Scheduling pre-season home games with NFL teams

Bob Moore

"Inside the Stacks: Exploring important documents in Chiefs history" is a series of columns based on never-before-seen documents and correspondence from the Lamar Hunt archives, including many from the founding and early days of the American Football League, the merger with the National Football League, and other historic moments up until the time of Hunt's death.

Kansas City's loss to the Green Bay Packers in what would be known as "Super Bowl I" left a bad taste, particularly after Packers head coach Vince Lombardi said that the Chiefs were not the equal of an NFL team.

Chiefs players were therefore anxious for another go at an NFL team any NFL team.

So was Chiefs Founder, Lamar Hunt.

They would get their chance even though inter-league play would not officially begin until the 1970 regular season, the AFL-NFL merger agreement did provide for preseason play between teams of the two leagues going into 1967.

Kansas City piled it on the legendary Chicago Bears, 66-24, in a preseason game on August 23, 1967, at Municipal Stadium. It was a seminal moment in franchise history and the players were still talking about that game years later.

So was Lamar Hunt, and what victories like the one over the Bears could mean in the new AFL-NFL post-merger world.

"The Bears game created more enthusiasm than any game we have had in five years," Hunt wrote to GM Jack Steadman, as regular season play began for the AFL, "and this enthusiasm was evident before we beat them, 66 24. The anticipation of playing [former University of Kansas star Gale] Sayers and the Bears was, I believe, a great asset."

Hunt was so enthusiastic about the outcome that he pushed Steadman to schedule two NFL opponents to play in Kansas City the next preseason and include them as part of the team's season ticket package.

He wanted NFL teams in this order, if Steadman could get them: Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, Washington Redskins, and Philadelphia Eagles.

Well-known and long-time National Football League teams every fan would recognize.

"My theory is that the infusion of these teams, which are among the great team names in professional sports, will help build pro football in Kansas City. I feel the fan, basically, wants to see class, and these teams represent a history of class."

It's interesting that if the Los Angeles Rams were agreeable, Hunt was willing to have the game played on the west coast, "which is preferable," he wrote. It would mark a return to where the Chiefs had lost Super Bowl I, and also the place where the Rams had beaten the Chiefs in the preseason the year before after the team's blowout of the Bears.

Of course, any matchup with the Dallas Cowboys wherever was a preference, but Hunt had serious "doubts that they will be willing to play us."

All these inter-league games helped to build interest not only for Kansas City but for other soon-to-be merged American Football League clubs.

Hunt's "spread-the-news" of the AFL in the preseason was well established by this time. He continued to look at the possibility of a preseason game at the University of Nebraska, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in Jackson, Mississippi. All had good stadiums, and he thought a game versus the Dolphins in the Tampa Bay-Ft. Lauderdale area would build interest in Florida.

A new era in professional football was just getting started.

SOURCES: "Hunt correspondence 1967," Cabinet 16, Drawer E. Lamar Hunt to Jack Steadman, September 19, 1967