1963 Kansas City Chiefs season
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| 1963 Kansas City Chiefs season | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Head Coach | Hank Stram |
| Home Field | Municipal Stadium |
| Results | |
| Record | 5-7-2 |
| Place | 3rd Western Conference |
| Playoff Finish | Did not qualify |
| Timeline | |
| Previous Season | Next Season |
| 1962 | 1964 |
The 1963 Kansas City Chiefs season was the inaugural season of Kansas City’s new football franchise. Despite winning the 1962 AFL Championship the previous year, the Chiefs finished the year 5-7-2 and third in their division.
For the previous three seasons, the team was known as the Dallas Texans. Owner and founder Lamar Hunt moved the team following the 1962 AFL Championship, despite enormous success in Dallas, Texas. The team was renamed the Kansas City Chiefs and moved into Municipal Stadium alongside the Kansas City Athletics baseball team.
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[edit] Goin' to Kansas City
After three seasons — including an AFL championship in 1962 — it was apparent that Dallas couldn’t support two teams. Hunt investigated opportunities to move his team to several cities, including Miami, 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, where Mayor H. Roe Bartle persuaded him to move to the Midwest.[1]
It was a negotiation conducted in secrecy. On several occasions Hunt and Jack Steadman, the team’s general manager, were in Kansas City and met with businessmen. Bartle introduced Hunt as “Mr. Lamar” in all the meetings with other Kansas City businessmen. Steadman was introduced as “Jack X.”[1]
Most impressive about this move was the support the team received from the community even before the team announced the move. Hunt made the move dependent upon the ability of Kansas City Mayor H. Roe Bartle and the Kansas City community to guarantee him 35,000 in season ticket sales. Hunt had arrived at this number because that was the Texans' average attendance at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
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. Not an easy task when one considers the move was still secret and the Gold Coats had to sell season tickets to people without knowing the team name, where it was coming from, who the owner was, what league it would play in, who the players or coaches were, when the team would play its first game in Kansas City, what its team colors would be or where it would play. Hunt gave Bartle a 4 month deadline. 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.
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 call 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 Chiefs — one of the most popular suggestions Hunt received in a name-the-team contest, along with Kansas City Mules — and began playing in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium in 1963.[1]
The name, "Chiefs" is derived from Mayor Bartle, who 35 years prior, founded the Native American-based honor society known as The Tribe of Mic-O-Say within the Boy Scouts of America organization, which earned him the nickname, "The Chief."
The Texans/Chiefs franchise was the flagship team of the American Football League, with the most playoff appearances as an AFL team, six (tied with Oakland), the most American Football League Championships (3), and the most Super Bowl appearances, playing in the first Super Bowl, and in the last to be played between League champions. The Texans won the classic 1962 double-overtime AFL championship game against the Houston Oilers, 20-17, at the time the longest, and still one of the best professional football championship games ever played. The Chiefs dropped the first Super Bowl to the Packers, then pulverized the Vikings 23-7 in the final "true" AFL-NFL World Championsip game after the AFL's last season in 1969. They had just one coach throughout their AFL history, Hall-of-Famer Hank Stram.
The Chiefs' first Kansas City home was at 22nd and Brooklyn, called Municipal Stadium, which opened in 1923 and had 49,002 seats. In 1972, the Chiefs moved into the new Arrowhead Stadium. Municipal Stadium, also formerly the home of the Kansas City Royals, the minor-league Kansas City Blues and, most successfully, the Negro Leagues' Kansas City Monarchs, was demolished in 1976 and is now a community garden. The Chiefs' first game at Arrowhead Stadium was against the St. Louis Cardinals (Chiefs 24, St. Louis Cardinals 14).
Arrowhead Stadium is half of the Truman Sports Complex, along with Kauffman Stadium (formerly Royals Stadium). Kansas City was viewed as taking an unnecessary risk at the time by building two stadiums instead of the popular multi-use stadiums being built in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis. However, with demolition in 2005 of St. Louis' Busch Stadium, the Truman Sports Complex has now out-lived all of the multi-use stadiums built in the same era. While many applaud the Kansas City decision makers for this decision, the move was not quite by design. When it became readily apparent the old Municipal Stadium was not adequate for the Chiefs, the decision was made to build a multi-use stadium for the Chiefs and Charlie Finley's Kansas City A's. Finley proved to be too difficult to work with, demanding a "baseball stadium that could also be used for football" or a baseball only stadium, instead of the other way around.
After much vitriol behind the scenes, Finley decided to move the team to Oakland. However, the discussion made Bartle and his advisors convinced that one stadium would be good but not great. Thus, the decision was made to build two separate stadiums after Finley left town. Coincidentally, Finley moved to Oakland's Alameda County Coliseum, a multi-use stadium in which the A's have played since moving there in 1967.
[edit] Regular season
Coming off the longest game (at that point) in football history against the Houston Oilers in the AFL Championship, the Chiefs could not find the same swagger in their new home in Kansas City for their inaugural season. The Chiefs finished with a 5-7-2 record by the end of the year.
[edit] Schedule
| Week | Opponent | Result | Game site | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denver Broncos | W 59-7 | Bears Stadium | ||
| Bye Week | |||||
| 3 | Buffalo Bills | TIE 27-27 | War Memorial Stadium | ||
| 4 | San Diego Chargers | L 24-10 | Balboa Stadium | ||
| 5 | Houston Oilers | W 28-7 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 6 | Buffalo Bills | L 26-35 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 7 | San Diego Chargers | L 17-38 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 8 | Houston Oilers | L 7-28 | Jeppesen Stadium | ||
| 9 | Oakland Raiders | L 7-10 | Frank Youell Field | ||
| 10 | Oakland Raiders | L 7-22 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 11 | Boston Patriots | TIE 24-24 | Fenway Park | ||
| Bye Week | |||||
| 13 | New York Jets | L 0-17 | Shea Stadium | ||
| 14 | Denver Broncos | W 52-21 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 15 | Boston Patriots | W 35-3 | Municipal Stadium | ||
| 16 | New York Jets | W 48-0 | Municipal Stadium | ||
[edit] Postseason
With their 5-7-2 record, the Chiefs failed to reappear in the AFL Championship for a consecutive year.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Covitz, Randy; Pulliam, Kent. Chiefs' founder Lamar Hunt dies Kansas City Star, 14 December 2006.
[edit] External links
| Kansas City Chiefs | |||||||||||||||||||
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| The American Football League |
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| Eastern Division |
| Boston Patriots | Buffalo Bills | Houston Oilers | New York Titans/Jets | Miami Dolphins |
| Western Division |
| Denver Broncos | Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs | Oakland Raiders | Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers | Cincinnati Bengals |
| Seasons | Playoffs | All-Star games | AFL Draft | All-Time Team | NFL |
