Gordon: Former Raiders remember more competitive Pro Bowls

He was the best running back in the NFL. An unparalleled combination of size, speed, strength and charisma. And the man former Raiders great Phil Villapiano was most eager to meet at the 1974 Pro Bowl in Kansas City.

Before his well-publicized murder trial and subsequent fall from grace, “OJ Simpson was my guy,” said Villapiano, a four-time Pro Bowl linebacker and Super Bowl XI champion. “Every player there, they were the best of the best. But OJ was the best of the best of the best. He took control of that team. He was automatically the captain. He was automatically the nicest guy out there.

“He’s the one.” The only. The Juice.

For more than 70 years, the Pro Bowl has been a congregation of the NFL’s best players. This year, it’s in Las Vegas.

They’ll socialize. They’ll practice. They’ll compete.

Well, not really.

But they used to compete, anyway, when Villapiano and his contemporaries played in the NFL’s annual All-Star game.

“I played full 100 percent,” Villiapiano said. “Most of the time, the game would start out maybe not full-go. Kind of a professional courtesy. But I played in four of them in a row and every single one of them ended up the same — you’re going 100 percent.”

Back in the day

Raiders owner Mark Davis said Monday that Las Vegas “could be a place to have the Pro Bowl every year, eventually.” But it used to tour through NFL cities, stopping in 1974 in Kansas City. Villapiano that week shared a seat on a bus ride with “Mean” Joe Greene, then the league’s most disruptive defensive lineman.

And a chief Raiders nemesis.

“We talked quite a bit, and I told him what a nasty, nasty player he was,” Villapiano said with a chuckle, “and he really enjoyed that.”

Naturally, Greene returned the compliment.

Villapiano was nasty in his own right. So much so that he and his Raider teammates were booed before the game by unforgiving fans who viewed them not as Pro Bowlers representing the AFC — but rivals to their beloved Chiefs.

“It’s an AFC stadium, so the fans there should be rooting for the AFC,” Villapiano said. “Everybody was cheering for the AFC until they hit the Raiders. … They wouldn’t give us a break. That was kind of fun. I remember standing next to Marv Hubbard and he goes, ‘They just hate us.’”

Villapiano also remembered playing against former San Francisco 49ers tight end Ted Kwalick, who’d “split my face open during the preseason.” The Pro Bowl afforded Villapiano the opportunity “to get to blast him.”

“I couldn’t wait to unload on that guy,” said the 72-year-old Villapiano, who retired after the 1983 season.

Learning on the job

Former Raiders tight end Raymond Chester was so good during his rookie season of 1970 that he earned a Pro Bowl invitation, solidifying his standing among the NFL’s elite.

But he didn’t want to compete with the other greats so much as he wanted to learn from them.

“It gave me a chance, more than anything else, to see guys you’ve played against,” said Chester, who concluded his NFL career in 1981. “But at the Pro Bowl, you got the chance to meet them up close and personal. You got the chance to really assess some aspects of your game. The Pro Bowl was a real honor, first of all. But a real opportunity to just kind of measure yourself up. Not just statistically, but physically.”

That said, Chester, 73, never sought to physically dominate his opponents or prove anything during the game itself — knowing it’s still an exhibition at the end of the day.

“I don’t think any of the game was played 100 percent in terms of physicality,” Chester said.

Shhh. Don’t tell Villapiano.

“I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of guys going 110 percent when everybody else was going 60, 70 percent,” Chester added. “Because you would have made a name for yourself, had you done that. But you wouldn’t have liked the name you made for yourself. It would be like a four-letter word. Three-letter word.”

Chester still admires a photo taken of him and the other seven Raiders players who were selected to the 1970 Pro Bowl: Jim Otto, Willie Brown, Fred Biletnikoff, Hewritt Dixon, Daryle Lamonica, Harry Schuh and Warren Wells.

It still brings back memories, Chester said. “Just of how great they were individually. And how great we were as a team.”

Every dollar matters

Los Angeles Rams great turned Las Vegas resident Tom Mack says it was “quite a thrill” to earn a Pro Bowl nod, especially in 1967 as a second-year offensive lineman.

Even more thrilling? The $500 bonus the winning team would receive.

“You get over the honor part, you’ve got to play the game and you want to win the game,” said Mack, 78. “It’s a lot different today than it probably was back then.”

But Mack remembered that the winners would receive an additional $1,500 and the losers $1,000. And that $500 definitely mattered. Mack surmised that players today may agree to split their bonuses, so long as they don’t risk injury during what’s become a relatively inconsequential spectacle.

“You couldn’t do that back then. You played to win the game. It didn’t matter what game it was,” said Mack, an 11-time Pro Bowler. “It was a fairly intense game, and the stupid bragging rights were probably more important than the $500 one way or the other.”

Contact Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.