NFL | Choking man saved by Chiefs' Tony Gonzalez

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A California man says Pro Bowl tight end Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs kept him from choking to death.

"Tony saved my life. There's no doubt," Ken Hunter, a shipping company manager, told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Huntington Beach, Calif.

"Tony came up behind me and gave me the Heimlich maneuver. Thank God he was there."

Gonzalez, a nine-time Pro Bowl selection who has set numerous NFL records, was having dinner with his wife, brother and 5-week-old daughter at Capone's restaurant in Huntington Beach Thursday. Hunter, 45, was dining with his girlfriend at the next table when suddenly a piece of meat stuck in his throat.

Gonzalez, sitting with his back to Hunter's table, looked around when he heard Hunter's companion yelling.

"She was screaming, 'He can't breathe, he can't breathe,' " Gonzalez said by phone from California, where he lives in the offseason. "The whole restaurant was quiet. Nobody was doing anything.

"Then I saw he was turning blue."

The 6-foot-5 Gonzalez, about a foot taller than Hunter, jumped out of his chair and came up behind the stricken man and began to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

"After just a few seconds, the piece of meat popped out," Hunter said. "I could breathe again. It's a good thing Tony is so tall because I had stood up — I think."

Gonzalez has never received any formal instruction in the Heimlich maneuver.

"I had seen it done, so I just did it," he said. "When you find yourself in those situations where you have to take action in a crucial situation, you just do it."

Notes

• Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann are reuniting on television on NBC's Sunday night NFL coverage, with the network hoping they recapture the chemistry that hooked viewers to ESPN's "SportsCenter" during the pair's run from 1992 to 1997.

"It was seamless. We never tried to understand why it worked," Patrick said on a conference call. "It just did."

Patrick joins the returning cast of NBC's studio show that includes Olbermann and host Bob Costas. Patrick will work Super Bowls that NBC broadcasts and will participate in the network's Olympic coverage starting with the Winter Games in 2010.

• James Brown, Phil Simms and Cris Collinsworth will host "Inside the NFL" when it moves to Showtime in the fall.

• Steelers chairman Dan Rooney and his son, team president Art Rooney II, want to buy Dan Rooney's brothers' shares in the team. The team says some of Dan Rooney's four brothers want to focus their business efforts elsewhere. Dan Rooney says he'll work to keep the team in the Rooney family and in Pittsburgh.

• Former Vikings DL Darrion Scott pleaded guilty to child endangerment for putting a plastic bag over the head of his 2-year-old son. Scott faces a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine.

• Former Chargers LB Steve Foley has agreed to settle his lawsuit for $5.5 million against a police officer who shot him while off-duty two years ago, ending his career.

Foley, 32, was shot in his leg, hip and hand in September 2006 after Aaron Mansker tailed his car home from downtown San Diego to suburban Poway, 15 miles north, on suspicion that the driver was drunk.