Henry Louis "Hank" Stram (January 3, 1923–July 4,
2005), was an American college and
Professional Football coach. He is best known for his fifteen-year
tenure with the
American
Football League's
Dallas
Texans/
Kansas City Chiefs and
the Chiefs of the NFL. Stram won three
AFL Championships (more than any
other coach in the league's history) and
Super Bowl IV with the Chiefs. He also coached
for the most victories (87), most post-season appearances (6) and
the best post-season record in the AFL (5–1). Stram is also largely
responsible for the introduction of
Gatorade to the NFL due to his close association
with
Ray Graves, coach at the University
of Florida during Gatorade's development and infancy.
Biography
Early life and career
Stram was
born Henry Louis Stram in Chicago
in
1923. His Polish-born father, Henry Wilczek, wrestled
professionally under the name Stram and the family name was changed
accordingly.
He later grew up in Gary, Indiana
, and graduated from Lew Wallace High School class of
1941.(The football stadium press box was renamed after him in his
honor.) He earned seven letters playing football and baseball and
joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity at
Purdue
in the 1940s, playing in 1942 and again in 1946 and
1947. Stram volunteered for the US defense forces during
World War II interrupting his university career.
He was an assistant football coach for the
Boilermaker in 1948-1955 and
the head baseball coach from 1951-1955. In 1996, Stram and
Len Dawson were inducted into the Purdue Athletic
Hall of Fame. After coaching at Purdue, Stram was an assistant at
Notre Dame,
Southern Methodist University,
and
Miami.
Professional football coaching career (1960–1977)
Stram was an innovator, a shrewd judge of talent, and an excellent
teacher. He helped develop
Hall of
Famers Len Dawson,
Bobby Bell,
Buck
Buchanan,
Willie Lanier,
Jan Stenerud and many others like
Johnny Robinson,
Ed Budde and
Otis Taylor. He was also the
first coach in professional football to use
Gatorade on his sidelines and run both the
I formation and two-tight end offense, still
used in professional football today. On defense, the Chiefs
employed a triple-stack defense, hiding the three linebackers
behind defensive linemen, and were the first professional football
team to cover the center with a defensive lineman (otherwise known
as a nose tackle).
He was considered a motivational genius, and his emphasis on the
Chiefs' wearing of a
patch
commemorating the AFL in Super Bowl IV was one of his typical
ploys, extracting maximum effort from players who had been derided
by proponents of the NFL.
Stram was inducted into the Pro Football
Hall of Fame
in 2003, ironically, nine years after
Bud Grant, the man whose team his had
convincingly defeated in Super Bowl IV, had been enshrined.
At the Hall of Fame ceremonies, Stram was so weakened by the
effects of
diabetes that Len Dawson pushed
his former coach onto the stage in a wheelchair. Stram's induction
speech was then played from a previously-recorded videotape.
Stram's contributions to the game, like those of other AFL
pioneers, helped to change the face of professional football.
Dallas Texans
In 1959,
Lamar Hunt recruited Stram to
coach his Dallas Texans in the new AFL, which commenced play in
1960. Hunt had previously been a
bench player at SMU when Stram had been coaching there and the
Texans' position had been turned down by
Bud Wilkinson and
Tom
Landry, then an assistant at the
New
York Giants. The Texans played their first game in the new AFL
in September 1960 and proved to be successful from the
beginning.
In 1962, the Texans won the AFL Western Division and the AFL
championship. The Texans won the championship against the
Houston Oilers 20-17 in what
remains the longest professional football championship game ever
played.
Tommy Brooker kicked a field
goal after nearly 16 minutes of overtime to win the game for the
Texans and stop the Oilers from winning their third straight
title.
Kansas City Chiefs
The Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963 and
continued their success. In 1966, they won the AFL title again on
the back of one of the best defensive teams in the history of
professional football featuring three hall-of-famers and eight all
star players. The Chiefs defeated the
Buffalo Bills 31–7 in Buffalo. The
Chiefs played the
Green
Bay Packers in
Super Bowl I with
the Packers winning 35–10. Packers coach
Vince Lombardi used a short passing game to
overcome the Chiefs defense which proved successful with
quarterback
Bart Starr becoming the first
Super Bowl MVP.
In a 1968 game against the
Oakland Raiders in Kansas City,
the Chiefs entered the game without a healthy wide receiver ready
to play. Stram went in to pro football's past and resurrected the
T formation. The Chiefs won the game
24-10 running the ball 60 times for over 300 yards while passing
only three times for 16 yards.
The Kansas Chiefs won the AFL championship again in 1969. In
Super Bowl IV, his ingenious
innovations, the "moving pocket" and the "triple-stack defense",
dominated the
Minnesota
Vikings on both sides of the ball. In the Super Bowl, Stram
became the first professional football coach to wear a
microphone. Stram's recorded comments
from that game have become classics:
"Just keep matriculatin'
the ball down the field, boys.",
"How could all six of you
miss that play?" "65 Toss Power Trap" and his
assessment of the Vikings' ineffectual play:
"You can't do that
in OUR league!". The Super Bowl victory was the second
straight by a team from the AFL and added credibility to the newer
league, which would complete a planned merger with the NFL the
following season.
In 1971, the Chiefs won the
AFC Western
Division championship. The
Miami Dolphins defeated the
Chiefs on Christmas Day 1971. The teams played the longest game in
the history of professional football. After that, the Chiefs did
not enjoy the same success, resulting in Stram leaving the
franchise. Stram's tenure in Kansas City ended with a 35–15 loss at
home to the same
Viking team the Chiefs
defeated in Super Bowl IV.
New Orleans Saints
Stram became the head coach of the
New Orleans Saints in 1976, but posted
losing records in his two seasons, 4–10 & 3–11. Hampering
Stram's efforts to rebuild the typically pathetic Saints was a
severe elbow injury to quarterback
Archie
Manning, who missed the entire 1976 season and parts of the
1977 campaign. Stram also had to deal with continuous discipline
problems caused by his leading rusher,
Chuck Muncie, who was in the early stages of a
cocaine addicition which would lead to his
trade in 1980 from New Orleans to the
San Diego Chargers, the end of his NFL
career in 1984, and eventually, 18 months in federal prison.
Perhaps
the biggest highlight of his New Orleans tenure was a 27–17 win
over his former team, the Kansas City Chiefs, at
Arrowhead
Stadium
in 1976, Stram's first victory with the
Saints. The 1977 campaign culminated in an historic home
loss to the previously winless
Tampa Bay Buccaneers who
were riding a 26 game losing streak over two seasons. Stram took
the loss hard; he burned the game film. He was fired after the
final game of the season.
Broadcasting career
Following his retirement from coaching, Stram enjoyed a long and
successful career as a
color
commentator on
CBS'
television and
radio broadcasts of NFL games. As a
broadcaster, he was best remembered for his near 20 year stint
(beginning in
1978 and lasting
through the
1995 season) with
Jack Buck on radio broadcasts of
Monday Night Football
games. Stram's key broadcasting trademark was his habit of
predicting the next play before it happened.
On January 10, 1982, Stram, along with
Vin
Scully, called the famous
NFC Championship Game between the
San Francisco 49ers and the
Dallas Cowboys. The game
in question was immortalized by
Dwight
Clark's
touchdown
catch which elevated the 49ers into their first
Super Bowl appearance (the first of four
during the 1980s).
During a
1988 broadcasting trip to Indianapolis
for a Chicago
Bears–Colts game,
Stram collapsed with a severely blocked aortic valve and underwent
open heart surgery. He was hospitalized in Indianapolis for
a week and later resumed his career with CBS.
Later life and death
Hank Stram
retired to New
Orleans
, Louisiana
, where he built a home in the town of Covington
. He died at St. Tammany Parish hospital in
Covington, from complications due to
diabetes, on July 4, 2005.
Career highlights
- 1960 Head Coach Dallas Texans
- 1962 Dallas Texans AFL champions
- 1966 Kansas City Chiefs AFL champions
- 1968 American Football League Coach of the Year
- 1969 Kansas City Chiefs AFL champions
- 1970 Chiefs win Super Bowl IV
- 1971 Chiefs win AFC West
- 1974 Coaching career ends at Kansas City Chiefs
- 1977 End of Coaching Career with 134–97–10 record and 5–3
postseason record
- 2003 Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame
See also
References
Internet references
Printed references
- Hank Stram with Lou Sahadi, They're Playing My Game,
Morrow, New York 1986 ISBN 0-688-06080-3
- Edward Gruver, The American Football League: A Year-by-Year
History 1960-1969 McFarland & Company 1997 ISBN
0-7864-0399-3
- Brad Adler, Coaching Matters: Leadership & Tactics of
the NFL's Ten Greatest Coaches Brassey's Inc 2003 pages 56–57
ISBN 1-57488-613-4
- "Stram gets Texan post", Dallas Morning News December
21, 1959
- "Texans now rule AFL kingdom", Dallas Morning News December 24,
1962
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
