More Strange But True AFL Stories

On a team known for colorful characters, Dan Birdwell was THE colorful character. Once the team was flying to a road game. Everyone was on the plane except for one player... Birdwell. The team waited for two hours for him until finally someone saw another plane on a distant runway. Dispatching a club executive over to the other plane found Birdwell sitting all by himself on an empty plane. "Where is everybody?" Dan asked.

He had so much body hair that his teammates would tease him about his "mohair shirt." But Dan didn't mind. He would but on a tank top and then shave off all the hair that was showing on his body. A true character with a big heart. But it was his heart that was Dan Birdwell's achilles heal. A massive heart attack ended his life way too early.

Cookie Gilchrist was one of the colorful characters in the American Football League. At 18, he was going to play football at Michigan State University when Paul Brown signed him to his first pro contract. The idea of getting paid to play football was just too much to overcome for Cookie. That stopped the college idea. To hone his football skills, Cookie went to Canada where he tore up the CFL for eight seasons. And drove his employers crazy at every stop.

He was a sports corporate spokesman before there were sports corporate spokesmen. And Cookie spoke for the corportation called Cookie Gilchrist Enterprises. Cookie sold Christmas trees outside War Memorial Stadium, the old home of the Bills. He sold Cookie Gilchrist earmuffs. He was working on a deal to drill for oil in northern Canada as well as mine copper in Zambia. Wherever there was a buck to made, there was Cookie. But whenever a deal went bad, there was Cookie also. In the general manager's or owner's office with his hand out, either wanting an advance on his salary or an outright raise.

Once Gilchrist took himself out of a game because he had stayed out way too late the night before. That move promptly got him suspended by head coach Lou Saban. But quarterback Jack Kemp came to Cookie's rescue and got him reinstated before the 1964 Championship between the Bills and the defending champion Chargers.

Cookie got traded to the Denver Broncos in 1965 and was late reporting to camp. He hadn't signed a contract and wanted to be traded to Oakland. He was fined and eventually reported (when 28 sportwriters for AFL cities were at the camp). There he held a press conference. Among the topics other than football was the 450 tons of tungsten that Cookie's corporation had just located on the estate of Lord Angusy in South Wales. Then Gilchrist went into his sales pitch to solicit investors. Despite the distraction that he caused, Cookie still turned in an All-AFL performance that season.

Gilchrist later played for Miami before ending his playing career back with the Denver Broncos. And do you know who the new Broncos head coach was that season? His old "buddy" Lou Saban.

Dennit Morris grew up in Oklahoma and knew a lot about snakes. Even kept snakes as pets. So when Oiler team meeting grew boring, old Dennit would liven it up by throwing snakes on the floor. Rattlesnakes. He would get his kicks watching big old linemen and other tough guys jump up on chairs, tables, or just plain run.

Meanwhile Dennit was as calm as could be as he lectured his teammates all about every aspect of the deadly snakes. Still, as calm as Morris was, his teammates were exactly the opposite. They couldn't wait for him to shut up and take the snakes away.

Veteran linebacker Clancy Osborne nearly went homicidal during 1965 training camp when he read in the newspaper that he had lost his starting job to Gus Otto - and took it out on head coach Al Davis.

Offensive tackle Harry Schuh was walking past the dormitory early one morning when he heard a loud crash. Schuh spun around and saw the booted feet of someone who had kicked in the window of Al Davis' room.

"I just saw the two feet but I knew it was Clancy by those cowboy boots and because that old cowboy always got up at the crack of dawn, Harry recalled. "I got closer and I hear this high-pitched, pleading voice saying, 'I promise you, Clancy, I didn't know nothin' about it. I didn't put it in the paper.' And I look it and there was Clancy Osborne sitting on top of Al Davis in Al's bed."

Hogan Wharton was the starting right guard on the Houston clubs from 1960-63. On the field, Hogan was all business. But off the field he was a completely different person. Offensive backfield coach Wally Schlinkman recalled Wharton. "Good God almighty. Hogan Wharon. He's the funniest white man I know."

Hogie, as he was called by his teammates, was a professional wrestler in the off-season, taking on opponents like "Man Mountain" Managoff, Joe "Yellow" Pizza, and "Mad" Maurice Vachon. Teammates kidded Hogan about wrestlng being fake but no one ever took his invitation to meet him in the ring.

Wharton loved a good joke and eventually perfected sham poolside fights when the Oilers were on the road. The action was so realistic that horrified hotel guests picked up kids or grandkids and scattered to the safety of their rooms. The grand finale was when the combatants would float face-down in the pool. Many times the police were called but Hogan would always vanish before the authorities got there.

The New York Titans started out as a sore and became a big black eye for the American Football League. And the biggest reason was their owner, Harry Wismer.

When the AFL was founded in 1959, out of the eight original owners, only Harry Wismer was the only person the American public had heard of. The poorest one of the bunch was the most recognizable.

Although Wismer owned the AFL Titans, he also owned 25 percent of the rival NFL Washington Redskins. And the AFL had a $10 million dollar lawsuit filed against the NFL. Imagine suing yourself!

The Titan offices were at 277 Park Avenue... in Harry's Park Avenue apartment. Unfortunately, the entrance to the building was on 49th Street. Imagine some fan coming by to purchase tickets but can't get into the building. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tickets lay on his bed. And if Wismer wasn't there, people would drop off $10 and pickup two tickets. Harry's office was his living room. The publicists's office was the butler's pantry while the coaches offices were the kitchen and dining room. The bathroom served as the mimeograph room. It was the only office like it in the American Football League.

Every year the Titans would train at a different site. The reason was because Harry never paid the bills. It's not that he didn't want to. It's just that he didn't have the funds.

The Titans played in front of what the press called "Wismer Attendances." While the 55,000-seat Polo Grounds held no more than 2,000 fans, Harry would announce the attendance at 12,000. One game in drew only 70 people! Yet Wismer reported it in the thousands. This caused the writers to report that most of the fans came described as empty seats.

And the biggest star on the Titans was Harry Wismer. When the Chargers called the Titans asking for some team publicity photos, Harry sent them 100 8x10 glossies of himself. Wismer also took out subway ads proclaiming "Harry Wismer and his New York Titans."

His fights with Commissioner Joe Foss were legendary. Foss wanted the league offices in Dallas. Harry wanted them in New York. Harry and the other owners circumvented the commissioner's office in 1961 with an illegal draft. Foss overruled it. Harry wanted the commissioner deposed while Foss wanted to take away Wismer's franchise. Despite the bad blood between Wismer and Foss, Joe was the best man at Wismer's wedding in 1962.

In the end, the fights with players, coaches, writers and the commissioner were too much for Wismer. He went bankrupt running the Titans and the league was forced to take over the team in November, 1962. Eventually, the team was sold in a New Jersey bankruptcy court in March 1963. They were purchased by Sonny Werblin, a known Wismer amtagonist, who renamed the club the Jets and moved them into Shea Stadium in 1964, a facility that was originally promised to be ready in 1961.

A few years later, Wismer was a guest of the Jets and strolled the sidelines just like in the old days. But there were tears of sadness in Harry's eyes as he looked into the sold-out Shea Stadium crowd and thought, "This could have all been mine... This could have all been mine."