“Marsalis, you tackle like bird crap. All you do is hit and splatter.” Who said it? Who else but the late Hank Stram? The cutting-edge coach of the Kansas City Chiefs was scolding rookie cornerback Jim Marsalis during a regular-season game in 1969. NFL Films founder Ed Sabol had Stram miked, and even though Sabol didn’t use the aforementioned line (you couldn’t say “crap” in those days), he knew who to call when the Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl. Sabol figured Stram would eagerly consent when asked to wear a microphone again on Super Sunday. He was wrong. The day before the game, Sabol and his son, Steve, visited Stram at the Fontainbleu Hotel in New Orleans in order to make a formal request. As per his custom on road trips, Stram had lined up a chain of connecting suites and a buffet table stocked with fine food. “Hank was sitting there in his underpants watching a college game,” recalls Steve Sabol, now president of NFL Films. When Ed Sabol queried Stram about wearing a microphone, Stram replied, “What’s in this for ‘The Mentor?’ ” That was a nickname Stram’s players had given him. He’d taken to using it as a third-person reference. Ed Sabol asked Stram to clarify his statement. “If The Mentor is going to wear a microphone for NFL Films, some coin of realm is going to have to change hands,” Stram said. Sabol: “What?” Stram: “Dead presidents, boys. The Mentor wants some dead presidents.” NFL Films wasn’t exactly rolling in dough at the time. Ed Sabol reluctantly offered $250. The always-dapper Stram, son of a tailor who’d doubled as a pro wrestler, responded swiftly. “Two hundred and fifty dollars won’t even pay for The Mentor’s dry cleaning.” Finally, the sides agreed on $750. That was a lot of “coin” back then — and Stram delivered a million-dollar performance. If you’re breathing and you like football, you’ve seen Stram’s sideline act from Super Bowl IV. The power of those early NFL Films productions — why are they so addictive• — helped to vault pro football past baseball, college football and boxing in the American sports consciousness. Stram was one of the first “Films” stars, thanks to classic lines such as, “Just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys.” “He took the game to places it had never been,” Steve Sabol says. “He was the first coach who really understood that football is a form of entertainment.” Stram, who died Monday at age 82 after a long illness, would later tell Sabol that people recognized him as the “65 Toss Power Trap” guy. That was a play Stram called early in Super Bowl IV. When it worked for a touchdown, he cackled like a schoolboy. “Yessir boys; was it there?” Stram said, as he clutched that ever-present program. “Yeahhh … The Mentor … 65 Toss Power Trap! I told you that baby was there.” Steve Sabol worked the camera that day and says you’ll notice times the picture shakes. That is because he was laughing. Marsalis still marvels at Stram’s confidence in wearing the mike. The Chiefs were underdogs to the Minnesota Vikings but won, 23-7. “What if we’d gotten beat real bad; what would Hank have been saying?” Marsalis wondered yesterday. “He had to really think we were going to win. A lot of people don’t look at it that way.” Even though the game is replayed, according to Sabol, on a “continuous, eternal loop,” Marsalis speaks for a lot of us when he says, “I don’t think they show it enough.”

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