Some Chargers Were in Drug ‘Stupor’ for 1982 Playoff, Klein Tells Magazine

Some members of the Chargers were in a drug-induced “stupor” when the team lost to the Cincinnati Bengals in the so-called Ice Bowl playoff game of 1982, former Charger owner Gene Klein says in a magazine interview.

In the story in this week’s Sports Illustrated, Klein is quoted as saying that some of his players “had a lot of cocaine in them” when the Bengals beat the Chargers, 27-7, in the Jan. 10, 1982, AFC championship game. The game was played in Cincinnati on a day when the temperature was 9 degrees below zero with a wind-chill factor of 59 below.

“That team was in a stupor that day,” Klein told the magazine, “and I thought it was the cold. A lot of them had a lot of cocaine in them, and here was our shot to get to the Super Bowl.”

Klein said a federal investigator told him several months later that one of the Charger players had purchased a kilogram of cocaine in Florida, where the Chargers had played Miami the week before the Cincinnati game.

The Chargers defeated Miami, 41-38, in overtime. The player reportedly smuggled the cocaine back to San Diego aboard the team’s charter flight and then shared it with some teammates in the days before the Cincinnati game.

None of the players that Klein suspected of drug involvement were identified by the former owner, who sold the Chargers to Alex Spanos in 1984. Also, no criminal charges ever arose from the case.

Klein has said he left football because of his disenchantment with the sports labor problems and the inability to work out an agreement allowing random mandatory drug testing of players. Klein has since become actively involved in thoroughbred horse racing.

Players and a coach who were with San Diego in 1981-82 said they had no knowledge of such a drug transaction.

“I haven’t read what Mr. Klein said, but it seems unfair,” former offensive lineman Ed White told the Tribune of San Diego. White retired after the 1986 season.

“This team played in Miami what I consider the finest game I’ve been associated with in my career, and then we had to go and play in conditions that were worse than any I experienced in my nine years in Minnesota, and we played outdoors there,” White said.

Tight end Kellen Winslow, who remains with the club and caught 13 passes in the overtime victory over Miami, said he remembers the homeward flight from Florida as uneventful.

“It’s news to me,” he said. “All I remember about the flight home was taking a DC-10 United charter, and I sat up in coach class . . . I don’t know anything about this.”

Said Ernie Zampese, San Diego’s former offensive coordinator who is now with the Los Angeles Rams: “I never heard anything about it. They (the Bengals) kicked our butts in the heat of San Diego earlier that year (20-17), and they kicked them in the cold.”

Former special teams standout Hank Bauer blamed the Chargers’ poor performance against Cincinnati on the weather conditions.

“How can you tell if it’s true?” asked Bauer of Klein’s allegations. “It was 59 below and people were just trying to survive.”