On January 11, 1970, former Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Bob Stein made history. At age 21, not only was he the youngest player to win the Super Bowl, he was also the first Jewish football player to play for and win a Super Bowl. At the same time he was playing for the Chiefs, Stein, a former AZA aleph, was attending classes at the UMKC Law School. Later on he would become the first CEO and president of the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team. Two’s Sopher Micah Kramer, recently interviewed Stein about his life, career and legacy.
Micah Kramer: When did you start playing football?
Stein: 10 years old. That was about the earliest you could start. I lived in a first tier suburb of Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, which had had an interesting population. There was high population of Jews there because it was the first Minneapolis suburb that would allow homes to be sold to Jews, which was going back to the late 40s and early 50s. So when I was in high school, about 20% of St. Louis Park High School was Jewish, which was very unusual in Minnesota,
What were you like in high school? Were you involved in other activities outside of football or was it just train, train, train?
Stein: I mean, first of all, back then it was kind of like just what kids did. You know, you went outside and played till it got dark and you came home to eat and you played whatever sport was in season. So I played football in the fall and tried to play basketball in the winter and in spring I played baseball until I was a senior in high school when I realized I wasn’t accomplishing much by being a wild pitcher. So I went off for track. I wished I’d had done it earlier, because my first year of track I was a state discus champion in Minnesota.
Do you have like a favorite memory from either your career generally or more specifically like Super Bowl IV?
Stein: Yeah, well playing in the Super Bowl was a big deal – even then. It was nothing like it is now as far as publicity or viewers or anything like that. But I do remember my rookie year and I was 21 years old – so things were happening going by pretty fast – but I remember the first day of training camp standing near some of the older veterans before practice and hearing them talk about how horrible it was to get into the first Super Bowl and lose to Green Bay, and how it felt like you’re letting everybody down, your relatives, your friends, your teammates, and that they would much rather never get back to the Super Bowl and get back and lose it. It was something that stuck with me, partly because over the years I’ve seen so many great teams in every sport who get to the championship game, but then for whatever reason they lose it, but then they came back with substantially the same team in the next year or two years and win it. And I think a lot of that is just the mental framework of thinking, “You know, our goal as a group is we want to get to the championship versus get to the championship and win.”
Born and raised in Minnesota, I imagine the Vikings were probably your favorite team growing up. Was it extra special playing Minnesota in Super Bowl IV?
Stein: Well, yeah, it was. They were the local guys and it’s hard to imagine now, but they came to Minnesota as an expansion in 1961 when I started playing at the University of Minnesota. The University of Minnesota football was significantly more high profile than the Vikings were at that time. So then they got Bud Grant as a coach, and by ‘69, the year after I graduated, they were a bigger deal. And of course, it was the hometown team and everybody thought that they were automatically going to beat us (the Chiefs)…
First, the, the Vikings had an excellent team. They were ranked No. 1 in offense and defense in the NFL, which is quite unusual. And they had a lot of great players. But the other thing was people still thought there was a significant difference in talent quality between the American Football League and the NFL. … When we played for the AFL Championship, it was against Oakland in Oakland. We were the first Wild Card team, so to speak, in the Super Bowl. We had lost to Oakland the year before in the playoffs, 41 to 6, which was a real ass kicking. And during the season, they had beaten us in Oakland and they had beaten us in Kansas City. So they were significant favorites in that game played in Oakland. It was a really good physical game. We won 17 to 7, but the fulfillment was sitting in our bus and seeing the Oakland Raider players come out of their locker room all carrying luggage. They were so sure they were going to beat us, they had plan to head right from the locker room to the airport to go to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.
That must have been an embarrassing walkout for that?
Stein: Yeah. Oh, you bet. That was a walk of shame.
What does it mean to you to be the first like Jewish football player to play with a Super Bowl? I mean, I don’t know any other good people that have played football at the NFL level, let alone won a Super Bowl.
Stein: Well, if you look into it, I think you’ll find a lot more Jewish players than you realize. I had a conversation one time with Ron Mix. He was a Jewish player, went to Southern Cal, was, was an All-Pro and eventual NFL Hall of Famer for the Chargers. And we were talking about that subject, how many Jewish guys were playing. And he said that at one time he was sitting in the locker room and he overheard two of the other offensive linemen starting along with him talking about the high holidays. And he hadn’t even known they were Jewish, and he had played together with them. So there’s a lot more guys than people know, because your name isn’t always an a easy giveaway. I guess it isn’t for me.
But it was a big honor and it was a big deal to be able to play football in the Super Bowl period ….Jewish or not Jewish. I always had that in mind that there weren’t a lot of Jewish players, and I wanted to try to equip myself well and be as tough as the next guy as much as I could, partly because of that.
Kramer: Did you face any antisemitism during your time in the NFL?
Stein: Not very much. I’ve been asked that before. There were a couple of guys who made comments, but it was definitely the exception rather than the rule. The thing that happened a lot was I played with guys who had never played and, and in many cases, even known any Jewish people. So they didn’t know what to expect, and a few of them gave me what they intended as compliments saying, “Geez, you’re like a regular guy.” “Well, yeah, I am a regular guy,” but wherever they had grown up and lived their life, they hadn’t experienced Jewish people.
Was playing in the NFL a big dream of yours?
It was fun to play in the NFL. It was never my goal when I started. I started college in pre-med and ended up taking the pre-med courses but not wanting to continue it. I got interested in political science, and that kind of led to law school. I never expected to play in the NFL frankly. Growing up, I was the first one in our family to go to college and growing up all my grandparents had been first-generation immigrants and education was a big priority in my family. So that’s what I was really thinking – what can I do after college? And law school was kind of logical to me, because you could use the law degree in any kind of business virtually or decide to just purely being a lawyer. I never did expect to go into sports law, partly because I thought that that would just feel like living in the past. When I got out, when I got out of the NFL the first year out, one of my teammates from the Vikings from the year I played with the Vikings, Ed White, walked out of camp and called me and wanted me to represent him and all of a sudden I was a sports lawyer. And then for about 10 years I was in the agent business because that was the quickest way to build my practice. And then my father-in-law and his partner later on were interested in trying to buy the Twins when they were up for sale. And I helped them with the political elements of that. During that time, the NBA announced that they were expanding.
What were some of the challenges you faced as the first president and CEO of the Minnesota Timberwolves?
Stein: Well, I was responsible for starting the team – the basketball team part, the finance and sales part, and then also building the arena. So the development challenge of the Target Center, the arena. Everything was brand new to me, and there’s no book on how to start a franchise. So what I did is I sought out as many people as I could within the NBA and talked to them about everything, really.
What’s your favorite part about your time in Kansas City? Just as a little side note, is there any places or establishments that you really remember?
Stein: Oh, yeah. I love Kansas City. In a lot of ways physically it’s much like Minneapolis than what I was used to. But two big parts of it. One was when I played the Chiefs, the Chiefs were a big deal, having won that Super Bowl and when I started. And that was very exciting and fun. The other part of it was that by going to law school, I had friends apart from football. And not that I wouldn’t have met other people, but some of my best friends still today were people I went through law school with. And so there’s a whole different sense of the community. You had two different groups that I got to know there very quickly.
And just to wrap things up, what advice do you have for today’s Jewish youth?
Stein: I think we’re entering a more challenging environment than it had in my lifetime, being Jewish and growing up in America or any place in the world based on what’s going on politically. And it is a time to remember who you are and take care of yourself, be aware of threats because I think they’re very significant. I guess we don’t want to get into your political diatribe, but I think it’s really important for everybody personally to have their own goals, that are realistic. I was asked at a speaking engagement about what t advice to give to kids who wanted to play in the NFL. And the first thing I thought of is, well you need to realize that statistically it’s about impossible. But you never know. And the important thing is to make significant goals for yourself but make them realistic. So your goal should be doing the best you can at the level you’re at rather than saying, “Well, I want to get into politics, so I’ll be the president of the United States,” – rather just, “I will do all I can at the local level and hopefully keep progressing and moving up.” And I think the same is true athletically. As far as unique to Jewish people, I’d say, things like AZA or anything else that ties you closely to the Jewish community is more important now than than for many, many decades.
Were you ever involved with, with the local AZA chapter in Minneapolis?
Stein: I was a member, but I wasn’t real active. My main activities were trying to get good grades and do the best I could in my sports. I was in a AZA for a while, but I can’t say it was a big part of my life.
What, advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
Stein: Well, try to maintain perspective, do the important things first. I think the lesson I always tried to impart for my kids – it is pretty straightforward. And it’s that you can rarely control a lot of things that happen to you, but you can always control how you react and respond to them. And I just think that’s so important in interpersonal relationships – in athletics or academics or business. Everybody’s on a roller coaster at times, and you just have to appreciate that you’re not a victim when something bad happens unless you let yourself be. And when something good happens, that’s when you control having some humility and not letting that turn a good thing into a bad thing because you take yourself too seriously. I’m really a big proponent of that. When my kids would say, “Oh, somebody’s making me feel bad,” my response is always, “No, nobody can make you feel anyway. You are the one that’s deciding whether to feel bad. They just did what they decided to do, but they don’t control your emotions. They don’t control how you feel about it. It’s up to you.” And that’s something that’s easy. I truly believe it’s an important and valuable lesson if you can live it, if you can practice it. I’ve found every time I’ve fallen back and thought about it and applied it, I’ve been happy that I did. There you go.
