Keeping Score
Super Bowl will be
missing a super ChargerCOVERING the Super Bowl in one's hometown is the ultimate assignment for any sportswriter.
For this native San Diegan, only one thing would have made the road trip to America's Finest City better: if the Chargers were playing on Jan. 26. Darn those Bolts.
No, make that two things that would have made this perfect -- perhaps getting a chance to speak with Sid Gillman.
But the 91-year-old Hall of Fame coach died last Friday in Los Angeles, not all that far from where his Rams once played in the Coliseum. The City of Angels had also lent its name to the Chargers for the first year of the team's existence in the fledging American Football League.
The bow tie-sporting Gillman baby-sat the Chargers for their first 10 years of existence, nursing their move to San Diego in 1961. The concrete bleachers of Balboa Stadium were usually cold, but Gillman's teams heated it up on the grass field.
As Alex Spanos, San Diego's current owner, said last week, "The Chargers' image of the lightning bolt was perfect for Sid Gillman and how his teams played football."
If not the father of the West Coast Offense, then Gillman was certainly a favorite uncle. His innovative passing style and creative genius on offense became a trademark for the upstart AFL, clearly setting the league apart from the stodgy NFL.
You wanted boring? One only had to watch Green Bay vs. Chicago.
You wanted excitement? San Diego vs. Oakland in the 1960s was THE rivalry.
John Hadl vs. Daryle Lamonica. Lance Alworth streaking down the sidelines for the Blue & Gold, Fred Biletnikoff doing the same for the hated Silver & Black.
And in the middle of it all was Gillman, who could glare with the best, even Oakland's Al Davis.
Reading Gillman's obituary brought back some wonderful memories of those early Charger teams. The AFL, desperately seeking fans, did ticket promos where two kids could get in with a paying adult.
Sunday mornings were reserved for church, Sunday afternoons for the Chargers. I have to admit my first real crush was not on a classmate but on Alworth, No. 19. The flanker nicknamed "Bambi."
Local basketball official Craig Petersen and I had a great discussion about Alworth, his favorite Charger, yesterday in Costco. Not sure if he was more envious of my going to the game or my collection of Alworth pictures, which numbered 88 at one point.
There was one game when, as I was coming down with a cold, my mother gave me a choice of either going to football or going to school the next day. Sister Genevieve never knew what a great sacrifice it was to be in her class that Monday.
I loved football. I loved the Chargers. And my parents indulged my passion, even getting me my own season ticket as an eighth-grade graduation present.
I'm sorry that Gillman did not live to see Super Bowl XXXVIII at Jack Murphy Stadium (I refuse to call it Qualcomm). I still have a scrapbook with the clippings on the opening of the stadium in 1967, a bad 50-7 loss to the Rams.
With the Chargers out, I'm now pulling for the Jets, just as I did in the 1969 Super Bowl.
One request for New York. Please bring Namath.
Cindy Luis' column appears periodically.
E-mail Cindy at cluis@starbulletin.com