NEW ORLEANS —Legendary NFL Coach and Toupee All-Star Hank Stram died today. Stram was 82. His latest piece was only seven.
Stram took the Kansas City Chiefs to two Super Bowls and led the New Orleans Saints for two years in the mid-1970s. He was enshrined in Canton, Ohio in 2003 for his leadership on the football field. However, his nod from Hairston Crossing, Georgia was his greatest accomplishment.
 “Let's face it,” said Toupee Hall of Fame Board Member Murray Vandertotten, “Every year there are a handful of old football players and coaches that get recognized by the NFL Hall of Fame. But we only invite one man each year to join our ranks. I mean, I think it is a far rarer thing to have stood out as a toupee wearer than as a coach. Any man can go bald. But it takes a special man, an arrogant man to think he can hide it with a rug.”
Stram was certain he was fooling people for years. According to Saints' biographer Jeff Duncan, during his tenure as the their “head” coach, Stram kept a weak rookie on the squad because the young player had knocked off the toupee from the venerable coach's head. Thinking the rookie might blow Stram's cover if he were picked up by another team, Coach dropped him the last possible moment.
Other enshrinees into the legendary Hall are sportscaster Marv Albert, actors Burt Reynolds, William Shatner and Charlton Heston, and Missouri junior high school science teacher Mr. McKendry, who was voted in after his former students lodged an impassioned plea and letter-writing campaign. In the hand-written letters, most students cited Coach Stram as a role model for Mr. McKendry. Coach Stram, himself, it is rumored, made a call to the Hall on behalf of the teacher.
“He was proud of his worst-kept secret,” said Mr. McKendry of Stram. “For many of us in the Midwest in the 1960s and ‘70s, we didn't have many hairpiece role models. All the actors in Hollywood made it seem so expensive and inaccessible and fancy. But Coach Stram was the everyman. The everybaldman.”
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