A Personal Ode to Two Wildly Different Chiefs Hall Tales
I know very well that Johnny Robinson spent quite a bit of time on my bedroom wall when I was a kid. I know for certain that I spent more average time per visit at Tony Gonzalez’s locker than any other athlete I have ever covered. One original Chief who spent his entire brilliant career with the team, and one longtime Chief who helped redefine his position, entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame Saturday, one who waited decades to get in, and one who got in right away, and those two notes are part of my personal memories of them.
Just as I was entering my teen years, I was more than just an enthusiastic young sports fan. I loved sports more than anything, but I also was a little sports entrepreneur. Well, let’s not dress it up, I was a young bookie. I used my sports knowledge that was a few leaps ahead of most of my peers to manipulate betting lines and work things in my favor. Just before my Dad decided to shut down this little cottage industry, came the 1970 AFL-NFL Championship game. (It was not yet dubbed the Super Bowl.
Of course, this game came on the heels of the mammoth upset by the New York Jets in the previous years game. The Jets were as high as a 19- point underdog when they beat the Colts. Those who still felt the NFL was the clearly superior league did not learn any lesson. The Chiefs were at least a two-touchdown underdog as they got set for the game. I was a Cowboys fan, but my AFL favorites were the Chiefs, even though I lived in the Boston suburbs and had no idea a big part of my future life would be covering that team.
The Chiefs were on national TV quite a bit, and I had seen them play many times that year. I was very sure that I knew how good they were, and I wasn’t shy about it. I made quite a few bets with the points, while pointedly saying that I thought the Chiefs would win outright. This finally annoyed one guy enough he bet me ten to one on twenty dollars. He would soon owe me two hundred dollars, which he would never pay (that’s a story for another day).
The absurd betting line becomes more glaring with the knowledge now that the Chiefs defense that day featured six future Hall of Famers, Johnny Robinson being the sixth. The Chiefs completely dominated the game, leading 16-0 at the half and easing to a 23-7 win. Robinson had a fourth quarter interception, the aftermath of the play resulting in the Sports Illustrated full page color photo that was part of my wall montage of sports pictures for quite a while. He is seated on the ground, with Bobby Bell standing over him, index finger in the air, the interception an exclamation point for what was now obvious, that the Chiefs were number one.
It was one of 61 interceptions that Robinson had in his career counting the playoffs, and part of an array of reasons why it is astounding that Robinson had to wait fifty years to inducted. He twice led the AFL in picks with ten, he was named to the all-time AFL first team at safety. How the hell can you be in that select club of twenty- two and not be recognized sooner. Thankfully, Robinson has survived multiple health issues so that he could fulfill a dream in person.
When you become one of the greats of all-time in a sport like Tony Gonzalez, things are sometimes said of you that are wildly exaggerated When I was popping around doing research for this piece, I came upon the lead for the Fox Sports story about his induction. It began “Tony Gonzalez probably could have been a star in the NBA. Instead, he chose the NFL path…” Uhh, no. Gonzalez played 82 games for Cal, never started one, and averaged five points and three rebounds a game.
That dopey attempt at trying to further the legend of Gonzalez is hopelessly unnecessary. Gonzalez was a big part of redefining the position of tight end. He wasn’t the first tight end to be a primary offensive weapon, but he took it to another level. In his dozen years with the Chiefs, he had five full seasons with Trent Green, and besides that was working with pedestrian or worse quarterback play, and he still thrived. His five year stint with Atlanta produced his only playoff win, and his push to exit, and some comments about his time in Atlanta, have soured some Chiefs fans toward him, but his greatness is undeniable.
You’ve heard all the gaudy stats, and seen the on-field brilliance. So i’ll give you a couple of interesting and revealing memories that I have when I think of him. The first is, that he was very much a diva, maybe the first diva tight end. Wide receivers like that are a dime a dozen, but Gonzalez brought pretty-boy swag and attitude to the table along with his great play.
Literally dozens of hours of my life were spent watching Tony’s elaborate post-game locker room ritual. No waltzing out of the shower, throwing some flip flops, shorts and a t-short for him. No, as we waited, and it was Tony Gonzalez, you had to get him, so you had to wait, since you didn’t know exactly how long he would take to languidly dress to the nines. Back to the assemblage, he would advance from naked, through a lengthy lotion treatment, then into designer clothes, concluding with knotting up a fancy tie, and then would turn, and finally address us.
At first, maybe you got a little miffed. But as time went by, it was just part of the whole deal, Tony being Tony. Just like when he had his lengthy consecutive games with a catch streak. The Chiefs would make sure early in the game to give him a quick and easy catch so there would be no angst about the streak.
But maybe my favorite interaction with him was at training camp at River Falls one year. I knew that he had taken a South American vacation before camp, and I had that in my pocket. Practice was over and Gonzalez was cooling off on a small rise. He and I were the only people around there, so I walked over and said “Hey, Tony, do you have a minute”. He said “What do you want to talk about?”. I said “Well….maybe football?”
“I don’t want to talk about football.”
“How about Rio?”
“Sure, man, let’s do it.”
We really didn’t chat long about Rio, and then got into what he knew was the point, which was getting him to talk football for the fans. He just wanted to make you work for it, wanted to give you a little test. Maybe he just wanted to make you work as hard at your craft as he did at his to make him the best.
Two Chiefs entered the Hall Saturday, one smoothly, in keeping with his overall persona, one after a long, grinding wait, in keeping with his perseverance. But now Tony Gonzalez and Johnny Robinson have one majestic thing in common, gained on the same day.