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THE BUSTERS NOTCH TWO HOLLYWOOD PARK WINS, BUT LOSE BOTH VICTORS

A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. For sports editor Jeff Lane and me, the two of us headed out I-10 toward Hollywood Park. – Obrey Brown

Jeff Lane, the sports editor and my one-time classmate at Chabot Junior College up in Hayward, and I were on a mission. Hollywood Park was our destination on July 7, 1979.

Comprising this two-man sports writing staff of a small-city California daily in Redlands, we had something on mind that Saturday. Since our junior college days at Chabot Community College in Hayward, a Bay Area city about 20 miles south of Oakland, we showed up for a local item for our newspaper.

We were as sports-minded as they come – baseball, golf, football, basketball, college and pro, NASCAR, not to mention horse racing, you name it. The main Bay Area tracks were Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows, not to mention a handful of summer fair tracks in Pleasanton, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, Fresno, and Sacramento.

Hollywood Park, though, was much bigger. So much greater thoroughbreds. So many top jockeys. Cash was beyond anyone. Looking for an angle to bring horse racing to that Redlands newspaper, we’d stumbled upon a thoroughbred that couldn’t defy such attention.

It was the only way you could sell such a story to local readership. Our newspaper owners, Frank and William Moore, plus its devoted editor, Richard West, had vested their faith in us to report on local events.

We were the second paper on people’s city doorsteps. The Los Angeles Times, San Bernardino Sun or the Riverside Press Enterprise were regional papers. They’d cover the professionals, major colleges and, of course, they had a horse racing page.

For Jeff and I to make this work in a Redlands newspaper, there had to be a local angle. And we’d found one: The horse was called Old Redlands. There was another horse in that same barn, a filly called Milenka.

LOSING MILENKA IN A CLAIMER

On this particular Saturday, both two of us were on a mission to watch Milenka, entered in the first race at Hollywood Park. Owned by a Redlands couple, Bill and Benita Marie Buster, we were curious to see this race’s outcome.

Milenka won in 1:10.2, ridden by apprentice jockey Patrick Valenzuela – who would go on to have a solid racing career – but just prior to the race, the Busters faced sad news.

Since it was a claiming race, rival owner Patrice Bozick claimed that filly. Milenka outraced Bozick’s own filly, Geeme, a few weeks earlier. The Busters, of Redlands, had just one runner remaining in their racing pedal.

“It took us eleven months or a year to breed her,” Bill Buster said, noting Milenka. “Then another year, a year to train her, and then two and a half months of racing. And in one afternoon, she’s gone.”

Such were the perils of claiming races. You’ve got to sell at the claiming price. In this case, the claim was $20,000. “We’re going to try to get her back,” said Buster.

After being posted at 4-to-1 in that day’s morning line, Milenka wound up as the 2-to-1 favorite, that filly beating Hoisty Jen, ridden by Canadian jockey Sandy Hawley.

Later that day, legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker booted home his 7,700th career win aboard Parsec in the Hollywood Juvenile. By comparison, Old Redlands notched just 10 victories.

A few hours earlier that day, once the Busters’ racing stable had been cut in half, only one thoroughbred, Old Redlands, remained in their barn.

“We’ve dreamed about having a stakes winner,” said Buster, noting that Milenka’s sire, Olympiad King, had been a stakes winner in the early 1960s.

Old Redlands, coming off a seventh-place finish in an allowance race at Hollywood Park, had been dropped into a claimer. This thoroughbred had no hopes of winding up in the Kentucky Derby or Hollywood Gold Cup. It won just once in his first 11 races. That win, coming in December 1979, came at Bay Meadows, a track located about 40 miles south of San Francisco, his final race as a two-year-old.

Buster, whose father was in construction and also a horseman, had owned Old Redlands upon its bred. That sire was Gummo, out of Judena. Gummo had been a decent sprinter.

A couple weeks before Milenka’s win, getting claimed at Hollywood Park, the Busters watched Old Redlands win a 1 1/16-mile allowance race.

Over a month later, he won a starter allowance race at Del Mar. That Hollywood Park win had lifted the spirits of Busters’ trainer, Clay Brinson, who called him a “useful horse.

“He’ll win a lot of races if we put him in the right ones.”

The Busters lost Milenka, lost Old Redlands, but held onto a yearling filly, named for Buster’s wife, Benita Marie. 

Milenka’s lifetime earnings at $59,600 reached off six wins and a place over 25 lifetime track races. She tucked five victories and a second place finish over an eight-race span between that July 21 victory and early January 1980.

Old Redlands rarely saw Southern California tracks again. Shipped up to the Bay Area, where he raced at Golden Gate Fields, just north of Oakland, and also at Bay Meadows down in San Mateo, then into the Pacific Northwest tracks Yakima Meadows and Longacres – both in Washington.

That horse would race 47 times over a six-year stretch – winning ten times with earnings just over $52,000. At one point, Old Redlands won four straight claiming races. By then, that horse had been claimed by another owner.

Old Redlands would have to serve as the honorable mention to Buster’s all-time stable of runners.

What a final race day. The Busters ran two horses – Milenka and Old Redlands – losing both the same day after winning claiming races.

Feature image credit: “hollywood park” by Deidre Woolard licensed under CC BY 2.0.

 

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“POP” LITTLED SMALL COLLEGE SUCCESS BEFORE ENTERING NBA

A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. For Pomona-Pitzer College to reach its road game against at its SCIAC rival, University of Redlands, their driver had to take that University Street exit off I-10 – Obrey Brown

There was something strangely familiar about how visiting Pomona-Pitzer College had put an end to a longtime men’s basketball domination by SCIAC rivals, especially a University of Redlands squad one night in January 1983.

For years, that small SCIAC basketball chase had been a two-team race confined between powerhouse Whittier College with Gary Smith’s coached Bulldogs usually a close second place.

Hmmm.

Around his seventh season coaching at Pomona-Pitzer, Popovich had his team headed to Minnesota as SCIAC champions, a qualifying spot in NCAA Division III playoffs. “It’s just neat to have somebody besides Whittier and Redlands win,” he said.

It took awhile.

Located consistently were two teams on different historic losing streaks — Caltech, from Pasadena, and Pomona-Pitzer College from nearby Claremont. It certainly didn’t seem like a launching pad for Popovich, en route to an NBA Hall of Fame coaching career.

Maybe it was Popovich using his bench that night in 1983. It was, believe it or not, reminiscent of UCLA a few years earlier. The Bruins, then under coach Larry Brown, had reached NCAA’s championship game against Louisville — later vacated over rules infractions.

Who’d have believed that Gregg Popovich would launch an NBA Hall of Fame coaching career having started at NCAA Division III, tiny Pomona-Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif.? Part of that trek went through the University of Redlands, Whittier, Claremont-Mudd, Occidental, La Verne, plus a few others. (photo by Wikipedia).

Popovich was an assistant to Hank Egan, then at Air Force, when he took Pomona-Pitzer’s job. That first Sagehens’ team was 2-22, losing to Caltech, which had set an NCAA record with 99 straight losses.

In that 1983 game at Redlands, Kurt Herbst was Pomona-Pitzer’s big banger against the Bulldogs. Redlands couldn’t penetrate his 6-foot-6 size, a wide body who had some help that night.

Backtracking a few years later, it was Pomona-Pitzer that famously lost to Caltech, ending that then-dubbed Engineers’ 99-game losing streak. I remember that story went on Associated Press’ wire. I published that four-paragraph brief in a local newspaper.

After all, two teams in Redlands’ conference seemed mildly interesting to our readership. That was our mandate, of course, to keep our pages local.

The Sagehens, for all intents and purposes, were no more talented than a college freshman team — maybe not even that good. So when I approached Popovich about those UCLA observations, he quickly summoned me inside the Sagehens’ locker room.

He seemed excited, perhaps impressed that I’d made that wise connection.

“Yes,“ he said, “that’s exactly the blueprint we use for this team I’ve got here. Larry Brown …“ his voice drifting off into a rash of interpretation, basketball lingo and connecting the dots between UCLA and Pomona-Pitzer’s rise to prominence.

Another coincidental connection! Popovich and Brown were connected. Those connections would later surface, re-surface and surface again.

Popovich spoke of his Air Force Academy background. He’d originally met Brown at the 1972 Olympic Games tryouts – those infamous Games where Team USA lost that controversial game to Soviet Union. A handful, or so, years later, Popovich was hired at Pomona-Pitzer to coach and, along with his wife, run a campus dormitory — “something like that,” he told me.

His connection with Brown, he said while Sagehen players were giddily showering after their upset win over Redlands, dated back to those 1972 Olympic tryouts.

If Brown coached it, Popovich tried it.

“That’s the relationship we have,“ said Popovich.

At Pomona-Pitzer, Popovich was using Brown’s system of defense, not to mention a substitution pattern that was eerily similar to that of UCLA’s 1979-80 squad. Strange as it might sound, in 1983, that system stood out.

Larry Brown, coaching here at Southern Methodist University, was the catalyst to an NBA coaching Hall of Fame career for Gregg Popovich, who lifted himself from tiny Pomona-Pitzer College to the San Antonio Spurs (photo by SMU).

It was a starting five, plus two key contributors off Pomona-Pitzer’s bench.

Popovich copped to it all, via Brown. There was no possible way anything he told me that night could crystallize into Pop’s eventual NBA Hall of Fame career.

I’d keep an eye on Popovich, who took one season off to take a sabbatical at Kansas, under Brown’s guidance. By 1986, Popovich had lifted the Sagehens to the school’s first SCIAC championship in nearly seven decades — 68 years to be exact.

Trust me on this: Some Redlands folks had a few “concerns“ on just how Popovich conducted recruiting basketball players on that remarkable Pomona-Pitzer campus in Claremont.

He’d turned it around on a campus that seemed oblivious to its athletics program. Pomona-Pitzer and Caltech, I’d written, cheated its student-athletes by not offering appropriate coaching and playing facilities. Yes, academics was a shrewd leadership at those campuses. Naturally, I received negative admonitions from a few corners of that SCIAC chamber.

I’d written about how some SCIAC campuses were cheating their student-athletes — taking their tuition monies and providing them with slighted athletic facilities, inauthentic coaching and only mild support. Popovich indicated some extra incentives were plugged into his program right around this time; saying, however, he didn’t know if it was related to that column I’d published.

These campuses were supposed to stand for academic strength. Sports, it was reasoned, was pay-for-play. Intramurals. Deemed not important enough. That was my take in that piece I’d written.

Frank Ellsworth, Pomona-Pitzer’s president at the time, told me in a telephone call, protesting my writing, “I think we need to have you on our campus to explain our educational mission.“ That mission, I guess, didn’t include a shiny basketball program that included a pristine gymnasium.

I’ve got to admit, though. Within years, that campus funded itself with enough money to include high-level renovations to its entire athletic facility. That came during Ellsworth’s watch, in fact.

Truth is, many of those coaches didn’t get enough support from their administrations. Maybe they didn’t hit the recruiting trail hard enough. Popovich, in fact, did that. I didn’t report that part of it. I should have. It’s how he landed Herbst.

Little by little, Pomona-Pitzer attracted better players.

A few years later, Mike Budenholzer, a red-headed, non-scoring threat at point guard — the future NBA head coach at Atlanta and NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks, later coaching Phoenix. Hey, he was born in Arizona, showing up at Pomona-Pitzer.

Speaking of that, the article attacked a few of those SCIAC campuses: Some Redlands athletic officials were mildly upset, perhaps thinking their SCIAC rivals suspected that they’d put me up for writing that piece.

Popovich, in his own way, bailed me out.

“I think you’re one of the reasons things improved here,“ he told me on that night in 1983. Solid as they were, Popovich’s Sagehens finished a hugely impressive 6-4 record in SCIAC play, nowhere close to a conference championship. By 1986, Pomona-Pitzer won its first league title in decades — eventually fourth at NCAA Regionals.

In another nice twist, Brown — having led Kansas to an NCAA Division I championship in 1988 with Danny Manning being the key player — invited Popovich’s Division III Pomona-Pitzer team for a non-conference game the following season.

I’ll never forget the score of a Pomona-Pitzer vs. Kansas matchup at the Phog Allen Field House. It was 94-38, Jayhawks. It was Popovich’s final season, incidentally, a 7-19 record, 4-6 against SCIAC rivals, his worst season in years. Future into coaching in the NBA?

Eventually, San Antonio hired Brown, who stands today as that lone coach to win NCAA and NBA (with Detroit) championships. That Spurs’ hiring led Brown to bring on Popovich as an assistant.

Popovich went on, spending a couple seasons at Golden State, but considered that Nevada-Las Vegas’ legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian, who coached Redlands High School over 1959-61 seasons, had been railroaded out of his job with the Runnin’ Rebels.

Tark turned up, briefly, as Spurs’ coach. It didn’t last more than a half season. The guy that hired and fired both Brown and Tarkanian was former owner Red McCombs. When McCombs sold out to Peter Holt, a few years later, Popovich returned — his SCIAC connections forever bridging a gap to his NBA career.

Eventually, Popovich appeared as Spurs’ general manager. Bob Hill was their coach. All of which led to Popovich taking over as Spurs’ coach in 1996. Just over one decade earlier, he’d coached at tiny Currier Gym in Redlands, his team playing the Bulldogs.

That Popovich-to-Kansas connection was a curious relationship. Popovich tried out for Team USA during its 1972 Olympic Trials, Brown cutting him early. There was an Air Force connection.

Dean, said Popovich, and Larry “were close back in when they both coached at Air Force. Popovich got cut again when Brown was coaching that old American Basketball Association squad, Denver. That Nuggets’ coach sliced Popovich from their roster. Playing at Air Force just wasn’t good enough for a future pro, it seemed.

Connections in Popovich’s coaching world added up quickly.

I keep giving myself an “atta-boy“ for that 1983 observation on a cold, rainy night in Redlands.

*****

Speaking of basketball: Current Phoenix Suns coach Mike Budenholzer, the former Milwaukee Bucks and Atlanta Hawks coach, who has been NBA Coach of the Year, spent some time locally during his playing career at Pomona-Pitzer College – playing against both the University of Redlands and Cal State San Bernardino. It’s when the Coyotes were NCAA Division III members back in the early 1990s.

Budenholzer, who led Milwaukee to an NBA title? That redhead, seen playing point guard during his playing days at Pomona-Pitzer, took a different path into the NBA.

It was mostly on Popovich’s shoulders Budenholzer served as a San Antonio assistant coach since beginning in 1996. Popovich? By 2020? That’s when Team USA returned with an Olympic Gold Medal. In Tokyo.

Kevin Durant and Draymond Green were each part of that team. So, too, was a Popovich Spur, Keldon Johnson. Steve Kerr, an assistant that season, wrapped up another gold medal as head coach in 2024.

While Popovich took his major lift into NBA activity, longtime Pomona-Pitzer assistant Charles Katsiaficas replaced him as Sagehens’ coach, lifting Pomona-Pitzer even further into that SCIAC.

Brown? Popovich? NBA? Try this: Popovich’s Spurs knocked off Brown’s Detroit Pistons, a seven-game duel, in 2005. It was a long way from those light-achieving seasons at Pomona-Pitzer.

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CYCLING HALL OF FAMER DAVIS PHINNEY HELPED LAUNCH REDLANDS CLASSIC

Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from the World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, NBA and a little NHL, aquatics and quite a bit more, the sparkling little city that sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10 has its share of sports connections. In 1985, it all started when racing’s top cyclists showed up to compete. – Obrey Brown

Davis Phinney took over a post-race media conference after winning that yellow jersey at 1986’s Redlands Bicycle Classic.

Phinney was a cycling rock star.

Davis_Phinney_1991_Thrift_Drug_Classic
Until Greg LeMond came along to win the Tour de France in 1988, there may have been no bigger USA cyclist than Davis Phinney, who won the Redlands Bicycle Classic while wearing Team 7-Eleven colors in 1986. (Photo by Wikipidia Commons.)

He’d just ridden a handful of days, pushed over the line by teammate Raul Alcala, runner-up and an Olympic bronze medalist for his native Mexico a couple years earlier. Phinney also held off future teammate Jeff Pierce in that Memorial Day weekend event.

Interviews centered around, naturally, of Phinney’s Tour de France success. Wasn’t that big news?

Wouldn’t Redlands like to connect with a guy that was in cycling’s greatest race?

After all, he would eventually become America’s first-ever cyclist to win a stage at that European-dominated event. Americans, at that point, had rarely competed in Europe.

Team 7-Eleven had raced across that Atlantic Ocean in this globe’s most important cycling race. Until Greg LeMond came along, Americans weren’t successful at any level in Europe.

In Redlands, Phinney was trying to be kind, but he knew why he was there. Phinney’s presence, along with his pre-eminent 7-Eleven cycling team, had been whisked to Redlands in order to help try and send this one-year-old event to a much higher level of popularity among everyone – cyclists, followers, media, you name it.

There were enough questions about European racing. Mostly mine. I was thinking globally, not locally. Finally, Phinney stepped in.

“Let’s stop talking about the Tour de France,” said Phinney, in a manner of taking over that post-event media conversation, “and talk about the Tour of Redlands.”

Tour of Redlands?

Fair enough. We’re on U.S. soil. On hand for those moments were handfuls of Redlands race organizers, no doubt delighted over their guest’s manners in trying to highlight this local race.

Team 7-Eleven’s presence might have been paramount in keeping Redlands afloat. A quarter century later, well into these 2000s, it’s still pertinent and relevant in cycling’s world.

In 1997, that team was inducted into U.S. Cycling’s Hall of Fame. That original 7-Eleven squad had sent two teams to Redlands for that 1986 Memorial Day weekend trek.

Team manager Jim Ochowicz, a Hall of Famer in his own right, had organized a remarkable collection of mainly U.S. riders.

Racing in Redlands that weekend was Tom Schuler and Bob Roll, Ron Kiefel and Doug Shapiro, plus Alex Stieda, Roy Knickman, Chris Carmichael, not to mention Phinney and Alcala.

Don’t forget Eric Heiden, that Olympic speed skater who captured multiple medals at the 1980 Lake Placid (N.Y.) winter games while also qualifying as an alternate for Team USA’s cycling squad later that summer.

It was a showcase for Redlands, its area fans, perhaps, not yet connected to cycling.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Eric Heiden, a 1980 U.S. Olympian in both speed skating and an alternate in the Summer Olympics as a cyclist, was part of Team 7-Eleven’s appearance at the 1986 Redlands Bicycle Classic. His presence brought extra prominence to the growing event. (Photo by Wikipedia Commons.)

And don’t overlook another Hall of Famer. Knickman, who rode for La Vie Claire and Toshiba-Look alongside the famous teams that included LeMond, Andy Hampsten and frenchman Bernard Hinault.

Team 7-Eleven’s presence in Redlands that 1986 race, I was told, came after plenty of negotiation – with top executive Jim Ochowicz, I believe – to help lift Redlands’ race to prominence. It was hard to bring his team west when most important competitions were in Europe.

Lying ahead was a huge historical level being highly raised at this Redlands event. Those 7-Eleven racers were followed by significant cyclists.

It’s story after story on that Redlands’ side of male cyclists notching a spot between 1985, its first race won by Thurlow Rogers, and its 2025 renewal.

Alexi Grewal, that 1984 Olympic road race gold medalist, showed up to win at Redlands in 1988.

LeMond, that first American ever to win a Tour de France? Did he show up? At Redlands? Not as a racer, but he came to lead a Redlands Bicycle Classic ride through a canyon a year, or so, following his retirement.

Lance Armstrong? Forget, at least for a moment, he had seven Tour de France triumphs wiped out over his behind-the-scenes usage of racing advantages. Having recovered from cancer in the mid-1990s, this U.S. Postal Service racer was seriously asked to race at Redlands during his return to cycling.

I was told by Craig Kundig, this race’s lengthy leader, “it was close.”

So close.

Armstrong’s U.S. Postal team, however, produced four straight champions at Redlands – Tomasz Brozyna, Dariusz Baranoski, Jonathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde. Those four racked up yellow jerseys from 1996 through 1999. Those last two guys rode as Armstrong lieutenants across that Atlantic.

Chris Horner captured his first Redlands yellow jersey in 2000 while racing for Team Mercury. A couple years later, Redlands’ 2002 champion was a Prime Alliance jersey-wearing star, Horner. In 2003 and 2003, Horner won wearing a Saturn uniform, then a Webcor, outfit.

Following that 2003 championship, Horner reflected that his age, 33, was a little beyond in seeking a career cycling overseas. Wrong! Over several following years, Horner racked up quite a few achievements over that ocean.

By 2011, Horner was Tour of California champion.

Spain’s Francisco Mancebo, a five-time top 10 finisher at the Tour de France, copped a pair of Redlands yellow jerseys.

Funny note on Horner, who also came in second place twice.

Phil Gaimon must have read my pre-race article’s 2012 interview on Horner, his strong hopes for notching victory No. 5 on yet another team. Gaimon, however, used that as motivation to race past everyone, beating three stage winner Patrick Bevin by just a couple seconds, Mancebo taking third, trailing by just a mere seven seconds.

Horner finished well behind.

Gaimon, who began racing on a “Team Redlands” squad known as Jelly Belly in 2009, repeated that Redlands triumph in 2015.

Almost each year, I approached Frankie Andreu just to see if something came up that wasn’t brought about in his book. Andreu, a former 7-Eleven cyclist, thought for a moment, shook his head, leaving me on my way. Why report something that was already brought out in his book?

Close men together, Armstrong and Andreu were quite well known over a few years.

Andreu, meanwhile, often came to Redlands  – media, team manager, a women’s coach, you name it. Here was a guy who discussed his spot in Armstrong’s hospital room during his 1996 cancer days, telling medical practitioners what he was using for cycling. It turned into Andreu’s book. Wow!

*****

Perhaps spurred on by his Redlands success, Phinney won two stages at the Tour de France, copping that 1985 third stage, then the 12th stage a year later.

Phinney, meanwhile, was accorded a high honor in Redlands when its organizers proclaimed “Legendary” status on him at a 2012 ceremony.

It was a Hall of Fame moment, A Redlands Connection and a huge chapter for that city’s classic event.

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TOM FLORES’ TIES TO THE OLD AFL DAYS

This is part of a series of mini-Redlands Connections. This is Part 3 of the series, Quick Visits. Magic Johnson and John Wooden showed up at the University of Redlands as part of a Convocation Series. This piece on Tom Flores was another one. Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, former NBA player John Block, legendary high school coach Willie West showed up. There are others. Cazzie Russell, for instance, came to Redlands with an NCAA Division III basketball team from Savannah, Ga. Russell, out of Michigan, was the NBA’s overall No. 1 draft pick by the New York Knicks in 1966. Today’s top athletic achiever, Flores, showed up in Redlands.

I still remember the day when a onetime Oakland Raiders’ legend showed up at the University of Redlands.

Before Tom Flores’ speaking appearance that day, I’d been given an hour to sit with him in an adjoining room inside that school’s chapel. I grew up in Raider Territory, a city called Hayward, some 20 minutes south of that Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. It allowed me a little background for this chat.

“I’ll bet you,” Flores told me, “that you can’t name the original eight AFL teams.”

“You guys started in Minnesota,” I told him.

Tom FLores (Silver & Black Pride)
Tom Flores, standing in front of his team in preparation for a game, led the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders to Super Bowl victories. In between those triumphs, Flores spoke at the University of Redlands (photo by Black & White pride).

Flores, who’d played collegiately at Fresno City College before landing at College of Pacific in Stockton, smiled. Nodded. I thought I had him. Name any other ones, he challenged me.

I almost got them all. Buffalo Bills, Boston Patriots, Los Angeles, not San Diego, Chargers, Houston Oilers, Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs. Oh, and the New York Jets.

“Not perfect,” he said.

Kansas City Chiefs? Uh-oh. They were in Dallas, dubbed Texans. Plus this: Those Jets were originally New York Titans. Flores clearly knew more than I did, no doubt.

One of Flores’ memories: “I remember we were being paged over that Minneapolis airport. They said, ‘Oklahoma Raiders.’ ”

Smiling broadly, Flores said, “They didn’t know if we were truck drivers or pro football players.”

American Football League teams weren’t exactly household names in those early 1960s. It was, Flores recalled, all-out war between the American Football League and National Football League.

After several minutes of taking on Flores’ trivia questions, he was introduced to a couple hundred audience members at that university.

“There’s something about those stained-glass windows,” said Flores, noting inner décor at that University of Redlands’ ancient chapel. “I had a few off-colored stories I was going to share with you, but I don’t think I’d better do that.”

Flores, part of football history, was part of that old AFL that merged with NFL teams in 1970. Flores, before he popped onto that audience, noted to me that he was part of Super Bowl champion as a quarterback, assistant coach before landing as Oakland’s head coach.

“No one else has done that,” Flores noted. “Proud? For me, it’s even greater than being proud.”

Flores had played as Raiders’ QB. Eventually, upon retirement, he wound up as assistant coach to legendary John Madden.

When Madden stepped aside as Raiders’ coach after 1978, Managing General Partner Al Davis tabbed Flores as Oakland’s head coach. What lied ahead were two Super Bowl championships, one in Oakland, another in Los Angeles.

Flores’ visit to Redlands came in between those two titles.

“I don’t mingle in any of that,” Flores told me, referring to any conflicts his boss, Davis, was having NFL teams and its commissioner, Pete Rozelle. “It’s hard enough to get a team ready to play.

“Teamsm coaches don’t need all those other distractions.”

He was totally in Davis’ corner.

“I think Al’s right. Six years ago, we had one of the best stadiums in football. Oakland Coliseum. Now, we’re one of the worst. Everybody has passed us by.”

That 27-10 Super Bowl win in New Orleans over Philadelphia in 1980 had some errant media coverage, he told that Redlands audience.

“We’re publicized as a team that has no discipline,” he said. “When we went to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, they publicized the fact that everyone on the team was out on Bourbon Street every night. Well, that wasn’t true at all.

“Only half the team was out.”

Audience members, laughing, had questions.

On football’s best player:

“There are several and I should go position by position. But I think Walter Payton is one of the most complete backs in the NFL. He’d sure fit in with the Raiders.”

On the upcoming NFL draft:

“We’re not limited to a position in the draft. But I think we’ll look for an offensive back or receivers. If there’s one out there we like, we’ll take a dominating defensive player.”

On Davis:

“As long as I win, we get along great.”