Stram was the happy warrior, and NFL Films proves it

For the last week, "The NFL Network," the cable television station, has been running the famous film of Hank Stram at work in Super Bowl IV. That's the one that followed Stram up and down the sideline in New Orleans' old Tulane Stadium as he urged his players to "matriculate the ball up the field, boys," cackling away as his underdog Kansas City Chiefs pounded the Minnesota Vikings.
Stram died last week at age 82, so the film is a perfect goodbye to the man who was pro football's happy warrior.
When Lamar Hunt founded the American Football League along with fellow Texan Bud Adams in the fall of 1959, his Dallas Texans' franchise found itself confronted by an immediate rival in the Cowboys. The established NFL, which had resisted expansion for a decade, quickly expanded into Dallas in an attempt to kill the new league where it began.
The Texans and Cowboys sought to hire the same coach, Tom Landry, the old Texas Longhorn standout who was offensive coach of the New York Giants (they didn't call them coordinators in those days). Landry chose the Cowboys, and the Texans were left without much of an option. Hunt was a graduate of Southern Methodist University and was fascinated by a man who had been an assistant coach there a few years previously. That's how Stram, who spent a dozen years as a college aide, got his first job as a head coach.
Years later, someone asked him why he always seemed to be so happy.
"I married the only girl I ever loved and I got the only job I really wanted," he said.
The Texans, who moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs in 1963, were always in the same division as the Chargers, so for years Stram matched wits with Sid Gillman, father of the modern pro passing game. He wasn't overmatched. Stram designed the moving pocket and the double-tight end formations so common today. His triple-stack defense was a variation of defenses used by Bud Wilkinson at the University of Oklahoma. He was an innovator, but like many top football coaches also a borrower and a reviser.
Hunt's organization was full of talented people, including super scout Don Klosterman, who provided him with the material to build two Super Bowl teams. But Stram's rehabilitation job on quarterback Lenny Dawson was the key to the success of the franchise.
Stram had been Dawson's quarterback coach at Purdue. Pittsburgh made Dawson the fourth pick in the college draft in 1957. Buddy Parker became coach of the Steelers that year, and in 1958 dealt for the quarterback who won championships for him in Detroit, Bobby Layne. Like a lot of young quarterbacks in the 12-team NFL of the '50s, Dawson wasted away on the bench. Parker dealt Dawson to Cleveland, but the Browns had finally stabilized their quarterback situation in their post-Otto Graham period, so he sat again. Stram kept in touch with Dawson and suggested the quarterback petition Paul Brown, the Browns' coach-GM, about obtaining his release. Surprisingly Brown, an old friend of Stram's, freed Dawson.
Brown also warned Stram, "Hank, he's not the player you had at Purdue. His arm isn't as strong as it was, and he's lost his confidence."
Stram threw himself into Dawson's rehab, correcting flaws that had developed in Dawson's passing mechanics and reinforcing his confidence. In his first season in the AFL, 1962, he led the then-Texans to the league championship.
After Stram's Chiefs had been beaten, 35-10, by Green Bay in Super Bowl I, the Packers' Vince Lombardi gave a brutally candid assessment of the vanquished: "Dallas is a better team. Kansas City is a good team, but they don't even rate with the better teams in our division. There, that's what you wanted me to say, wasn't it?"
Will McDonough of the Boston Globe was at the Lombardi news conference, and when he came into the Chiefs' dressing room, he told Stram about Lombardi's words.
"Vince didn't say that, did he Will?" said a stunned Stram. "Vince is a friend of mine. Tell me he didn't say that."
Seven months later, the AFL teams were playing NFL teams in exhibition games for the first time. Kansas City entertained the Chicago Bears, "one of the better teams" in Lombardi's division. The honor of the AFL was at stake. The Chiefs bludgeoned the Bears, 66-24. George Halas, the Bears' owner and coach who virtually invented the NFL, left the field with tears in his eyes.
When the Chiefs were preparing to play the Vikings in Super Bowl IV, Ed Sabol, founder of NFL Films, visited Stram's hotel room to pitch the idea of wiring Hank for sound during the game. "I've got a better idea, Ed," said Stram. "Why don't you go over to the Vikings' hotel and ask Bud Grant to do it?" Sabol, knowing what makes a great film, wanted the animated and chatty Stram. It was a master stroke.
That's what we've been seeing on the NFL Network for the last week, Stram on the day the sporting public finally accepted the AFL as equal with its bitter rival.

LARRY FELSER