Embracing the circus
For Stram, the NFL media was never a nuisance

I've often wondered how Hank Stram would have fit into this modern world of the NFL, this era of the buttoned-up coaches who might see fit to hold two or three 20-minute press conferences a week, who put their assistants off-limits, who act like they're finding a cure for cancer. He probably would have laughed himself sick.
"Come over here, siddown, what do you want to know?"
How well I remember Hank, with his toupee and flamboyant red vest under his dark blazer, as he patrolled the sidelines, giggling, snapping off his one-liners. He liked action. He liked crowds ... and writers around him, plenty of them. The media circus was meat and potatoes for him.
Even when an ugly story broke the Tuesday before Kansas City's 1970 Super Bowl victory over the Vikings, the Chiefs' hotel was hardly a place hostile to writers, as it would be today. The story was that Stram's quarterback, Len Dawson, had been associating with a known gambler, Dice Dawson (no relation), and you could draw your own conclusions from that.
As soon as the news appeared on TV, Kenny Denlinger of the Washington Post and I headed over to the Fontainbleu, the New Orleans hotel housing the Chiefs. These days we would have been met by a cordon of police at the door, backed up by a squadron of worried-faced NFL people herding the media into some ghetto somewhere. But the Fontainbleu was wide open.
Kenny and I took the elevator up and knocked on the door to Dawson's room. He answered it and the three of us, plus his roommate, Johnny Robinson, the safetyman, stood there yacking for a while.
"There's absolutely nothing to it," Dawson said. We were surprised that there weren't any security people around, but this was Hank's hotel and Hank liked the media. We stopped by the Chiefs' offices on the mezzanine floor, figuring they'd be calling a press conference, and later on they did, but when we arrived, the PR man, Jimmy Schaaf, was there to greet us.
"Yeah, Hank said a bunch of you would be coming over," he said. "He said to call room service and get you taken care of." And that's what he did.
"Room service? Send up around 10 pounds of shrimp remoulade to the Chiefs' offices, OK?"
And, of course, Dawson played, was the MVP of the game and nothing came of the accusation. During the offseason I asked Stram about the loose way he had handled what could have been a major crisis.
"Have writers ever cost us a game?" he said. "Does it matter what's written? Well, yeah, it means something to me, because it helps me get my ideas across. The dumbest thing you can do is get mad at the press."
And his ideas came pouring out like a flood after that 23-7 victory in Super Bowl IV. It had really been a triumph of that great K.C. defense, the innovation of the stacked linebackers, the odd front that allowed 270-pound Curley Culp to manhandle Minnesota's undersized center, Mick Tingelhoff. But it was Stram's offense that got all the ink.
Who can forget him, miked on the sidelines ... "It's like stealing out there!" when one of his wideouts caught still another square-out underneath the Vikings corners, playing back? Or the three Frank Pitts end-arounds K.C. ran ... oh no, not again, it can't work again ... each one for good yardage. Or the sucker trap that gave little Mike Garrett a five-yard TD, the ultimate in flim-flammery, designed for the great pursuit of DT Alan Page. And of course Page took himself out of the play, following the guard who was pulling out -- to nowhere -- as Garrett walked in.
Stram football. Trick-'em football. He liked to hide little backs in the slot, behind his monster linemen, and sneak them downfield as pass catchers. When Dawson was hurt during the Super Bowl season, Stram designed a rollout attack for his big, mobile rookie -- Mike Livingston, who won five games with it. So the tactic stayed in the playbook, only now it bore the name, "Moving Pocket," which became the watchword for Stram's.

Sports Illustrated