span - plus a 5-3 mark in the playoffs.

Stram was named AFL or AFC coach of the year four times in 1962, `66, `68 and `70. He served as the New Orleans Saints' head coach during 1976-77 and continued to make his home in suburban Covington, La.

During the AFL's 10-year history, Stram's Texans/Chiefs won more games than any other AFL team and he won more championships than any other coach (1962, 1966 and 1969). The Chiefs enjoyed nine straight winning seasons in Kansas City during 1965-73.

Stram may be best known for wearing a wireless microphone during Super Bowl IV and barking instructions to his team and chiding referees as the underdog Chiefs shocked the Vikings in the last game before the merger between the American and National Football Leagues.

"The record shows he was the finest coach in the history of the American Football League," said Hunt, a founder of the league in 1960. "He was probably the most memorable coach because of things like the highlight film of the 1969 Super Bowl game, and he was innovative.

"His mind was constantly in motion."

Among his innovations was an offense featuring a moving pocket as a way to keep mammoth defensive linemen from reaching quarterback Len Dawson, and a Triple Stack defense - putting two tackles over the center - that confused Minnesota in the Super Bowl.

"He knew how to win," Dawson said. "A lot of people thought we always had the best talent, but that wasn't always the case. He knew howto take advantage of our strengths and the opponents' weaknesses."

Stram was a shrewd evaluator of talent. Five of his players - Dawson, linebackers Willie Lanier and Bobby Bell, defensive tackle Buck

Page 1 of 2Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram dead at 82


© 2005 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com

Buchanan and place kicker Jan Stenerud - were voted into the Hall of Fame. And seven of his players - Bell, tight end Fred Arbanas, offensive tackle Jim Tyrer, guard Ed Budde, defensive end Jerry Mays, safety Johnny Robinson and punter Jerrel Wilson - were selected to the all-time AFL team.

"I always felt if you were going to be successful, make sure you get good people," Stram said upon his election to the Hall of Fame. "You win with great players. Coaches don't win games. Players win games.

"I had a great coaching staff; they were all great, loyal people and did a terrific job; and Lamar Hunt allowed me to be his coach for 14 years."

Stram was born Jan. 2, 1923, in Chicago and grew up in Gary, Ind., where his Polish-born father was a tailor and professional wrestler named Henry Wilszek, who performed for the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The circus changed his surname to Stram, though no one in the family knew why that name was selected.

Though his parents discouraged him from playing football, Hank became a star athlete in football, baseball, basketball and track at Lew Wallace High in Gary, earning all-state honors as a halfback.

Stram enrolled at Purdue University on a football scholarship in 1941 and enlisted in the Army reserve in 1943. He remained in the service for three years, returning to Purdue in 1946 and earning his degree in 1948. He lettered in football and baseball at Purdue, and as a senior he received the prestigious Big Ten Medal, awarded to the conference athlete who best combines athletics with academics.

Stram spent the next 12 seasons as an assistant at Purdue, SMU, Notre Dame and Miami (Fla.) before Hunt hired him as the head coach ofthe Dallas Texans of the fledgling AFL.

"It was his personality, and the fact he wanted the job," Hunt said. "It was very apparent he wanted to be a head coach. He had a very good reputation as far as offensive football. He was a good teacher. He knew how to describe things and articulate what he wanted."

Stram continued to use his communication skills following his coaching career. He worked briefly as an analyst for CBS Sports' NFL telecasts before moving into the radio booth calling "Monday Night Football" for 17 years alongside legendary play-by-play man Jack Buck. Stram, who did radio commentary for four Super Bowls, became the first person to participate in the Super Bowl both as a winning coach and as a broadcaster.

Stram was inducted into the Gary, Ind., Hall of Fame; the Indiana Hall of Fame; the Missouri Hall of Fame; and the Kansas City Walk of Stars. In 1989, Stram received the prestigious Bert Bell Award for Outstanding Achievement and Contribution to the NFL. In 1990, he received the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Washington Touchdown Club.

"I've lived a charmed life," Stram said when he turned 80. "I married the only girl I ever loved and did the only job I ever loved."

---

© 2005, The Kansas City Star.

Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kcstar.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Page 2 of 2Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram dead at 82




Stram helped to legitimize AFL By DON PIERSON Chicago Tribune

Hank Stram, who added color and celebrity to NFL coaching, died Monday at age 82 after a long illness.

Personable and dapper, Stram recognized and exploited the power of the media in drawing attention to the upstart American Football League. His Kansas City Chiefs played in the first Super Bowl against Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers.

Miked by NFL Films while the Chiefs beat the favored Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV after the 1969 season, Stram endeared himself to millions of fans by providing an inside glimpse of the sidelines. In doing so, he infuriated the reticent Bud Grant, coach of the Vikings.

"Pro football has lost one of its most innovative and creative coaches and one of its most innovative and creative personalities as well," Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.

A native of Chicago who graduated from Lew Wallace High School in Gary, Ind., Stram had been in declining health for several years and son Dale Stram attributed his father's death to complications from diabetes. He died at St. Tammany Parish Hospital, near his home in Covington, La.

"If you look at NFL Films as the film arm of the league, Hank was our Errol Flynn," said Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films. "He was the first swashbuckler, the first coach who really understood, more than any other coach, that football was also entertainment."

A familiar sight in his red vest, the stocky Stram paced the sidelines pounding a rolled-up program. More than a showman, he used and popularized such tactics as the "moving pocket," the "stack defense" and the two tight-end offense. He knew talent, rescuing the career of NFL reject quarterback Len Dawson and discovering such other Hall of Famers as Bobby Bell, Buck Buchanan, Willie Lanier and Jan Stenerud. His teams featured huge lines and skilled receivers and runners and his success in Super Bowl IV legitimized the AFL as soon as the 1970 merger with the NFL took place.

"I don't think people know what a great quarterback coach he was," said Dawson, who was Stram's presenter at his 2003 Hall of Fame induction. "He knew more about the quarterback position than any coach I ever had."

Stram's Chiefs won AFL titles in 1962 (as the Dallas Texans), 1966 and 1969. He also coached the New Orleans Saints in 1976-77.

Turned down by Bud Wilkinson and Tom Landry for his fledgling team in the new league, Hunt approached the unknown Stram, who was on the staff at the University of Miami.

"Hank is really symbolic of the coaching style and the coaching personality of the American Football League," Hunt said. "Maybe he never would have gotten a chance anywhere else. Hank personified the American Football League. He was a salesman. He was an innovator. He wasn't afraid to try new things."

Stram's pro record was 136-100-10. He was involved in the two longest games in pro football history - the 1962 overtime AFL title game and the 1971 Christmas Day six-quarter divisional playoff between the Chiefs and Miami Dolphins. He graduated from Purdue in 1948 and coached the backfield under Stu Holcomb for eight years before moving to SMU, Notre Dame and Miami.

"His whole life was football," Dawson said. "That's what he was born for, I think. He had a passion for it, not just a liking. He was really sincere when he talked about the team being a family. Everybody really loved him."

Page 1 of 1Stram helped to legitimize AFL



Stram leaves a legacy of innovation on, off field By RANDY COVITZ Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Hank Stram's greatest legacy as a coach was as an innovator.

Breaking the mold from the staid, predictable style that NFL teams played for 40 years, Stram devised wrinkles that produced three AFL titles and two Super Bowl appearances for the Chiefs/Texans franchise.

"I don't know if there is anything ever new in football, but we were doing things in the `60s that teams are doing now," said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson. "Hank came up with so many new twists and doesn't get the credit he deserves.

"He wasn't afraid to try things. Back in those days, guys didn't try anything. They pretty much stayed with what the Green Bay Packers or New York Giants were doing. Well, Hank decided let's do some things different. We were playing the West Coast offense before it was the West Coast offense."

Stram, who died Monday at age 82, created the "Offense of the `70s" with a moving pocket as a way to keep mammoth defensive linemensuch as San Diego's Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison away from Dawson.

He came up with the Tight I Formation, lining up the tight end behind the quarterback and shifting to one side or the other, creating a moment of indecision for the defense. He created the Triple Stack defense, putting tackles Curley Culp and Buck Buchanan over the center, which disguised the front and enabled Culp to manhandle undersized Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff in one of the key matchups of Super Bowl IV.

And Stram deployed zone defenses in the early 1960s as a way to combat the wide-open passing games of the AFL when teams were loathto defend receivers in anything but man-to-man coverage.

Stram attributed that defense to the Texans' intercepting five passes in the 1962 AFL championship win over Houston.

Stram also was one of the first coaches to devote more than cursory attention to special teams and weight training.

After the Chiefs won the AFL championship in 1966 but lost to Green Bay in the first Super Bowl, Stram hired a strength coach, Alvin Roy, and introduced a weight-lifting program, long before weight training became a routine practice.

"We didn't have people who lifted weights," Dawson said, "so the guy Hank had to convince was me. I was the quarterback, and the rest of the players would follow my lead. Hank had to do the sell job on me, and frankly I don't know how he did it because I didn't lift anythingover 12 ounces. He said he had to have me (lift weights) for the good of the team.

"I said, `You expect me to lift the same weights as Ed Budde and Buck Buchanan and those guys?' He said, `Oh, no, yours will be much lighter. But you still have to go through the program with the rest of them.' "

Stram's reasoning was that if he could sell the weight training to the leader of the team, everyone else would follow.

"Hank was a great salesman," Dawson said. "As a coach, you have to sell what your approach is, what your philosophy is to the people you're working with, and Hank was able to get that done."

Stram not only was an innovator on the field but also was progressive off the field. The Chiefs encouraged diversity 30 years before it became a significant issue.

In the early 1960s, when NFL teams had an unwritten and unspoken limit on the number of black players, Stram culled some of his best talent - including Buchanan, linebacker Willie Lanier and wide receiver Otis Taylor - from historically black colleges.

Page 1 of 2Stram leaves a legacy of innovation on, off field



"He didn't care what color, what creed, whatever," said linebacker Bobby Bell, the first Chiefs player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. "If you could play football and play under his rules and regulations, that was cool. That's all he asked, to give him 120 percent out there. Anytime you wanted to talk to him, he'd talk to you about it. If you had a problem, you could let him know, and he said, `Let's talk about it.' "

Lanier, the first starting black middle linebacker and second Chiefs player inducted in the Hall of Fame, said during Stram's induction at Canton in 2003: "My first memory of Hank is he created opportunity. It was 35 years ago, my coming to Kansas City, and it was as if Hankalready had the concept and understood diversity. He sought the best talent."

Page 2 of 2Stram leaves a legacy of innovation on, off field



Stram's legacy will be his passion for the game By JIM MASHEK The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.)

BILOXI, Miss. - Hank Stram will be remembered as a Pro Football Hall of Famer, a squat, animated coach who guided the Kansas City Chiefs to a remarkable upset victory in Super Bowl IV.

Beyond that, though, he was just a guy who loved football.

Stram, 82, died Monday after a long fight with diabetes. He made suburban New Orleans his home after John Mecom ended his two-year run as the Saints' coach in 1977. He never coached again, but his legacy stayed intact. Most of all, he was never embittered.

And he became one of the best football broadcasters the game has ever seen, particularly when he was calling "Monday Night Football" on the radio with another booth legend, the late Jack Buck.

Stram established himself as a direct, innovative coach in the early days of the American Football League. He won an AFL title in 1962 withthe Dallas Texans, before the team relocated to Kansas City. His Chiefs squad was no match for Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in theinaugural Super Bowl, but three years later, Stram was ready for his second chance.

More than ready. He was poised, polished. One step ahead of the competition.

Stram's Chiefs crushed the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in that fourth Super Bowl at Tulane Stadium, a mismatch that showed why the NFL wasmerging with the upstart AFL.

He agreed to wear a microphone for NFL Films - for a thousand bucks, it turns out - in that game, showing his colorful side as the Chiefs manhandled the Vikings. He walked up and down the sideline, rolled-up game plan in hand, while telling his charges to "keep matriculating down the field, boys."

It was a defining moment for NFL Films, and obviously for Stram himself.

The maddening, ultra-political process for determining Pro Football Hall of Fame selections overlooked Stram until the Senior Committee got him through in 2003. He was the winningest coach in AFL history, and the Chiefs remained a viable NFL team under his tenure, going 124-76-10 in his 15 seasons with the club.

Stram was confined to a wheelchair on that warm July day in Canton, Ohio, when he was immortalized with a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His taped induction speech, however, showed all sides of Stram's personality, a fiery yet charismatic coach who could relate to athletes and get them to perform at their best.

"He had the ability to make each and every one of us feel special," said former Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson, who like Stram later worked in television and radio. "I wear a Super Bowl ring on this hand, and a Hall of Fame ring on this hand, and it's all because of Hank Stram."

Stram had some of the premier defensive players from his era, in part because the Chiefs were aggressive in their scouting of historically black universities.

Wideout Otis Taylor came to the Chiefs from Prairie View. Defensive tackle Buck Buchanan played at Grambling. Willie Lanier, one of the best linebackers on the planet, was a second-round draft pick from Morgan State.

The Chiefs employed a "stack defense" in which their linebackers lined up directly behind their teammates up front. It created mismatches and gave the Chiefs the opportunity to make big plays.

"All of us had great joy in being able to experience the sport at the level we did, because of his creative mind and the kind of personality

Page 1 of 2Stram's legacy will be his passion for the game



he put around you," Lanier told The Associated Press. "That allowed everyone to perform at levels higher than they would have without him."

Stram's brief tenure with the Saints never measured up, of course. Mecom, the bumbling owner, said he gave Stram "an unlimited budget and he exceeded it." Stram used to refer to Saints quarterback Archie Manning as a "franchise quarterback without a franchise."

Twenty years ago, my first year of covering the Saints for a Baton Rouge newspaper, I reached Stram for a telephone interview. It was thefirst of many. Stram was engaging and had plenty of insight. He always had something to say, and he cared deeply about the game. When his health failed, his wife, Phyllis, helped him get through the tough times.

"I've lived a charmed life," Stram said. "I married the only girl I ever loved, and did the only job I ever loved."

Rest easy, Hank.

Page 2 of 2Stram's legacy will be his passion for the game



Stram, Buck clicked on Monday nights By DAN CAESAR St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Hank Stram made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a coach, but to many NFL fans he was equally well known for his work as the adroit analyst on "Monday Night Football" radio broadcasts.

Stram worked on CBS, alongside play-by-play announcer Jack Buck, for 16 seasons_from 1978 to 1995, minus two years NBC had the package in the mid-1980s. That gave them a longer run than any team ever to broadcast "MNF" on radio or television.

They mixed like apple pie and ice cream, with Stram having the uncanny ability to correctly predict the coming play, then Buck following through with his description of what was transpiring.

Many people, especially those who didn't like Howard Cosell's presence on ABC's telecasts of the games, would turn off the volume on theirtelevision set and turn up the sound on the radio.

"It was the only time in my life I tuned in just to hear the broadcasters," longtime Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls wrote three years ago, after Buck died. "They were terrific."

Joe Buck, now Fox's lead baseball and football announcer, grew up watching and listening to his father and Stram work together.

"He was really one of my dad's closest friends," Buck said Monday night, adding, "they'd have their cat fights during breaks."

But he said the disagreements quickly subsided.

"They were like the odd couple, but in a fun way."

To wit, Joe Buck said his dad would bring candy bars into the booth to eat at halftime to maintain his sugar level because he had diabetes.

"Hank would steal them by the end of the first quarter," he said. "He's have it in his pocket."

Joe Buck said his dad would rummage through Stram's pockets looking for them while on the air.

"He was one of the few guys who could make my dad laugh," Joe Buck said. "He had nicknames for everybody. It was `Skippy' for my dad because of his love for peanut butter."

Carole Buck, Jack's widow, often went to Hawaii with her husband when he and Stram broadcast the Pro Bowl. She was friendly with Stram and his wife, Phyllis.

"They were great for each other," Carole Buck said. "They were family people, like us. He was a tough, tough guy."

Stram was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003, a year after Jack Buck died.

"My dad would have been so happy to know (Stram) got that thrill of going into the Hall of Fame before" dying, Joe Buck said.

And Jack Buck, in his autobiography, said he had fun with Stram.

"Hank and I clicked," Buck wrote. "We both prepared well for the game, never rehearsed what we were going to say. I trusted him. He trusted me. Our work was all spontaneous."

Page 1 of 2Stram, Buck clicked on Monday nights



When the Buck-Stram run ended in 1995, CBS Radio vice president of programming Frank Murphy said, "They will always be a model for what a radio play-by-play broadcast should be."

Page 2 of 2Stram, Buck clicked on Monday nights



COMMENTARY

Being loyal to a fault made Hank a great man

he first thing they teach you about obituary writing is this: You are celebrating a life. You don’t dwell on the failures, the regrets, the hard losses. No. This is not the time for all that. Focus on the triumphs. Describe the sunshine. Capture the legacy. That’s obituary writing.

Hank Stram had all sorts of triumphs and sunshine in his 82 years on earth. There’s enough to fill an entire newspaper. Still, on this Independence Day, the day when Hank Stram died, I cannot help but think of his final, haunting days in Kansas City.

I know instinctively those days do not belong in the obituary. No. Obits are regimented, ordered things. You begin with time and place and cause of death. Hank Stram died on a gray and muggy Fourth of July. He died in a hospital bed in Covington, La., just across the lake fromNew Orleans. He suffered from diabetes. His health had been deteriorating for several years.

Then, you move on to a few basic life details. Hank Stram was born Jan. 3, 1923, in Chicago. He grew up a few miles away, in Gary, Ind. He served in the Army during World War II. He played football at Purdue and, after graduating in 1948, became an assistant football coach there. He married Phyllis in 1956. He would say often that Phyllis and football were his two great loves.

Stram coached for a while at SMU and Notre Dame and the University of Miami. He was an assistant coach at Miami when a millionaire named Lamar Hunt called. Hunt wanted a head football coach for his new team, the Dallas Texans, in his new league, the American Football League. Hunt had been turned down by more famous men than Stram.

Hank Stram said he would take the job.

This is the part in the obituary where you write about the victories, the parades, the innovations — Hank Stram’s life was crowded with those. Stram won three American Football League championships, the first in Dallas and then two in Kansas City. He coached the Chiefs into Super Bowl I. He coached the Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV.

He led a remarkable group of men: Buck Buchanan was an unstoppable train; he could run around a lineman, run through him, jump over him, whatever it took to get to the quarterback. Len Dawson seemed always to call the right play. Otis Taylor would catch the ball and then drag defenders, like a bully in a schoolyard. Bobby Bell seemed to appear out of thin air when the ball was thrown over the middle. Willie Lanier always made the tackle.

Stram loved them all. He had so many ideas about football, radical ideas, such as having his players shift and move before the snap or rolling the quarterback out to give him an instant more time to throw or having his defenders cover zones rather then men. Some of these were new ideas — Hank Stram inventions — and some of them were variations of a theme, but he wanted to try everything. Stram was bursting with new ideas. They called him The Mentor. It took other football coaches many years to catch up to him. In some ways, other football coaches still try to catch up.

His spotlight moment was Super Bowl IV, when the Chiefs beat Minnesota. NFL Films put a hidden microphone on Hank Stram that day, and even now, on old highlight films, you can see Stram in the sunshine of his youth, storming the sidelines in his striking Chiefs blazer — “He always looked like the coolest guy in the stadium,” Don Shula would say — and shouting “Just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys!”

And to the officials: “You definitely gave them an extra foot. Bad! Very bad!”

And after his pet play, the 65 Toss Power Trap, scored a big touchdown: “Was it there, rats? Nice going baby! Ha ha ha ha ha. … 65 Toss Power Trap! Ha ha ha! Yeah!”

It is the closest thing to pure joy as you will ever find on film.

Then, he was always joyful, even on a gray, drizzly day in Canton, Ohio, in 2003. Stram was already ravaged by diabetes. He was

T

Page 1 of 3Being loyal to a fault made Hank a great man


inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame that day. He could barely speak, but he somehow lifted everyone’s heart. A video played with him talking. There were all the old film clips. Then he stood up out of his wheelchair, he smiled and waved. Everybody cried. No one there will forget it.

His joy touched everybody, his players, his coaches, his announcing partners. Stram changed sports announcing, too: Announcers had called the action. He told viewers and listeners what would happen before it happened.

“He’s going deep here,” he would say. And, three will get you five, the quarterback would throw the ball deep.

An obituary does not stop for sentimentality. It lists the survivors. Hank Stram is survived by his wife, Phyllis, and their six children, four sons and two daughters. He is also survived by so many people who remember his style, his relish for everything, his constant joy.

“Simplicity but variety,” he would say when someone asked him his philosophy of coaching. It was his philosophy of life, too.

“Hank was always saying stuff like that,” his old quarterback, Len Dawson would say.

And that’s the obituary. It will mention that the Stram family plans a private memorial service. It will include an all-encompassing quote, like this one from Stram’s former announcing partner Jim Nantz: “Everywhere we went, Hank was loved. He was bigger than life.” Then, the obituary ends.

And what’s strange is, it feels incomplete. I can’t get those final days in Kansas City out of my mind. There’s something about those final days that might cut closer to his heart than all the victories and brilliant coaching maneuvers and great quips. Something harder to touch.

You might know that it did not end well for Stram with the Chiefs. His team’s records kept dwindling as his great players grew older and slower and more fragile. In 1974, for the first time in more than a decade, the Chiefs and Stram had a losing record. At the end of that year, Hank Stram was fired.

But that’s not what strikes me about those days. Every coach loses sooner or later. Every coach gets fired. No, what strikes me now is howStram held on to his players. He would not cut them. Would not ask them to retire. In his heart, he had to know that he was fighting a losing battle. He had to know that time would sink his team. He could see his players out there missing tackles, getting knocked down, falling short of the first down. He could see it. But he loved those guys.

He really loved those guys.

“People were talking about getting rid of Bobby Bell, Buck Buchanan, all those great players we had,” Stram would say. “But where are you going to get other people like that? I wasn’t going to do it.”

He didn’t do it. He held on to his men to the bitter end. Football coaches learn quickly that they have to let go or else they end up losing their jobs. Hank Stram could not let go. Yes, that got him fired. But you know what else? It also made him one heck of a man.

And in the end, I suppose, the greatest thing you can think after reading an obituary is this: He was one heck of a man.

INSIDE

■ Stram coached in some of the NFL’s most

memorable games. C-7

■ Former Chiefs credit coach for their success. C-6

■ On the field or off, Stram was the source of many humorous lines. C-7

■ Text of his speech when Stram was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. C-6

■ Related story, A-1

To reach Joe Posnanski, call (816) 234-4361 or send e-mail to [email protected] . For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com .

Page 2 of 3Being loyal to a fault made Hank a great man



Chiefs’ greats praise beloved coach By ELIZABETH MERRILL The Kansas City Star

The note was on Jan Stenerud’s staircase Monday morning, a reminder for when he woke up and got the paper.

Call the Strams.

Stenerud doesn’t write himself notes. But something compelled him Sunday night because he had to talk to Hank Stram. They used to chat every month, the kicker and his coach, but lately things were different. Stram was old and sick. He’d drift off and lose track.

Two months ago, Stram’s wife, Phyllis, called Stenerud and said Hank was having a good day. He wanted to talk.

“Janski,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“I think about him on the sideline,” Stenerud said late Monday after he received a call that Hank Stram had died. “In the early training camps. I think about how full of life he was.”

As word of Stram’s death filtered through the Chiefs’ organization, at least two Hall of Famers wondered Monday where their football careers would have gone had it not been for Stram. Stenerud was golfing in Colorado Springs and waxing nostalgic about how Stram used to hold for him that summer before his rookie season in 1967, when soccer-style kickers were an unknown quantity in pro football.

Willie Lanier was clicking between calls when he talked about how Stram took a chance on a small-college middle linebacker from Morgan State.

“If Hank Stram is not in Kansas City … the outcome of my future might have been different,” Lanier said. “At that point and time, the doors were not quite as open as they are now. He created opportunities that I am very thankful for.”

By Monday night, former Chiefs players, coaches and front-office personnel were on the phone, exchanging memories, talking about the coach who led Kansas City to Super Bowls I and IV.

Former Chiefs general manager Jack Steadman said Stram was a disciplinarian who required players to be clean-shaven and well-dressed even in the hippie age of the late 1960s. He was a humorist who had his own language called, “Stramisms.”

He called people “Humperdicks.” Steadman still doesn’t know what that meant.

“Nobody ever knew,” he said.

He was a family man with six kids who took the brood on trips to Hawaii, including his mother.

The one thing Stram wasn’t, friends say, was well-recognized. Because he existed in the days before heavy media coverage, Stram didn’t get his due, Lanier said. He created the stack defense and the moving pocket and won more games than anyone else in the American Football League.

Stram wasn’t inducted into the Hall of Fame until 2003, when his health was failing.

“He was a creative, innovative coach and a wonderful guy,” Steadman said. “He probably had more to do with the offenses that developed in the American Football League in the early years and then continued to develop into the National Football League even today.

“He was an important part of our history, and now we’ve lost a very important part of Chiefs history. The franchise will go on and continue,but he was a very special person. And we’re saddened by his loss.”

Page 1 of 2Chiefs’ greats praise beloved coach



Stenerud is from Norway, but he was immediately struck by how different his coach was from everybody else. Stram dressed differently, talked differently, and made a point to know everything about his players. Even his mannerisms, Stenerud said, were original.

Twenty years after they worked together, Stenerud used to call Stram and ask him to help with his golf tournaments in Montana. It was a haul for Stram, who was flying from New Orleans, but he’d wait through five-hour layovers for a friend.

“Hank reminds me of youth and championships,” Stenerud said. “Of when you were young and good at something.

“As far as I can remember back, everything was about winning, having fun and thinking about the team. He was the guy who made everything tick.”

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected]

Page 2 of 2Chiefs’ greats praise beloved coach



On field and off, he was never at a loss for words … or keys By BILL RICHARDSON Special to The Star

Perhaps Hank Stram is best remembered for his quote about “matriculating the ball down the field” during the Chiefs’ victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV.

But for writers who covered the Chiefs in their early years in Kansas City, “The Mentor” came up with several other memorable lines.

A dapper dresser on the sidelines, Stram once said of a casually dressed opposing coach, “He ought to draft a tailor.”

Other coaches became targets of Stram’s humor.

Before a game at Shea Stadium, which was used for both football and baseball games, Stram asked Jets coach Weeb Ewbank, “Who won the rodeo here?”

The perplexed Ewbank said he didn’t know what Stram was talking about.

“There must have been a rodeo, the way this field is chopped up,” Stram said before letting out a teasing laugh.

Stram had nicknames for rival coaches. He called the squatty Ewbank “the Penguin”; Patriots coach Mike Holovak, a naval reserve officer; “the Admiral”; and San Diego’s haughty Sid Gillman “Sir Sidney.”

Stram enjoyed catching reporters and players off guard.

He joked to a player being interviewed by a writer, “Be careful what you say to that guy, he’ll put it in the paper.”

To emphasize his point about not allowing players to have facial hair, Stram told an incoming rookie receiver, “It’ll cut down on your speed.”

In my first interview with Stram, he explained part of his offensive strategy quite simply.

“The football field is 53 1/3 yards wide. We plan to use all of it.”

That was the only time I ever heard a coach reveal that little-recognized factor of football dimensions.

Stram could get riled up about what he considered a negative media story, but he didn’t hold a grudge.

“There’s nothing so dead as yesterday’s newspaper,” he would say in a forgiving manner.

Stram’s final two years in coaching were spent at New Orleans, They were unproductive, and he had a good idea why he couldn’t get the Saints going — he said starting quarterback Archie Manning was available for just six of 28 games.

Those were times that tried his patience and maybe forced him to look over the large group of keys he often carried.

“Two of them are for the boiler room back in my hometown of Gary, Ind.,” he once chuckled, “just in case I need to go back and look for my old job.”

Bill Richardson covered the Chiefs for The Star during their early years in Kansas City, including all 12 of Hank Stram’s seasons here.

Page 1 of 2On field and off, he was never at a loss for words … or keys



Stram strode the sidelines of NFL history

Coach was on hand for Chiefs’ most memorable games

By RANDY COVITZ The Kansas City Star

Hank Stram played central roles in four of the most memorable games in pro football history:

■ The Dallas Texans’ 20-17, double-overtime victory over Houston in the 1962 AFL championship game.

■ The Chiefs’ 35-10 loss to Green Bay in Super Bowl I, the first meeting between the two leagues.

■ The Chiefs’ 23-7 upset of Minnesota in Super Bowl IV, the last game before the merger of the two leagues.

■ The Chiefs’ 27-24 double-overtime loss to Miami on Christmas Day 1971, still the longest game in NFL history and final game at old Municipal Stadium.

The Chiefs, bristling because the AFL was considered the “Mickey Mouse League” by the haughty Packers in 1967, played heavily favored Green Bay tough in the first half, trailing just 14-10 at halftime. But Willie Wood’s interception of a Len Dawson pass and return to the Kansas City 5 set up a Packers touchdown that broke open the game.

“We were not as good a team as we expected to be,” Stram said of Super Bowl I.

They were three years later.

The victory in Super Bowl IV was considered one of the great upsets in football history. Although the Chiefs were 13-point underdogs, Stram was convinced his team would win.

“We sold our team on the idea that we weren’t going down there to play the game, we were going down there to win the game,” Stram said in an interview two years before his death Monday. “It didn’t make any difference what anybody said. People who make (point spreads) just don’t know what they’re talking about.”

With just a week between the NFL and AFL championship games and Super Bowl, the Vikings were ill-prepared for Stram’s innovative stratagems.

“We felt because of the traditional things that were happening in the National Football League, everybody basically did the same thing,” Stram said. “They were used to playing against the same things every week. Everybody used man-for-man coverage and the same formations, offensively.

“With our moving pocket, triple-stack defense, tight-I formation, we felt we would have an advantage.”

During the week of the Super Bowl, NFL Films founder Ed Sabol asked Stram to become the first coach to wear a wireless microphone during a Super Bowl. Stram agreed under certain conditions.

He did not want anyone to know he was wired for sound, and he wanted the rights to approve what was shown in the final product. The film was a howling success, and Stram attained national acclaim for his dialogue with players, coaches and officials during the game.

Stram’s use of language such as imploring Dawson to “matriculate the ball down the field” and his call for “65 Toss Power Trap” that resulted in the game’s first touchdown by halfback Mike Garrett, are now part of NFL Films and Super Bowl lore.

Another memorable moment was the 1962 AFL championship game when running back Abner Haynes mistook Stram’s instructions before the overtime coin flip. After winning the toss, Haynes said, “We’ll kick to the clock,” giving the Oilers both the ball and the wind, but the Texans won on Tommy Brooker’s 25-yard field goal 2:54 into overtime.

Page 1 of 2Stram strode the sidelines of NFL history



“In spite of that, we still won the game,” Stram remembered years later. “It was a stepping-stone as far as the future success we enjoyed because we had something to hang our hat on.”

The 1962 game was the longest game in pro football history until the fateful Christmas Day game in 1971.

While Super Bowl IV was Stram’s crowning achievement, the 1971 Christmas Day loss to Miami was the most bitter defeat. Jan Stenerud missed a 31-yard field goal that could have won the game in regulation, and the Chiefs didn’t return to the playoffs for 15 years.

“That ’71 team was our best team,” Stram said years later. “What are you going to do? We had the greatest kicker in the business, and wemissed it by an inch, and we lost the game.”

Page 2 of 2Stram strode the sidelines of NFL history


CJOnline.com / Topeka Capital-Journal

Published Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Hank Stram dies

Hall of Fame Chiefs coach was a pioneer, innovator

By Rick Dean The Capital-Journal

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Hank Stram, the banty coach who helped the fledgling American Football League matriculate to an equal footing with the long-standing National Football League, was remembered on the occasion of his death Monday for his contributions in making Kansas City a major league city.

Stram, who guided the Chiefs to the first Super Bowl in 1967 and scored a 23-7 upset of mighty Minnesota in Super Bowl IV -- the final game before the 1970 AFL-NFL merger -- died in New Orleans after a long fight with the complications of diabetes. The 2003 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee was 82.

"When you're a part of starting something from scratch that becomes as successful as the Chiefs are in Kansas City today, more than 40 years later, that's greatness," said Chiefs Hall of Fame linebacker Willie Lanier. "He was the foundation of what we have today."

The short, stocky, cocky Stram patrolled the Chiefs sideline in his trademark coat, tie and bright red vest while urging his players to "matriculate the ball down the field." His innovations on offense and defense helped make the upstart AFL an attractive TV alternate to the more staid NFL, and the winning ways of his teams helped put Kansas City on the national sports map.

"His influence on the development of this city has to be remembered," said Len Dawson, a Hall of Fame quarterback and a long-time Kansas City sportscaster. "Most people in America thought of Kansas City as a cowtown until we started playing on national TV and making trips to the Super Bowl."

Stram was a 27-year-old assistant coach at the University of Miami when Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt -- after being spurned in his efforts to hire Oklahoma coaching great Bud Wilkinson and a New York Giants assistant named Tom Landry -- made Stram the first coach of the Dallas Texans in 1959.

"Hank was symbolic of the coaching style and personality of the AFL," Hunt said. "Maybe he wouldn't have gotten a chance anywhere else. But he personified the old AFL because he was a salesman. He was an innovator -- he wasn't

File Photo/The Capital-Journal Legendary coach Hank Stram was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003. He led the Chiefs to a win in Super Bowl IV. Click here to check for reprint availability.

A HALL OF FAME COACHING CAREER

Hank Stram compiled a career record of 131-97-10 in 15 years with the Texans-Chiefs and two years with the Saints. His postseason record was 5-3.

• He was a running back for Purdue in 1942, 1946 and 1947 and served as an assistant coach there from 1948 to 1955.

Page 1 of 3Hank Stram dies 07/05/05

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afraid to try new things."

Stram's Texans won the third AFL championship game in 1962. But the Texans had trouble drawing fans in the same town as the more popular Dallas Cowboys, and it wasn't until Hunt moved the team to Kansas City in 1963 that the Chiefs took flight.

Featuring a frequently shifting offense that was an innovation at the time and a "Triple Stack" defense that was the forerunner of today's 3-4 defensive formation, Stram's Chiefs posted nine straight winning seasons, victories in 61 percent of his games and the city's only Super Bowl victory, in January 1970.

"A lot of restaurants didn't want his business because he was always drawing up plays on the tablecloths," Dawson said jokingly. "He was always trying to think up new ways to create problems for the other team. We were doing things then with motion and formations that are common today but weren't then."

Stram had a 124-76-10 record in 15 seasons (1960-74) with the Texans-Chiefs, who made five postseason appearances with a 5-3 record. He was named coach of the year in either the AFL or AFC four times. Five of his Chiefs players preceded him into the Hall of Fame.

Stram's most famous moments followed Super Bowl IV, where he wore a microphone for NFL Films. His excitement and humor on the sideline showed viewers a rarely seen side of professional football and helped usher the NFL into today's video world.

Equally important at the time was the way Stram, Hunt and other coaches in the AFL offered playing opportunities to athletes from smaller, traditionally black universities.

"No question they opened doors," Lanier said. "Buck Buchanan (another Chiefs Hall of Fame player) was the first first-round draft pick from a historically black university (Grambling).

"Shortly after I was drafted out of Morgan State, I was playing next to Jim Lynch, from Notre Dame. I thought it was a great joy to be in that

kind of a situation at a time when many industries were challenged to make equal opportunity truly equal.

"Their approach gave the AFL the opportunity to catch the NFL at a time when they weren't drawing from that talent pool."

Stram concluded his coaching career with two non-winning seasons in New Orleans before moving into the broadcast booth. There he became best known as the colorful analyst on Monday Night Football

• Lamar Hunt hired Stram to coach the Dallas Texans in 1959. The American Football League franchise became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963.

• His teams won more games than any other AFL franchise. With AFL titles in 1962, 1966 and 1969, he won more AFL titles than any other coach.

• The Chiefs won the 1970 Super Bowl after losing in Super Bowl I in 1967. Stram was the only AFL coach to go tomore than one Super Bowl.

1973 FILE PHOTO/The Capital-Journal Len Dawson quarterbacked Stram's flashy offense. Click here to check for reprint availability.



radio broadcasts.

Though Stram battled ill health for many of the last years of his life, his greatest thrill was to be present for his Hall of Fame induction in 2003. Though he was confined to a wheelchair and had to pre-record his acceptance speech, Stram's love for his family and his profession came through clearly.

"I've lived a charmed life," he said. "I married the only girl I ever loved and did the only job I ever loved."

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1973 FILE PHOTO/The Capital-Journal Hank Stram was at the forefront of motion offenses and the 3-4 style of defense. He also helped break down racial barriers. Click here to check for reprint availability.



Stram did it his way -- with style Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Peter Finney

When it comes to funerals, in this case a Viking funeral, Hank Stram will go down as the best-dressed undertaker of all time.

There's no argument.

It's all there in the videotape.

Super Bowl IV. Jan. 11, 1970. Tulane Stadium.

There he is, walking the sideline in the company of his Kansas City Chiefs, black blazer, black tie, red vest, with a matching silk handkerchief -- a football Napoleon in pastel shades, clutching the game plan in his right hand.

What a sight it was.

Across the field, as that long-ago Sunday became a requiem for the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings, Hank Stram's strut would become a 23-7 victory march with the coach making a triumphant exit on the broad, padded shoulders of his gladiators.

A year before, with an upset of the Baltimore Colts, Joe Namath and the New York Jets told the world the American Football League was for real.

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A year later, Hank Stram's Chiefs applied the seal of approval and they did it in the flashy fashion of the man in charge, with multiple formations, with the moving pocket, with the "offense of the '70s."

Let it be said no one coached his personality better than Henry Louis Stram, who left us Monday at age 82.

And let it also be said, while Super Bowl IV was his shining moment, Stram left the game as a highly respected innovator who brought the Chiefs from the ashes to the mountaintop, brought them to Super Bowl I and a loss to Green Bay, to a victory in Super Bowl IV -- to the best stretch ever enjoyed by the Kansas City franchise.

What befell Coach Stram at the end of a long career, a two-year pit stop for John Mecom's Saints, did nothing to tarnish the résumé of the most successful coach in the history of the AFL.

Without a doubt, Hank's finest hour with the Saints had more to do with the owner who fired him in Kansas City, Lamar Hunt, than the man who brought him to the Big Easy.

Perhaps old-timers will remember.

All the Saints had to do to sew up a 20-17 victory at Arrowhead Stadium in 1976 was run out the clock. They were near the Kansas City end zone with the final seconds ticking down when Stram called time. He told a surprised Bobby Scott, his quarterback, "now we're going to shove it to 'em."

Scott threw a touchdown pass to tight end Henry Childs to make it 27-17.

"I wanted that last one," Hank said afterward. "Maybe these people will learn to do their talking after the game, not before."

During the week, Chiefs coach Paul Wiggin was quoted as saying, "I'd like to kick Stram's butt." After the game, as Stram was being carried from the field, running back Chuck Muncie ran over to Wiggin and handed him a poster-sized reproduction of his words.

All and all, it was a strange setting. Stram had been best man at Lamar Hunt's wedding. And that's not all. At the time, the coach and his former boss were in the courts, trying to settle Hank's contract with Kansas City, a 10-year, $100,000-a-year deal terminated with seven years remaining.

So it made for a memorable postgame scene, the Strams leaving Arrowhead Stadium linked arm-in-arm, Hank, wife Phyllis, two sons, two daughters, all of them singing, "When the Saints . . ."

It was right out of Dorothy and friends, in the "Wizard of Oz," walking the Yellow Brick Road.

Hank had found his Saints rainbow.

It wasn't long before an ex-coach was enjoying retirement in Covington, tooling the Tchefuncte River in a Fiberglas hull, golfing, playing tennis, playing racquetball, watching turtles on a tree stump.

"I promised myself I would not have withdrawal symptoms," he told me. "When I got into coaching, I knew I was getting into a high-risk, high-profile profession. I adopted a philosophy I never wavered from: Yesterday is a canceled check, today is cash on the line, tomorrow is a promissory note."



In time, "tomorrow" would bring a well-deserved entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Hank would win high marks for his work as a radio analyst for CBS on Monday Night Football.

Most of all, he lived out his days enjoying time with his family, particularly Phyllis, his life-long love, who enjoyed directing visitors to a closet in their Covington home that housed her husband's shoes, row after row of shiny footwear.

"That man," Phyllis liked to say, "has more shoes than Imelda Marcos."

And where did Phyllis keep her things?

"Phyllis has a closet in the basement," said Hank, giving the misses a wink and a hug.

. . . . . . .

Peter Finney can be reached at [email protected] or (504) 826-3802.



remembering hank stram - national football...

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