Hank Stram, 80, was an underdog from the time he attended Lew Wallace High School in Gary until he finally made the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The former Kansas City Chiefs coach will be inducted Sunday in Canton, Ohio, along with running back Marcus Allen, receiver James Lofton, defensive end Elvin Bethea and guard Joe DeLamielleure.
The audience for the weekend festivities will include more than 100 enshrinees as the Hall celebrates its 40th anniversary.
Stram made it as a candidate from the Seniors Committee after falling short of the necessary votes in the regular process for years.
Recent inductions of Minnesota’s Bud Grant, Buffalo’s Marv Levy and Washington’s George Allen–coaches who never won a Super Bowl–helped the case of Stram, who beat Grant in Super Bowl IV.
The win verified the upstart American Football League as legitimate one year after the New York Jets’ upset of the Baltimore Colts. Stram’s Chiefs lost Super Bowl I to Vince Lombardi’s Packers.
“Hank is really symbolic of the coaching style and the coaching personality of the American Football League,” Chiefs owner Lamar 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.”
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 Southern Methodist. Some credit Stram with inventing the “stack” defense and the moving pocket on offense. Other coaches claim he only dusted off old ideas. There is no doubt, however, that Stram’s gift was in promotion.
Stram will be presented by his Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson, whom Stram picked up after the NFL rejected him.
“I don’t think people know what a great quarterback coach he was,” Dawson said. “He knew more about the quarterback position than any coach I ever had.”
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Stram achieved a measure of fame by wearing a wireless microphone for NFL Films during his Super Bowl victory. He taped his induction speech, another first for the Hall.
“Hank felt it might be more dramatic, and I don’t know if he was comfortable standing up there in the hot sun and giving this talk,” NFL Films President Steve Sabol said. “This is a poetic justice. If you look at NFL Films as the film arm of the league, Hank was our Errol Flynn. He was the first swashbuckler, the first coach who really understood, more than any other coach, that football was also entertainment.”
First-time charmer: Allen is this year’s only enshrinee elected in his first year of eligibility. Allen, Bethea and Lofton each played 16 years, DeLamielleure 13.
Allen was the first player to reach 10,000 yards rushing and 5,000 yards receiving. Lofton was the first to score touchdowns in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. DeLamielleure excelled as a run blocker for O.J. Simpson in Buffalo and then a pass blocker in Cleveland. Bethea had an unofficial 105 sacks because he played most of his career before the sack was recognized. He did it as an end in the 3-4 alignment.
“If he’d played in a four-man front all his career, a lot of people would be chasing him for the all-time sack lead,” Hall of Fame offensive lineman Art Shell said.
Modell tour: The Baltimore Ravens’ Art Modell, 78, is entering his final year as a team owner. Minority partner Steve Bisciotti has said he plans to exercise his option to buy the remaining 51 percent of the team from Modell for $325 million at the end of this season. Bisciotti wants Modell to stay on as an adviser.
Modell is writing his memoirs and said he is still struggling over how to approach his move out of Cleveland, the episode that has hurt his chances to make the Hall of Fame. Modell said there are circumstances that still haven’t been fully reported that may affect his legacy.
“It would be nice to get into the Hall, but I have no control over the process. I know Al Davis is in and he moved his team twice. Doesn’t that say something to you?” Modell asked.
Modell is typically optimistic about his team: “I’d like to go out on top. I don’t know how much progress our competitors have made in the division or in the conference, but this Ravens team is better than the one I had that won the Super Bowl [in 2000].”
Major emphasis: If the subject of minority hiring hasn’t been on the minds of NFL owners, it is now. Lions owner William Clay Ford lashed out at Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Steelers owner Dan Rooney for fining Lions President Matt Millen $200,000 after he failed to interview minority candidates for the head-coaching job. The Lions argued that five minority candidates turned down interview requests, supposedly because they concluded Steve Mariucci was going to get the job anyway. Rooney is chairman of the league’s diversity committee, which mandated that teams interview minorities for coaching openings.
“The Steelers and the league office have a terrible record. They’re great ones to be picking us out,” Ford said.
That led Rooney to note that the Steelers were the first to name a minority coordinator (Tony Dungy in 1984) and were the first to hire a fulltime female trainer, Ariko Iso, a native of Japan.
Tough off-season: Miami defensive end David Bowens tore the anterior cruciate ligament in a knee after landing from a four-foot jump off his bathroom countertop. Bowens was changing a light bulb.
Ring’s the thing: Colts running back Edgerrin James said he was hanging out with fellow Miami (Fla.) alum Warren Sapp at a Tampa Bay Super Bowl party and discovered the magic of earning a Super Bowl ring.
“I’ve got friends who have Super Bowl rings,” James said. “They talk to you with their fingers. Everything they said, they’d be like pointing. `It’s over there. Come over here.’ Everything they do is with their hands. It’s like jabbing you in the side. I’ve got a lot of friends who have rings. That’s something I want.”
Robbins returns: After battling bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse that got him booted out of the Raiders’ starting lineup and out of the Super Bowl last January, center Barret Robbins is back.
Robbins received treatment for severe depression at a Southern California rehabilitation clinic.
“It’s been an unbelievable journey,” Robbins said. “I didn’t think I’d ever be here. That’s how hard it had gotten. I was in a bad state of mind for a long time.”
As for fence-mending, Robbins apologized to the team during mini-camps for for his AWOL incident. Since then, he says he has friends on the team “I didn’t know I had.”
Guard Frank Middleton, one of the first Raiders to criticize Robbins and express doubts he would ever be welcomed back, changed his tune. “We took care of [the fence-mending] a while back,” Middleton said.