The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football franchise that began play in 1960 as the Dallas Texans. The team was a charter member of the American Football League (AFL), and now play in the National Football League (NFL). The team is not related to the earlier Dallas Texans NFL team that played for only one season in 1952.
The Texans won the 1962 AFL Championship and relocated to Kansas City, Missouri the following year, becoming the Chiefs. In 1966, the Chiefs won their second AFL title and appeared in the first AFL-NFL World Championship game (later named Super Bowl I) in January 1967, losing to the Green Bay Packers. In 1969, the Chiefs won the final AFL title and went on to defeat the NFL's heavily favored Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. The Texans/Chiefs were the most victorious franchise in AFL history, compiling an 87–48–5 record from 1960 to 1969.
Fifty years later, the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV in February 2020 with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who was named MVP. In Super Bowl LVII in 2023, the Chiefs won again and Mahomes won his second Super Bowl MVP award. They won yet again in Super Bowl LVIII in 2024.
AFL origins
In 1959, Lamar Hunt, son of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, began discussions with other businessmen about establishing an American football organization that would rival that of the National Football League. As early as 1958, Hunt had the interest of purchasing an NFL franchise and moving it to Dallas, Texas. His desire to secure a professional football franchise was further heightened after watching the historic 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The team that Hunt was most interested in buying was the Chicago Cardinals.Kansas City Chiefs History AFL Origins"
The NFL convinced Hunt to contact Cardinals owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner, and her husband Walter Wolfner eventually agreed to sell Hunt 20 percent of the Cardinals franchise. Hunt declined the opportunity. He then conceived the concept of forming a second league. "Why wouldn't a second league work", Hunt recalled. "There was an American and National League in baseball, why not football?" Hunt contacted several other individuals who had expressed interest in the Cardinals franchise—Bud Adams, Bob Howsam, Max Winter and Bill Boyer—and gauged their interest in forming a second league.
On August 14, the first meeting of the new league was held in Chicago. Charter memberships were issued to six original cities — Dallas, New York, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. The league was officially christened the American Football League on August 22. Ralph Wilson was extended the league's seventh franchise for Buffalo, New York, on October 28 and Billy Sullivan became the league's eighth team's owner for Boston on November 22. Minneapolis withdrew its franchise from the AFL in November after receiving an offer for a team in the NFL, and Oakland, California instead joined the AFL as the Oakland Raiders.
Early years in Dallas
For the Texans' inaugural season, team owner Lamar Hunt pursued both legendary University of Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson and New York Giants defensive assistant Tom Landry to lead his Texans franchise. Wilkinson opted to stay at Oklahoma, while Landry was destined to coach the NFL's franchise in Dallas, to be called the Cowboys. In mid-December 1959 Hunt settled on a relatively unknown assistant coach from the University of Miami, Hank Stram. "One of the biggest reasons I hired Hank was that he really wanted the job", Hunt explained. "It turned out to be a very lucky selection on my part."
The Texans have Don Klosterman as their head talent man. Klosterman had a penchant for luring star talent away from the NFL, and for finding talent otherwise undiscovered.
Reserved seats at the Cotton Bowl cost USD $4, general admission $2 and high school students paid 90¢ (90 cents) that initial season. Don Rossi served as the team's General Manager until November when he was succeeded by Jack Steadman. The team was headquartered in the Mercantile National Bank Building. The AFL was also headquartered in Dallas.
The Texans conducted their inaugural training camp at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico. The club embarked on a whirlwind pre-season barnstorming tour that featured road games in Oakland, Tulsa, Boston, Abilene and Little Rock. An announced crowd of 51,000 at the Cotton Bowl witnessed a 24–3 victory against Houston on September 2 as the club concluded a perfect 6–0 preseason record.
In both teams' inaugural 1960 seasons, the Dallas Texans and Dallas Cowboys competed fiercely for the attention of local football fans. For example, according to the book Ten-Gallon War, the Texans offered discounted tickets at department stores and airline offices, free tickets for fill-ups at certain service stations, and even had free tickets "stuffed inside helium-filled balloons set loose over the city." They held a promotion where fans in barber's capes got discounted tickets (under the theory that local barbers were some of the most trusted people in the city) and gave free admission to fans who showed ticket stubs from local high school games played on certain weeks. In competition, the Dallas Cowboys had such promotions as hiring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans for a halftime show.
In their early years, the Texans had a strong home-state identity with quarterback Cotton Davidson from Baylor, linebacker Sherrill Headrick from TCU and running back Abner Haynes from North Texas. Haynes led the league with 875 rushing yards and nine TDs, as well as combined net yards (2,100) and punt return average (15.4). The Texans also had a flashy, high-scoring club which finished the year at 8–6 as three close losses kept the squad from challenging for the division title. The Texans averaged 24,500 for their home games, the highest average in the league. In one attempt to draw more fans to their games, the Texans would offer free tickets to anyone who brought a ticket stub from the previous Friday's high school football game, to counter the NFL Cowboys' playing their home games on Friday night.
In 1961, the Texans and the NFL's Dallas Cowboys both drafted linebacker E.J. Holub from Texas Tech, described by many scouts as "the best football player in America." Holub decided to play for the Texans, joining three future franchise Hall of Famers—Jerry Mays, Fred Arbanas and Jim Tyrer—as part of the club's draft class. The club moved its training camp to Lamar Hunt's alma mater of Southern Methodist University and started the regular season at 3–1 before hitting a six-game losing skid, the longest such streak of Stram's tenure with the franchise. The Texans rebounded to claim wins in three of its final four contests to finish 6–8, marking the club's second straight finish behind the San Diego Chargers in the AFL Western Conference standings.
In 1962, head coach Hank Stram was named AFL Coach of the Year and running back Curtis McClinton was named the AFL Rookie of the Year. Haynes became the franchise's first 1,000-yard rusher, concluding the season with 1,049 yards and an AFL-high 13 rushing touchdowns.
The Texans clinched their initial AFL Western Division Championship in November and finished with an 11–3 regular season record. The team won the 1962 AFL Championship when kicker Tommy Brooker connected on a 25-yard field goal during the second overtime of the title game, giving the Texans a 20–17 victory against the Houston Oilers. Spanning an elapsed time of 77:54, the game stands as the third-longest contest in pro football history.Since 1984 the game has been the third-longest professional football game following a triple-overtime USFL playoff game between the Los Angeles Express and the Michigan Panthers. Until a Christmas Day playoff game in 1971 between the Chiefs and Dolphins, the game was the longest ever played.
The move to Kansas City
The Dallas Cowboys joined the NFL as an expansion team in . By the end of the 1962 season, it was apparent that Dallas could not support two teams. Even though the Texans had been far more successful on the field, Hunt investigated opportunities to move his team elsewhere for the 1963 season, including Miami, Atlanta, Seattle and New Orleans. Hunt wanted to find a city to which he could commute easily from Dallas, and when he was unable to secure Tulane Stadium because the university didn't want its football program to compete with a pro team, he turned to Kansas City, Missouri, where Mayor H. Roe Bartle persuaded him to move to the Midwest.
The negotiations in Kansas City were conducted in secrecy. On several occasions Hunt and Jack Steadman were in Kansas City and met with businessmen, without the general public's knowledge. Bartle introduced Hunt as "Mr. Lamar" in all the meetings with other Kansas City businessmen. Steadman was introduced as "Jack X."Covitz, Randy; Pulliam, Kent. Chiefs' founder Lamar Hunt dies Kansas City Star, 14 December 2006.
The support the team received from the Kansas City community before the team announced the move was extraordinary. Hunt made the move dependent upon the ability of Mayor Bartle and the Kansas City community to guarantee him 35,000 in season ticket sales. Hunt had set this number, being that it was the Texans' average attendance at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. An ambitious campaign took shape to deliver on Bartle's guarantee to Hunt of tripling the season-ticket base the Texans had enjoyed in Dallas. Kansas City's mayor also promised to add 3,000 permanent seats to Municipal Stadium, as well as 11,000 temporary bleacher seats. Along with Bartle, a number of other prominent Kansas Citians stepped forward to aid in the efforts, putting together more than 1,000 workers to sell season tickets.
Bartle called to his office 20 business leaders and called upon them to form an association later known as "The Gold Coats", whose sole objective was to sell and take down payments on the 35,000 season tickets required. "The Gold Coats" had to sell season tickets to people without knowing the team name, where it was coming from, who the owner was, which football league they would play in, who the players or coaches were, when the team would play its first game in Kansas City, or where it would play. Hunt gave Bartle a four-month deadline to accomplish the sales. Bartle and "The Gold Coats" made good in only 8 weeks. Later, Hunt admitted he was really only hoping for 20,000, for which he still would have moved the franchise. On May 22, Hunt announced he was moving the franchise to Kansas City, Missouri.Kansas City Chiefs History 1960s"
Hunt, with a roster replete with players who had played college football in Texas, wanted to maintain a lineage to the team's roots and wanted to name the club the Kansas City Texans. "The Lakers stayed the Lakers when they moved from Minnesota to California", he reasoned. "But Jack Steadman convinced me that wasn't too smart. It wouldn't sell." The team was renamed the Kansas City Chiefs—one of the most popular suggestions Hunt received in a name-the-team contest. Lamar Hunt sent letters dated June 21, 1963, to all the contest entrants who selected the name CHIEFS in the "Rename the Texans" contest of whom Mrs. Joan Feuerborn was one of those entrants, and along with their respective guesses as to the number of season tickets sold by May 1. The actual total was 10,808, and based on this the car winner was Mr. E. L. Diemler of Kansas City, Missouri, a warehouse manager who got the idea when making out a bill of lading to Chief Freight Lines.Flanagan, Jeffrey. Name-the-Chiefs winner was inspired by freight. KansasCity.com. 16 Jan 2007. Another name also considered at the time for the team was the Kansas City Mules.