The origins of the Kansas City Chiefs

Oddly enough, the Kansas City Chiefs’ beginnings begin in the city of Chicago.

Around 1958, Lamar Hunt, the son of a Texas billionaire oilman, was obsessed with professional sports. He was wealthy, young, and a sports enthusiast. Initially, he intended to invest in the third league of professional baseball, but when that did not take off, he focused on his first love, professional soccer.

He applied to an NFL expansion team that would place him in his hometown of Dallas, Texas. There were only 12 clubs at the time, so having another club would make the league unbalanced. Additionally, all of the league’s owners were older, established men who wanted the 26-year-old Silverspooner to join the team with fresh ideas.

Mr. Hunt was denied a franchise agreement and was told that the idea of ​​expansion was far off.

In 1959, it was announced that the Chicago Cardinals, owned by Violet Bidwell Wolfner, the first woman to own a professional football franchise, and her new husband, Walter Wolfner, might be put up for sale. Hunt bought the Cardinals, moved to Dallas, and was probably going to be drafted by the Dallas Cardinals.

After several rounds of negotiation, Wolfner’s agreed to sell 20% to Hunt. No, the Cardinals won’t move to Dallas.

During negotiations, Wolfner bragged to Hunt about the several rich men the NFL had sent to buy the Cardinals. After traveling to Miami for a final attempt to buy the Cardinals, Hunt boarded an American Airlines plane and began thinking about the three like-minded men Wolfner had mentioned. “Why not start a new professional soccer league?” he thought, and then the lights went out. During the flight, he took note of the cost of the equipment, the revenue from ticket sales, and a rough schedule he could propose to the future owner.

Hunt signed players from Denver, Minneapolis, and Houston to the new association, which he called the American Football League (AFL), to begin play in 1960. He searched for potential owners in Los Angeles and New York, then in Buffalo and Boston. .

Minneapolis’ ownership ended up switching to the NFL, eventually replacing them with Oakland. Hunt’s team will be known as the Dallas Texans.

Almost immediately, the NFL announced that it was actually expanding with four new clubs. One in 1960, another in 1961, and two by 1962. From 1946 to 1949, the league endured a war with another NFL rival league called the Oars. -American Football Conference. After that, player salaries skyrocketed and almost all NFL and AAFC clubs were in the red every season.

The last thing the NFL wanted this time around was a new eight-team league that would drive up costs.

And in fact, the first two NFL expansion teams were going to be located in Houston and Dallas. The Dallas franchise was quickly established with no owners, no equipment, no players, coaches, scouts, or administrative staff, and they were called the “Stairs.” After an owner was found, he changed the name to “Rangers”, but the team name was later changed to “Cowboys”. A franchise in Houston never materialized.

At the time, Dallas’ population was just over 600,000. Cotton Bowl Stadium was considered major league baseball because it was built for the SMU Mustangs in 1930 and expanded from 45,000 to 75,000 in 1949. For three years, the Cowboys and Texans lived together in both the stadium and the city. The area could barely afford to support one soccer team, much less three.

From 1960 to 1962, the Texans were one of the AFL’s best teams, posting far better attendance than the Cowboys. During this period, the Texans had a record of 25-17-0 and the Cowboys had a record of 9-28-3.

The Texans’ helmets were all red with a white Texas logo and a small yellow star to indicate where Dallas was in the state. At the time, every professional soccer team had a cartoon. Their logo was a sniper running with a football with the state of Texas in the background.

They were billed as the “ZING team of football.” For children, Mr. Hunt devised the “Texans His Huddle Club,” which gave each child admission and his T-shirt for $1.

In the 1962 AFL Championship Game, the Texans went 11-2-0, defeating the Houston Oilers 20-17. Dallas, led by manager Hank Stram, became the league champion.

new beginning

Despite his success in the league, Hunt was tired of the back-and-forth competition in Dallas. Moreover, despite his extraordinary record and subsequent championships, he lost money again. He decided to relocate, but wanted a new metropolitan area closer to Dallas where he could keep his home.

His first stop was New Orleans, a soccer-rich city. Tulane Stadium was the home of Sugar’s Bowl, which can seat over 80,000 people. But there was a problem.

The stadium remains strictly segregated and Mr Hunt wanted nothing to do with racism or preventing people from buying tickets. Hunt was a strong advocate of racial equality and even hired Lloyd Wells, pro football’s first black full-time scout.

His next scheduled destination was Atlanta, during which time he received a phone call from Kansas City Mayor H. Roe Bartle.

Kansas City recently acquired the Athletics Major League Club to play in Municipal Stadium, a space that can be renovated for football. Since there was already a professional baseball team in the city, Mr. Hunt thought this would make the city “major league,” and the stadium did not refuse to sell tickets or segregated seating to black patrons.

When Hunt visited, Bartle rolled out the red carpet, promising 25,000 advance season tickets and free office space and practice facilities. On February 8, 1963, Hunt announced his move to Kansas City after the Cowboys agreed to purchase the Texans’ practice facility.

It took Hunt a lot of time to leave his hometown, especially after outselling and outperforming the Cowboys. Initially, he called his new team the “Kansas City Texans” after his hometown. The Texans’ new helmets were the same all-red color with a white Missouri logo and a small yellow star to indicate Kansas City’s location in the state. However, a month later, GM Jack Steadman convinced Hunt to call it quits.

Hunt then chose “Chief” to honor Bartle for what he had done for him. Everyone called Bartle “Chief.”

Their logo was nearly identical to the Texans’ running Sharpshooter, but featured a Native American running with a football against the backdrop of Missouri. Arrowhead Stadium was then built to continue the Native American motif. But in reality, this team was named after a man, not a tribe.

The “KC” logo adorning the Chiefs’ helmets was copied from the San Francisco 49ers’ logo, which Hunt thought was classy. The first letter is placed on top of the letter below in a serifed letter style, and each letter is outlined in black. Hunt pulled out an arrowhead instead of an oval. Both have a thick black outline around their periphery.

The Chiefs also invented colored masks. Stram loved to play defense. The strategy at the time was for offensive linemen to cling to the bars of defenders’ face masks and hold them as a tactic to manipulate players.

At the time, there were only two types of face masks. Either a brown steel cage manufactured by Schutt or a gray double-grid plastic cage provided by Liddell. These were standard equipment for all professional soccer teams.

Complaints to referees were largely ignored, so to solve the holding problem, Stram had equipment manager Wayne Rudy paint all of his gray face masks white in 1974 and used them to grab defenders during games. The offensive lineman’s fingers were clearly visible to the referee. This way.

The Chiefs won the Pro Football Championship five times, the AFL twice and the Super Bowl three times. They also have a chance to win the franchise’s fourth Lombardi Trophy when they play against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58 in Las Vegas.