On January 15, 1967, the Kansas City Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I. The Chiefs’ presence in the first Super Bowl was fitting because the owner of the Chiefs, Lamar Hunt, was one of the key architects of the championship game.

The first Super Bowl pitted the championship teams from each of the two professional leagues then in existence, the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). The AFL owed its existence primarily to the efforts of Lamar Hunt, who between 1958 and 1959 failed to convince the NFL to sanction an expansion franchise in Dallas, Texas. Hunt, the son of a wealthy Texas oilman, still dreamed of owning a football team. In addition to starting an AFL team in Dallas, Hunt convinced affluent individuals interested in owning football teams to form AFL teams in Denver, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Buffalo, Houston, and Boston.

The AFL’s inception in 1960 meant that no decisive national championships occurred between the two leagues that routinely battled for players, coaches, and fans. In 1962, Hunt moved his team, then called the Dallas Texans, to Kansas City, where Mayor H. Roe Bartle promised a larger fan base free from the competition that the Texans faced from the Dallas Cowboys NFL team. In part to honor Mayor Bartle, whose nickname was "The Chief," Hunt settled on the name "Chiefs" for the newly relocated team.

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