UC Davis radio man Doug Kelly recalls Chiefs days and USFL with Donald Trump
Doug Kelly wears a lot of red these days.
As in, blatantly bright Kansas City Chiefs red, bless those of 49ers faith who sneer or huff when he walks by.
Kelly is a football man to the core, a history buff closing in on his 25th year as the radio color voice alongside Scott Marsh on Sports1140 KHTK. A one-time public relations guru in the NFL, he has all but five of the 54 Super Bowl game programs, receiving the one for Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Chiefs in the mail this week.
Kelly grew up a Chiefs fan. As a teenager, he once admired the neatly arranged closet of Chiefs coach Hank Stram, just over 50 years ago. The Strams lived down the street from the Kelly family in Kansas City. Kelly also lived — and nearly died a number of internal deaths — as the assistant public relations director for the Chiefs from 1974-82. No one talked about the Super Bowl then, or even the playoffs. Two-game winning streaks were cherished.
“Loved the time there, the people, but we didn’t win a lot of games,” Kelly said this week over lunch, his bright-red Chiefs hat lighting up the place. “We won 31-percent of our games. That’s all.”
Kansas City muddled through a lot of misery with few storylines for Kelly and the staff to offer up. The Chiefs went 5-9 in each of Kelly’s first three seasons, then produced campaigns of 2-12, 4-12, 7-9, 8-8 and 9-7. It was Kelly who had to play the role of Grim Reaper and inform kicker Jan Stenerud the club released him in 1979. Stenerud would land in the Hall of Fame.
Kelly’s final game with the Chiefs was an odd one, a scene of hooliganism. It was the last game in creaky old Metropolitan Stadium in frigid Minnesota. Kansas City won 10-6, but the real action was after the game.
“People were taking everything they could for souvenirs, nailed down or not,” Kelly said. “I saw three guys carrying out a phone booth and I saw a father taking out the bolts to take out his stadium seat. One guy died. Climbed on top of the scoreboard and fell off. A bad scene.”
Hank Stram, Marv Levy and the USFL
Kelly worked one season with the excitable and wildly quotable Stram, who coached the Chiefs into the first Super Bowl following the 1966 season and into their last Super Bowl, 50 years ago. Imagine Stram in today’s NFL. He’d have no peers. He was the first coach to be mic’d up, doing so for Super Bowl IV during a rout over heavily favored Minnesota.
A classic line was Stram saying, “Just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys!”
Stram was paid a tidy $500 by NFL Films to carry a wire, Kelly said with a laugh, rubbing his fingers to signify cash.
“If there had been Twitter when Hank was coaching, it would’ve been awesome,” Kelly said. “He had a lot to say. He was not boring.”
Kelly worked closely in Kansas City with coach Marv Levy, whose best years were in the 1990s with the Buffalo Bills, including four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl. When Kelly left Kansas City to become the director of communications for the new United States Football League, he was moved by who attended his farewell: Chiefs Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson and Kansas City running back Joe Delaney, who might have been a Hall of Famer if not for a tragic twist of fate.
Two years after earning AFC Rookie of the Year honors at running back, Delaney in the summer of 1983 drowned after rushing into a Louisiana pond to rescue three children who had fallen in. Delaney did not know how to swim, but his selfless act defined him. He was 24. Delaney was awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal from President Ronald Reagan. No Chiefs player has won Delaney’s No. 37 since.
“Devastating,” said Kelly, who tears up even now at the mention of DeLaney. “One of the best human beings I’ve ever known.”
Who’s this guy, Donald Trump?
Early in his USFL stint in 1982, Kelly was summoned into the office of USFL Commissioner Chet Simmons. He was handed a 3x5 index card with a name on it, tasked to learn “everything you know about this guy.” This mysterious figure wanted to buy into the fledgling league.
Donald J. Trump.
“Not a lot of people knew who Trump was then, so I went to the New York public library and did some digging,” said Kelly, whose many hats include being director of communications for the Football Bowl Association and also works with Battlefields2Ballfields, a national program designed to get veterans — men and women — into careers as sports officials..
“I spent the whole day at that library,” Kelly continued. “I came back with a stack of print-out papers and told Chet that (Trump) was well-known in New York.”
Trump became the owner of the New Jersey Generals. Before his introductory news conference, Kelly approached Trump, suggesting that the waterfall at Trump Tower would be too loud for the cameras to hear what he had to say.
“Trump told me he didn’t want to lose the aura of Trump Tower,” Kelly said. “Told him to shut it off for 20 minutes so he could do the press conference. He spoke for 45.”
Trump has widely targeted as the man who buckled the USFL down, convincing fellow owners to take on the NFL as a fall league and not a spring league. The USFL died.
“He did bring down the USFL,” Kelly said, frowning. “People ask me what Trump was like. Well, he’s exactly the same as he was decades ago. No difference.”
Kelly turned back to a more enjoyable topic: His beloved Chiefs.
“I hope they win Sunday,” he said. “Fifty years is a long time.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "UC Davis radio man Doug Kelly recalls Chiefs days and USFL with Donald Trump."