Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005

Hank Stram died on July 4, 2005.

Just recently, I remember watching an NFL Films documentary called "The Original Six Days to Sunday." Stram of course let NFL Films get complete access to the Saints in 1976 as they prepared for a division game against the Falcons. Stram was fired before they did all the production work on the film, so they let it sit in the vaults for years before finishing it.

It was a great film. It showed Stram working with Bobby Douglass to break down game film and to become a finished product as an NFL quarterback.

Hopefully, the NFL Network or ESPN Classic will replay the film in the next few days or weeks.

Here are some other interesting things I found out about Coach Stram.

Stram won the 1948 Big Ten Medal for combining athletics and academics.

From some additional research, I found out that John Wooden won the award at Purdue in 1932.

I've linked to some of the better obits that I've found. And I pulled some quotes that interested me. I will say that I've read several columns by Jerry Magee and I love his stuff.

Stram also has a reputation of being a innovator. There are three that I would like to investigate further. The full-time conditioning coach was credited to Stram in some of the obits. The use of the zone defense in the AFL, at least, if not the zone defense itself was credited to Stram. And, Lenny Dawson said that the Chiefs were running the West Coast offense before the West Coast offense. I don't know if these are accurate or not, but I'd like to find out.

Below please find the interesting quotes.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/nfl/20050705-9999-_1s5stram.html

By Jerry Magee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 5, 2005

Two
coaches arguably had more to do with American Football League teams achieving
permanence than any others. One was the Chargers' Sid Gillman, the other Stram.
Gillman, who died in January 2003 at age 91, respected Stram. "Good plays,"
Gillman would say. But he also felt he could read Stram. One of Gillman's
deductions was that when a Stram team would get behind, it would begin blitzing.

Joe Horrigan noted that under Stram, the Chiefs were among the first
professional teams to recognize the talent pool contained in historically black
schools.

Henry Louis Stram was the son of a professional wrestler from
Gary, Ind. At Purdue, he was a running back in 1942 and in 1946-47.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/3252592

By MICKEY HERSKOWITZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Stram fought
the battle of Dallas, where the Cowboys and Texans both drew so poorly that a
playoff was suggested, with the winning team getting to leave town.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/football/nfl/kansas_city_chiefs/12057041.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

Stram was born Jan. 2, 1923, in
Chicago and grew up in Gary, Ind., where his Polish-born father was a tailor and
professional wrestler named Henry Wilszek, who performed for the Barnum &
Bailey circus. The circus changed his surname to Stram.

Although his
parents discouraged him from playing football, Hank Stram became a star athlete
in football, baseball, basketball and track at Lew Wallace High in Gary, earning
all-state honors as a halfback.

Stram enrolled at Purdue University on a
football scholarship in 1941 and enlisted in the Army reserve in 1943. He
remained in the service for three years, returning to Purdue in 1946 and earning
his degree in 1948. He lettered in football and baseball at Purdue, and as a
senior he received the Big Ten Medal, awarded to the conference athlete who best
combines athletics with academics.

Stram spent the next 12 seasons as an
assistant at Purdue, SMU, Notre Dame and Miami (Fla.) before Hunt hired him as
the head coach of the Dallas Texans of the fledgling AFL.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/12053348.htm

By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star

"I don't know if there is
anything ever new in football, but we were doing things in the `60s that teams
are doing now," said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson. "Hank came up with so
many new twists and doesn't get the credit he deserves.

"He wasn't
afraid to try things. Back in those days, guys didn't try anything. They pretty
much stayed with what the Green Bay Packers or New York Giants were doing. Well,
Hank decided let's do some things different. We were playing the West Coast
offense before it was the West Coast offense."

And Stram deployed zone
defenses in the early 1960s as a way to combat the wide-open passing games of
the AFL when teams were loath to defend receivers in anything but man-to-man
coverage.

Stram attributed that defense to the Texans' intercepting five
passes in the 1962 AFL championship win over Houston.

http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-19/1120543067262410.xml

The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Peter Finney

What
befell Coach Stram at the end of a long career, a two-year pit stop for John
Mecom's Saints, did nothing to tarnish the résumé of the most successful coach
in the history of the AFL.

Without a doubt, Hank's finest hour with the
Saints had more to do with the owner who fired him in Kansas City, Lamar Hunt,
than the man who brought him to the Big Easy.

Perhaps old-timers will
remember.

All the Saints had to do to sew up a 20-17 victory at
Arrowhead Stadium in 1976 was run out the clock. They were near the Kansas City
end zone with the final seconds ticking down when Stram called time. He told a
surprised Bobby Scott, his quarterback, "now we're going to shove it to 'em."

Scott threw a touchdown pass to tight end Henry Childs to make it 27-17.

"I wanted that last one," Hank said afterward. "Maybe these people will
learn to do their talking after the game, not before."

During the week,
Chiefs coach Paul Wiggin was quoted as saying, "I'd like to kick Stram's butt."
After the game, as Stram was being carried from the field, running back Chuck
Muncie ran over to Wiggin and handed him a poster-sized reproduction of his
words.

All and all, it was a strange setting. Stram had been best man at
Lamar Hunt's wedding. And that's not all. At the time, the coach and his former
boss were in the courts, trying to settle Hank's contract with Kansas City, a
10-year, $100,000-a-year deal terminated with seven years remaining.

So
it made for a memorable postgame scene, the Strams leaving Arrowhead Stadium
linked arm-in-arm, Hank, wife Phyllis, two sons, two daughters, all of them
singing, "When the Saints . . ."

It was right out of Dorothy and
friends, in the "Wizard of Oz," walking the Yellow Brick Road.

Hank had
found his Saints rainbow.

thankyouverymuch,

Old Cleat