He was born the seventh son of a seventh son, and his jersey number was 16, and if you add 1 and 6 it’s 7, the Biblical number for perfection, and maybe that’s a reach but still, I’m just sayin’.
Len Dawson wasn’t perfect, but he was close enough.
In the Pro Football Hall of Fame both as a quarterback and as a broadcaster, Dawson died in hospice care Wednesday at 87, but he lived as a poster boy for Mid-America Cool in his Ohio hometown and then at Purdue and finally in Kansas City, a poster boy for decency and graciousness, a fearless competitor and an “everyman” on HBO’s Inside the NFL for nearly a quarter-century, just a nice-looking man in a sports coat and mock turtleneck, no telestrator or frame-by-frame breakdown of a controversial play, just a guy you used to watch play, just a guy you watched win a Super Bowl when you were a boy, just a dude talking football.
Poster Boy for the kind of wavy-hair, eye-black cool that seemed a little reckless but still shaved every day, signed autographs, kissed babies, won championships.
He was literally a poster boy in my world. My little-boy room had on its walls four posters, each purposeful figure possessing what I thought was a Super Power: Brooks Robinson (glove), Bob Hayes (speed), Sonny Jurgensen (pot belly! and still getting it done) and Len Dawson (grace and calculated cool).
Thumb tacks held them up then; I got them framed when I got older even though I had no money but by-god they deserved framing. In Dawson’s picture, he’d taken maybe two steps back in his drop, left leg about to step behind his right leg, looking downfield.
Loved it.
But for 40 years, The Greatest Picture of All-Time — also of Len Dawson — wasn’t published. Life magazine took photos of Super Bowl I but didn’t publish a picture of Dawson, taken at halftime, until 15 or so years ago when the magazine published a photo slideshow of that momentous event.
In the picture, Dawson, in the Chiefs’ all-white uniform, is sitting in a folding chair on the concrete floor of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum locker room, helmet off, staring at the floor, a Fresca (they quit making them a couple years ago, dang it) in a bottle by his cleats, a cigarette between his lips while he stares at the concrete, surely contemplating the Green Bay Packers defense, and takes a hit off what looks like a menthol filtered.
I imagine a lot of quarterbacks did that back in the 1960s when they were playing Green Bay, as Dawson and the Chiefs were that day. Kansas City was trailing just 14-10 at the half; in the third quarter, some mean Packer hit Dawson’s arm and a pass fluttered to Willie Wood for an interception and KC lost 35-10.
Think Dawson might have smoked another one post-game? Or two. Or eight?
Of course, I have a copy of that iconic photo, not much bigger than wallet-sized, framed and on a bookshelf.
But I don’t have the poster. Maybe a dozen years ago, sober as a judge but short on space and logic, I had the feeling I needed to mature a bit and put Len Dawson and Sonny Jurgensen by a dumpster. Didn’t have the heart to put them in the dumpster; I was hopeful someone would take them, and maybe they did.
But who throws away Dawson and Jurgensen when they’ve already been with you for 40 years? A stupid person, that’s who. A stupid person named Me.
Regrets, I’ve had a few…
But I can see him still. Super Bowl IV and NFL Films made him eternally famous. Hank Stram calling him “Lenny” and Otis Taylor on the out route for a touchdown and 65 Toss Power Trap all day long, boys. And Lenny in front of the huddle, not a circle huddle but a Lenny Huddle, Lenny alone out front, hands on his hips, five backs and receivers in front of him, five offensive linemen with three-bar facemasks behind them, all looking at Lenny Cool.
Makes me want a cool Fresca.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu