BillBoard

Here's a story I got from Paul Maguire some years back that I neglected to include in the obituary on Lou Saban that we ran when Saban died recently. It's Maguire's recollection of Saban's pregame speech before the 1964 AFL Championship Game between the Chargers and the Bills in Buffalo. Those who recall the configuration of the tunnel at War Memorial Stadium, with both teams coming out of separate locker rooms that spilled out into the tunnel, can envision the scene. Said Maguire:

"In the championship game, the officals came up and the Chargers were in the tunnel. The official says you’ve got five minutes. We’re waiting for Lou, and Lou never came. So Lou finally runs down the ramp and jumps on the middle of this table and says, 'Everything that’s been said has been said.' We all knew he had no idea what he was talking about. And he said, 'So the only thing I can tell you guys now is heads down and toes up. Cookie (Gilchrist) opened the door and turned around and said, 'What in the hell does that mean?' And Saban said, 'How the hell do I know? I'm as nervous as you are.' And we started laughing. So we went down the steps into the tunnel, and we were lined up along the Chargers. And I had just played four years with these guys (the Chargers), and the whole team was laughing their (butts) off. John Hadl looked at me and said, 'Gonna be that easy?' And I said, 'I can’t explain it to you. You’d never understand.' Lou didn’t have any idea what he was saying, but he loosened up the team and we went out and beat the hell out of them."

"To this day I could not tell you how good he was with the Xs and the Os," said Hall of Fame guard BIlly Shaw. "But he was a marvelous leader in that he could motivate. He studied people’s personalities and he would know wehter to pat you in the back or want to slap you in the face."

---Mark Gaughan