Initially, the Dallas Texans were the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Chiefs were first organized as the Dallas Texans in the fledgling American Football League, owned by Lamar Hunt.
After defeating the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs secured their spot in the Big Game for the fourth time in the previous five seasons. The Chiefs will take on the San Francisco 49ers once more in a rematch of Super Bowl LIV in 2020, which they won to claim their first of two championships. And Kansas City will rank among the greatest NFL dynasties in history if it triumphs once more this year, marking its third Super Bowl victory in five years.
Which, given this: The Chiefs’ legacy in Dallas extends back even deeper than that of the Cowboys, must pain Cowboys fans a little.
The Chiefs were first established as the Dallas Texans in the fledgling American Football League, owned by Lamar Hunt. In the late 1950s, Hunt—the son of oil magnate H.L. Hunt—tried to get the NFL to expand to Dallas, but the league turned him down. The Dallas Texans were a one-and-done franchise that left the NFL in 1952.
Thus, Hunt made the decision to form his own league and team, the Texans, with the intention of making their debuts in 1960.
By then, Dallas industrialist Clint Murchison Jr. had received the expansion club Hunt had desired—the Cowboys—from the NFL in response to the breakaway league.
The 1960 football season began with two teams from Dallas, the city that only managed to acquire one club a few years before: Hunt’s Texans and Murchison’s Cowboys, who shared the Cotton Bowl.
And the Texans were the early favorites since they had a larger crowd and outperformed the Cowboys in terms of game wins.
The Texans defeated the Houston Oilers to win the 1962 AFL Championship after finishing 14-14 in their first two seasons. During that time, the Cowboys, who had Tom Landry as their first head coach, went 9-28 with a 0-11 record in their inaugural campaign.
Lamar Hunt (right), NFC president George Halas (left), and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle (center) in 1971.
However, Hunt saw that Dallas was not a two-team town and that the Cowboys, with the support of the NFL, were in the lead.
Despite selling more season tickets, Hunt lost $1.25 million during his three-year money war with the Cowboys, according to the Associated Press. Hunt’s epiphany coincided with two significant events, as NFL Throwback pointed out in this retrospective article from 2017: In 1962, he filed an AFL lawsuit against the NFL, claiming it was a monopoly. The NFL then agreed to a new television arrangement with CBS, paying $300,000 annually to each team.
The Cowboys were in a much better position to succeed in Dallas if a professional football club was going to do so.
According to the Chiefs website, Hunt looked into moving to Atlanta and Miami. However, as the AP noted, Mayor H. Roe Bartle gave Hunt a guarantee when he arrived in Kansas City: the team would be able to sell 25,000 season tickets to their new fan base.
When Hunt made the announcement in February 1963, the Texans made their way up north. Interestingly enough, despite the team’s move to Kansas City, Hunt and head coach Hank Stram debated sticking with the Texans moniker. As reported by the AP, they finally decided to dispense with the moniker after receiving over a thousand suggestions for a new one.
As a nod to Bartle’s nickname, “Chief,” Hunt & Co. selected the Chiefs, the official website states. Though the team used headdress imagery early in their Kansas City tenure, the nickname was not a reference to Native American culture.
Later on, the club claimed to have “tried to delete these insulting images,” and they also initiated communication with the Kansas City-area American Indian Community Working Group.
Hunt made a wise choice when he decided to leave Dallas.
Landry led the Cowboys to an unprecedented run of success that lasted into the 1980s, and the team swiftly rose to prominence in the NFL. After moving to their new stadium, the Chiefs maintained their winning ways, participating in Super Bowl I (where they lost to the Packers) and defeating the Vikings in Super Bowl IV.
Hunt did more for pro football than merely create a devoted following in Kansas City and pave the way for one in Dallas. In addition, he coined the term “Super Bowl,” a parody of the well-known Super Ball toy that his kids were enjoying at the time.
In 1972, Hunt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his contributions to the early stages of the AFL-NFL merger. Despite his passing in 2006, the Hunt family still owns the franchise.
The Hunts are still in Dallas, too.
