When you have football coaches talking like this on the sidelines, it is amazing people are not more prone to be sesquipedalian.Remember Marv Levy? I would keep a dictionary with me when I would listen to his pressers just so I could understand what the heck he said! And I loved when he would yell at the referees. Instead of yelling “you !@#$%^&” when a refree made what appeared to be a bad penalty call on his team, he yelled “you overofficious jerk!”
The words in the heading were spoken on the sidelines by Hank Stram during Super Bowl IV, when he became the first coach to wear a microphone during a championship game, one of the many firsts in his career.
Hank Stram was truly a football pioneer. Hank was the first to come up with the moving pocket, an innovation that prevented a lot of less mobile quarterbacks from eating grass every other play.
He was also the first to use the two tight-end formation and the stack defense, but it was his off-field innovations that really contributed to changing the face of football: coach Stram instituted the off season mini-camps and was the first coach to hire a year round strength and conditioning coach....moves which drastically improved the modern game of football, transforming it into a ballet of grace and power instead of brutish hoedown it once was.
Hank Stram had to wait twenty-five years to be inducted to his proper place in Canton, Ohio. Why did it take the winningest coach in the old American Football League so long to be given this honor is beyond me?
In his induction speech, Len Dawson pointed out that Hank Stram did not have the cadre of assistants that is now prevalent in football. Dawson said that coach Stram was both offensive coordinator and quarterback coach, along with being seriously involved with the defense and special teams. He was both a teacher and motivator besides being a coach, and while it can be argued that these are the duties of a coach, sports is becoming so stratified that today a coach as involved as Stram was is comparable to the head of IBM micro-managing the mail room.
Hank Stram was a visionary and one of the true characters of the game. – Mike Cardano
Mike Cardano is the founder of the Around The Horn (Baseball Blogs) and Extra Point (Football Blogs). Mike is also the founder of the fantasy sports games Ultimate Franchise Baseball™ and Ultimate Franchise Football™.
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