Fifty years ago this month, an exotic curiosity named Jan Stenerud signed a lease at the El Camino Real apartments on The Plaza.
Soon, the Norwegian who came here by way of a skiing scholarship at Montana State prepared for his first Chiefs camp by kicking with coach Hank Stram as his personal holder at the team’s facility in Swope Park.
If that scene sounds absurd by today’s standards — imagine Andy Reid doing the same for Cairo Santos — this was about more than Stram’s endless innovations and eccentricities.
“Sure it helped. But it was me it helped, not Jan,” Stram told Sports Illustrated in 1968 as he rummaged through files for charts of those kicks.