No. 10: Dinkel's Super Bowl memory still sketchy

Super Bowl XVI was the biggest game of Tom Dinkel's football career.

He just wishes he could remember more about it.

Dinkel, No. 10 on Shawnee County's Top 100 Athletes, was a standout at Shawnee Heights and Kansas before the 6-foot-3, 240-pound linebacker was selected in the fifth round of the 1978 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals.

Dinkel played for the Bengals from 1978 through 1985, with the unquestioned highlight the Bengals' 1981 season, which ended with a Super Bowl berth on Jan. 24, 1982, against Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers in Pontiac, Mich.

“I remember walking out of the tunnel with Blair Bush, our offensive center, and we were just like, ‘Wow, Super Bowl,’ ” Dinkel recalled. "I said, ‘Blair, did you ever think we'd be here?' He's, ‘No way.’ ”

Dinkel, a Bengals captain, also remembers a chance pregame meeting with the legendary Diana Ross.

“I remember Diana Ross singing the national anthem and bumping into her when I was going out for the coin flip,” he said. “She even said, ‘Excuse me.’ That's Motown's finest right there.”

Dinkel's memories of most everything else that transpired in the Bengals' 26-21 loss are a little sketchy.

“Right at the start of the second quarter I was playing on one of our special defenses in a passing situation and I was tackling a fullback by the name of Earl Cooper,” said Dinkel, now 55. “It wasn't even a hard hit, it was one of those glances off the side of the helmet with his thigh, and it knocked me cold for a couple of commercial breaks. In today's world they would have strapped my head to a wooden board and taken me off in an ambulance. But they used a bunch of smelling salts and I finally came to.

“I was on the sidelines and walked off with the team at halftime and didn't know where I was at, had total loss of memory. I went into the locker room and all of a sudden it was like a light came on. In those days I was able to come back to play special teams and some of the special defenses in the second half.”

Still, Dinkel has a hard time remembering any details of that appearance.

“I still really don't remember the game,” he said. “I just talked to a guy who's got a copy of the (tape) and I have yet to really watch the game in full since I played in it. I said, ‘Please get it to me because I'd like to see the game.’ ”

Dinkel, who now sells sponsorships for Fox Sports Ohio, has fond memories of his tenure with the Bengals, particularly the ’81 season under Forrest Gregg.

“It all clicked,” Dinkel said. "We had a good mix of veteran players and a good mix of young players. We had great leadership, guys like (quarterback) Ken Anderson, who was just a phenomenal athlete. Defensively we had a tremendous linebacker by the name of Jim LeClair.

“Anthony Munoz, I think, was in his second year at that time and he went on to be probably one of the greatest offensive tackles ever. We drafted some skinny little wide receiver by the name of Cris Collingsworth, who we all laughed at when he first came here, but went on to have a very good career.”

Two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin was also on that Bengals team, as was another former Jayhawk, wide receiver David Verser.

Dinkel, a 1974 Shawnee Heights graduate, was honored just to have a chance to be in that situation.

"It's so funny because I don't think there was a day that I went to work where I didn't pinch myself saying, ‘Hey, great day to be going to work and playing pro football,’ ” he said. “That was the attitude I had and I never took the sport for granted.

“I felt I could walk into the locker room any day and get cut because I had seen it happen to so many other good teammates, players that I had all the respect in the world for for their ability. I took it one day at a time and I didn't buy my first house until basically after I was done playing football. When I was with Cincinnati I rented the whole time.”

Dinkel, a member of the Topeka Shawnee County Sports Council Hall of Fame, remained in the Cincinnati area once his playing days were over, but he still gets back to Topeka whenever he can.

Most of Dinkel's family still lives in Topeka and his son, Alex, attends Washburn.

“I couldn't say enough about going to Shawnee Heights,” said Dinkel, part of a state runner-up basketball team at Heights. "A lot of great memories of Topeka. It's a great little city. You look around and between my dad and my brother they built about every street in Topeka with Dinkel Construction.

“I worked on a lot of those jobs. There's a lot of good people in Kansas and a lot of good people around the Midwest. That's what's always great about going back home.”

Rick Peterson can be reached

at (785) 295-1129

or rick.peterson@cjonline.com.