Feb. 8, 1963: Lamar Hunt, one of the guiding forces in the founding of the American Football League, moves his team, the Dallas Texans, to Kansas City and renames it the Chiefs. The Texans-Chiefs were an AFL powerhouse and played in the first Super Bowl against the National Football League champion Green Bay Packers in 1967. The Chiefs performance in that game—the Packers won 35-10—did nothing to convince the haughty NFL powers that the AFL was anything more than a nuisance. But Hunt and his colleagues continued to build their league and the Chiefs victory in Super Bowl IV, which followed the New York Jets’ improbable triumph the year before, helped clinch the merger between the two leagues. In fact, Super Bowl IV was the last one played between the league champions—the Chiefs and the Minnesota Vikings. The following year’s game matched the winners of National Football Conference and the American Football Conference. Hunt’s influence can still be seen in the merged NFL. He is widely credited with coining the name “Super Bowl” and the hardware awarded to the AFC champion is called the Lamar Hunt Trophy. But perhaps most impressively, he was never tempted to sign Alex Rodriguez as his quarterback.—Jeffrey Kanige
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