Raiders, Chiefs Play a Bible Belt Revival : Once-Great Rivalry, Which Decided Championships, Has Heated Up Again

Kansas City may be a nice place if you’re a Chief, or a beef, or a Royal base thief like Willie Wilson, but it’s been rough on the Raiders.

The Raiders have been rough right back. The situation doesn’t promise to get any more pleasant anytime soon.

Tonight, the old antagonists get to see Arrowhead Stadium by TV light as the featured attractions in ABC’s nationally televised game.

Since the Raiders were the ones who had to travel, they’ll be working on 2 1/2 days of practice. The Chiefs will have the benefit of 3. If that extra half-day doesn’t sound like much, you’re not a football coach or a Raider. They’ve been damning the NFL office for this particular favor since the schedule was posted.

It’s not as if they felt that they needed an added handicap. The Raiders have won their last three games at Arrowhead, and the last five in the series, but it wasn’t easy.

This is how it was:

1982--Raiders win, 21-16, at Arrowhead when Calvin Muhammad makes a diving catch in the end zone with 25 seconds left.

1983--Raiders win, 28-20, at Arrowhead. Chiefs lead, 20-14, until Jim Plunkett throws a 19-yard touchdown pass to Dokie Williams with 3:49 left. Raiders win, 21-20, at Coliseum when Frank Hawkins recovers Marcus Allen’s fumble in the end zone. Nick Lowery’s 48-yard field goal try with nine seconds left is blocked by Ted Hendricks.

1984--Raiders win, 22-20, at Arrowhead. Chiefs lead, 13-0 and 20-19, until Plunkett marches Raiders 73 yards to the Kansas City one, where Chris Bahr kicks the winning field goal with a minute left.

It wasn’t always fun, either. One thing it was, though, was challenging.

How?

Let them count the ways.

Rod Martin, linebacker, said: “Ooh! It’s been more than the last couple that have been tough. Every time we go into that pit-hole, it’s a vicious atmosphere.

“Up until the people in Seattle came on, Kansas City was No. 1, as far as the fans getting into the game. They just make it so tough. They’ve got that horse that runs around the field when they score a touchdown. One year I thought we were going to kill that horse. They scored so many points, we thought that horse was going to fall over. We’re going to try to keep him in the pen this week.

“The fans are right there. I think they sit closer to you than in any town in the league. This may be a little exaggeration, but they’re almost at arm’s length. If you make a big play, they harass you, tell you you’re lucky. If you try to walk away, it seems like they’ve got the whole section following you. We’ll have some friends at the game, and they usually put them behind your bench. Not Kansas City. They want their fans there.”

This is Raiders-Chiefs. It goes back to 1960, when the Raiders were in Oakland and the Chiefs were in Dallas and known as the Texans. It’s always been this way.

For years, their two meetings a year determined the champion in the American Football League’s Western Conference, pitting genius Al Davis against genius Hank Stram.

Edges were much in demand.

Al LoCasale, Raider executive assistant, said: “In the old park (Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium), they had both teams on the same side of the field, just a few yards apart. After Don Klosterman (then Chief general manager) left, he revealed that Hank had a guy spying on the sideline, a photographer from one of the TV stations or something, who’d go up and down the field taking shots and listening to what we were saying.

“We barred the guy for life. When the Chiefs came out to Oakland, he had to stay on their sideline and we had a guy watching him, too. Once he asked me, ‘How long do I have to do penance?’ I said, ‘Forever.’

“We used to call them the Sears Roebuck team. They’d have two defensive ends, 6-5. If they wanted a tight end, they’d open the catalogue and find somebody 6-4, 235 and Lamar Hunt (founder of the AFL, owner of the Chiefs and heir to the vast Hunt fortune) would say, ‘Go buy one.’ They tilted the field when they came in. The only thing bigger than their offensive line was their defensive line.

“We had a game in 1970, the (George) Blanda miracle year, where Lenny Dawson bootlegged and Ben Davidson tackled him. It wasn’t a bad hit, but Ben had this way of doing a roll after he made a tackle. He came in helmet-first, and there was a big fight.

“We came back and got the ball to their 41, a 48-yard field goal (the goal posts were then on the goal line). That was the extreme edge of Blanda’s range but he just barely made it. The game ended in a 17-17 tie. They had a guy named Morris Stroud, a 6-8 guy who had played basketball. They put him under the goal posts and had him jump up. He just barely missed the ball.”

With the tie, the Raiders finished 8-4-2 and won the AFC West title. The Chiefs went 7-5-2 and followed the playoffs on whatever they had in those days.

It is nice to note that the two organizations seem to have coexisted admirably off the field. The Raiders, who are not shy about complaining, say nice things about the Chiefs.

“We were close to Hank,” LoCasale said. “The Chiefs still have Al (Davis) go back for their 101 Club’s banquet in February.

“It was like our games with Pittsburgh became later on, two giants going into the ring and slugging it out. I remember Joe Greene coming into our locker room afterward, and the Gene Upshaws and Art Shells going into theirs and hugging each other. I remember Joe Greene saying, ‘This is the way the game should be played, man to man.’ ”

Tonight’s it’s a re-tooled giant against an aspiring contender. Someone is going home sore. Maybe everyone.

Raider Notes Kickoff tonight is at 5 p.m., PDT. . . . As Steve Garvey would say, this is a classic confrontation between a passing team and a pass defending team. The Chiefs threw 59% of the time last year. Bill Kenney is the fifth quarterback ever to pass for 4,000 yards in a season. Wide receiver Carlos Carson has a career average of 18 yards a catch and has been over 1,000 yards the last two seasons. . . . Raiders have the two stellar cornerbacks, Mike Haynes and Lester Hayes, and have led the NFL in sacks over the last three seasons. They lead again, their 10 against the New York Jets representing the third-highest one-game total in NFL history. . . . Chiefs have a strong young rush of their own, led by the three-man front of Art Still, who had 14 1/2 sacks last season; Mike Bell, 12 1/2, and nose tackle Bill Maas, 4 1/2. The Raiders’ Al LoCasale called them “the bluest chip in football.” Still and Bell were the second picks overall in their respective drafts, and Maas was the fifth in his. . . . The Raiders gave up 57 sacks last season, worked on it in the exhibition season, but still gave up four to the Jets. . . . There is the possibility of an expanded role for recently acquired wide receiver Jim Smith. Smith looked so good in practice that the Raiders activated him two weeks before they had to, putting nose tackle Mitch Willis on injured reserve. Rookie Jessie Hester is still struggling. He caught one pass last week, but dropped one.