From Dallas Texans to Kansas City Chiefs: How the Chiefs Came to Kansas City

Every Chiefs fan knows Arrowhead. Fewer know that this franchise started in a Dallas stadium it shared with the Cowboys, won a title there, and then moved north after Kansas City sold season tickets for a team with no name.

Here's how the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs, and why the way it happened still says something about this fan base.

A league built because the NFL said no

The Chiefs exist because Lamar Hunt couldn't buy an NFL team. In the late 1950s he tried to purchase the Chicago Cardinals and move them to Dallas. The best offer he got was 20 percent of the club, and he turned it down. Instead, he asked a simple question, as he later recalled it: "Why wouldn't a second league work? There was an American and National League in baseball, why not football?"

That question became the American Football League. Hunt's own franchise, the Dallas Texans, started play in 1960.

The Texans hired a little-known University of Miami assistant named Hank Stram as head coach. Hunt said one of the biggest reasons he hired Stram "was that he really wanted the job." It turned out to be one of the best hires in pro football history.

Two teams, one city

The NFL answered Hunt's league by putting its own expansion team in Dallas: the Cowboys. For three seasons the two clubs shared the Cotton Bowl and fought for every fan. The Texans gave away tickets at gas stations, offered free admission to fans with high school ticket stubs, and even released free tickets inside balloons over the city.

On the field, the Texans were better. They led the AFL in home attendance in 1960, and in 1962 they went 11-3 and won the AFL Championship. Tommy Brooker's 25-yard field goal in the second overtime beat the Houston Oilers 20-17 in a game that lasted 77 minutes and 54 seconds.

But by the end of that season it was clear Dallas couldn't support two pro teams.

The Gold Coats

Hunt looked at Miami, Atlanta, Seattle and New Orleans. Kansas City Mayor H. Roe Bartle won him over, and the talks were held in secret. Bartle introduced Hunt to local business leaders as "Mr. Lamar."

Hunt's condition was a guarantee of 35,000 season tickets. Bartle organized about 20 business leaders into a group later called "The Gold Coats," and more than 1,000 workers sold tickets for a team that had no name, no announced owner, no league they could talk about and no schedule. Hunt gave them four months. They did it in eight weeks. Hunt later admitted he'd have moved for 20,000.

The name

Hunt wanted to keep "Texans." Team executive Jack Steadman talked him out of it. "Chiefs" was one of the most popular entries in a fan contest, and it also tied to Bartle, whose nickname was "The Chief."

The first years in Kansas City

It wasn't instant. Only 5,721 fans came to the Chiefs' first preseason game at Municipal Stadium in 1963. In 1964 the club averaged just 18,126 fans a game, enough to start talk among AFL owners about whether the Chiefs had a future in Kansas City. The franchise kept building anyway, adding players like Buck Buchanan, Ed Budde and Bobby Bell in its first Kansas City draft.

What came next

The move paid off fast. The Chiefs won the AFL title after the 1966 season and reached the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game. After the 1969 season they won the last AFL title and beat Minnesota in Super Bowl IV. From 1960 to 1969 the Texans and Chiefs went 87-48-5, the best record of any AFL franchise.

Our Take

What we love about this story is that Kansas City earned the team before it ever saw the team. A city sold tens of thousands of tickets on faith, in half the time it was given. The crowds took a few years to fill in, but the commitment came first, before a single down was played. That's the DNA of Arrowhead.

Chiefs Kingdom.

Sources: Wikipedia, History of the Kansas City Chiefs, Wikipedia, History of the Dallas Cowboys