Conrad Dobler
There are movie villains, and there are real life ones…
By the NFL’s measure former KCMO 810 AM sports talker Conrad Dobler was one of the best… as in, worst.
That’s because his football career was peppered with things like kicking Rams star Merlin Olsen in the head while he was down and spitting on Eagles linebacker Bill Bergey after he’d been injured.
Dobler was infamously known as one of, if not the dirtiest player in the NFL. He once told Sports Illustrated he’d “do anything I can get away with to protect my quarterback” including “holding, eye gouging, face-mask twisting, leg whipping, tripping, even biting.”
In other words, Dobler preferred physical attacks to verbal ones.
“Verbal abuse could take all day,” he said in 1977. “A faster and more efficient way to aggravate and intimidate people is to knock the stuffing out of them.”
“Dobler was one tough son-of-a-bitch and never took any shit from anyone,” says Kevin Kietzman. “He was tough on radio, too.”
In a world where nice guys finish last, Dobler was far from last.
Yet as far as Kansas City listeners go, he was “kinder and gentler.”
“He was nothing like that to me, he was very nice,” says Todd Leabo, director of sports operations at WHB radio. “I did the show with him when I was an intern at KCMO in 1990 while I was in college. Mike Murphy and Marshall Saber were still working there. I was 20 years old and wrote letters to all the local stations, and when I went in to KCMO I met Conrad.”
How mellow was he?
“I remember him f-bombing some things, and then he looked at me and said, “I’m sorry. Are you a religious man?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ And from there on out it was, ‘Eff this’ and ‘Eff that.’ ”
“I remember him more for what people said about him,” says former Entercom head Bob Zuroweste. “He was very outspoken, very controversial, but what I liked about him was – unless you were a sports nut, which I’m not – you could still listen to him because he was entertaining.”
“We took the Chiefs away from KCMO in 1989 and they called us, the hippie radio station that was going to ruin the Chiefs,” says former KCFX FM honcho Bill Newman. “Clearly he was a dirt bag, but I presented no threat to him.”
Somewhat oddly, there’s scant to no mention of Dobler’s time here.
Zuroweste’s take on who was KC’s top sports yakker of all time?
“Well, I had Soren Petro, Tim Grunhard, Bill Maas and Don Fortune,” he muses. “But I think Bill Grigsby was the best. And Kevin Kietzman was really good, but his downfall was he got so arrogant that he thought he could attack (Chiefs coach) Andy Reid. And that’s like going to church and attacking Jesus.”
Speaking of which, Newman hired two of KC most famous Chiefs play callers: a young KU intern named Kevin Harlan; plus his “biggest hiring mistake,” Mitch Holthus, who still serves as the team’s longest (and most boring) play-by-play caller.
Aw dammit, another great is gone. I had no idea Dobler had passed until I read this. Back in the 70’s I grew up in a small town north of Columbia..in 1975 I was a huge fan of the Cards because they were way better than the Chiefs, my dad even took me to a couple of games at the old Busch stadium. We beat the Giants after being down 0-14 at the half..and later we killed the Cowboys something like 35-17. My best friend Harold would call Dobler “Conrad Cobler” that always cracked me up.
As far as Dobler being dirty, those Cowboys defensemen were dirty and crazy as well, the NFC East was BRUTAL back then. Think 1979’s North Dallas Forty.
I’m sure Dobler and another unapologetic great, Chuck Bednarik, are now arguing about who hit the hardest. RIP fellas you played the game the way it was supposed to be played.
Why was Holtus Newman’s biggest hiring mistake?
I didn’t ask him to explain it…in no small part because I basically agreed with him
You?
Holtus could be good. But come across as a carnival barker
I always thought he was kind of mediocre to boring