There was a lot written about the Kansas City Chiefs when they won Super Bowl IV, but with a few notable exceptions, that team and its accomplishments in the 1969 season have received relatively little coverage since then.
Joe McGuff’s Winning It All: The Chiefs of the AFL (Garden City, NY; Doubleday, 1970)—by the longtime sports editor and sports columnist of the Kansas City Star—was written in the spring following the Super Bowl victory and covers the entire first decade of the franchise in detail.
Also out that year was Len Dawson: Pressure Quarterback (New York: Cowles, 1970), an as-told-to collaboration between Dawson and Lou Sahadi, the editor of Pro Quarterback magazine. It was particularly valuable for Dawson’s account of his knee injury–plagued 1969 season and the team’s playoff run. Less intimate, but still informative, is Larry Bortstein’s Len Dawson: Superbowl [sic] Quarterback (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1970).
For a team with as many Hall of Famers as the Chiefs have, it’s odd that more of them haven’t written books or had books written about them. One autobiography that’s worthwhile is Otis Taylor: The Need to Win (Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2003), written by Taylor with Mark Stallard.
Hank Stram’s They’re Playing My Game (New York: Morrow, 1986), with Lou Sahadi, was an easy read, but a disappointing book for anyone who knew Stram. Like many coaches’ autobiographies, it allowed little room for nuance, and the stories were too pat. The best insight into Stram comes from the collection of team talks he gave in 1969 (until, oddly, the last two games of the postseason), faithfully typed up by his secretary, Pat Colt, and shared by Dale Stram. The Stram playbook, circa 1969, is also full of insights into his worldview, and his complete control of the team.
There are several books by those affiliated with the team in one way or other. There’s an autobiography of the bandleader, Tony DiPardo: Life, Love, Music and Football (New York: Sports Publishing, 2005), which should come with a soundtrack; and the Bill Grigsby autobiography Grigs: A Beautiful Life (New York: Sports Publishing, 2004), which should come with a two-drink minimum. There’s also George Toma: Nitty Gritty Dirt Man (New York: Sports Publishing, 2004).
The best real-time coverage of the ’69 Chiefs was in the pages of the Kansas City Star and Times, especially the work of McGuff, Bill Richardson, Dick Mackey, Gary Warner, Tom Marshall, and Dick Wade.
The Star remains the best resource for the Chiefs today. In their capacity as columnists for the Star, Joe Posnanski (previously) and Vahe Gregorian and Sam Mellinger (presently) have written eloquently about that ’69 team, its main characters, and the long shadow they cast.
The other great resources from the era are Sports Illustrated, for its insightful, in-depth coverage of the main storylines in the NFL and AFL, and Pro Football Weekly, which smartly documented the weekly ebb and flow of the unpredictable season. Tex Maule’s The Pro Season (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970) was a journal of the 1969 season by the lead pro football writer of Sports Illustrated, an NFL loyalist who grudgingly came to terms with the AFL’s parity.
Among retrospectives, Kansas City Chiefs: Great Teams’ Great Years (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1974) is, next to McGuff’s book, the most informative team history, focusing on the Chiefs’ first decade, with extended Q&A’s with Len Dawson, Buck Buchanan, and Jerry Mays, and others.
Mark Stallard’s The Kansas City Chiefs Encyclopedia (Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2004) and Alan Hoskins’ The Illustrated History of the Kansas City Chiefs (Dallas: Taylor, 1999) also provide broad general overviews.
Bob McGinn’s Ultimate Super Bowl Book (Minneapolis: MVP Books, 2012) includes detailed accounts of the Chiefs’ experiences in both Super Bowl I and Super Bowl IV. The other indispensable Super Bowl book is The Super Bowl: Celebrating a Quarter-Century of America’s Greatest Game (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), which includes a detailed review of Super Bowl IV by the writer Shelby Strother. In the annual series Sports Illustrated Presents: NFL ’95, John Garrity wrote perceptively about the Chiefs’ Super Bowl IV win in his bonus piece “Parting Shot.”
The best—and best-looking—document of the AFL’s history is the lush coffee-table book The Other League: The Fabulous Story of the American Football League (Chicago: Follett, 1970), by Mike Rathet and Jack Horrigan.
The best documentary on the history of the AFL comes in HBO’s 1995 documentary Rebels with a Cause, from the networks Sports of the 20th Century documentary series. NFL Films has also given ample attention to the team and the season, through the original 1969 season highlight film, the Super Bowl IV highlight film that immortalized Stram, and the excellent documentary America’s Game: The 1969 Chiefs. Less seen, but equally compelling, is The Final Showdown, about the 1969 AFL Championship Game between the Chiefs and Raiders.
The best website about the American Football League comes from AFL obsessive Ange Coniglio’s Remember the AFL (www.remembertheafl.com/AFL.htm). Also valuable is the research done by Chargers’ and AFL scholar Todd Tobias, much of which can be found on Tobias’s own site, Tales of the AFL (http://talesfromtheamericanfootballleague.com/). For the record, Tobias also played a significant role in the push for Johnny Robinson’s overdue induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The Joel Francis blog, The Daily Record (joelfrancis.com), features a long piece from September 15, 2001, called “When the Chiefs Ruled the World,” with revealing interviews with Fred Arbanas and Bobby Bell.
John Simonson’s blog, Paris of the Plains (http://paris-of-the-plains.blogspot.com/), includes a vivid account of his work at the Chiefs training camp in Liberty, on the campus of William Jewell College, “Memories of Summer Camp, 1969,” from August 17, 2014.
The Chiefs did a series of visually striking, high-quality yearbooks from 1968 through the early ’70s, and the 1970 version—with the unique keyhole cover in the shape of the numeral “1,” which remains one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen—has a game-by-game review of the 1969 season.
On the subject of race relations and football, Charles K. Ross’s Mavericks, Money, and Men: The AFL, Black Players, and the Evolution of Modern Football (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016) is a good resource. Closer to home is C.S. Griffin’s commendable, trenchant Racism in Kansas City: A Short History (Traverse City, MI: Chandler Lake Books, 2015).
A good overview of the history of Kansas City can be found in the handsome coffee-table book Kansas City: An American Story, written by Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, and edited by Monroe Dodd (Kansas City: Kansas City Star Books, 2007)
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Cheryl Anderson (formerly Cheryl Taylor), Fred Arbanas, John Beake, Bobby Bell, Pete Brewster, Georgia Buchanan, Ed Budde, Curley Culp, Al Davis, Len Dawson, Len Dawson, Jr., Tom Flores, Mike Garrett, Tom Hedrick, Lamar Hunt, Willie Lanier, Mike Livingston, Ed Lothamer, Jim Lynch, John Madden, James Marsalis, Curtis McClinton, Warren McVea, Willie Mitchell, Mo Moorman, Frank Pitts, Tom Pratt, Johnny Robinson, Pete Rozelle, Jack Rudnay, Jim Schaaf, Goldie Sellers, Peaches Sellers, Jack Steadman, Bob Stein, Jan Stenerud, Dale Stram, Hank Stram, Stu Stram, Lionel Taylor, Otis Taylor, Lloyd Wells.
Note: Al Davis, Len Dawson, Lamar Hunt, John Madden, Johnny Robinson, Hank Stram, Jim Schaaf, and Jack Steadman were originally interviewed for America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation. Abner Haynes, Curtis McClinton, and Frank Pitts were originally interviewed for Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports. Lionel Taylor was originally interviewed for Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work. Pete Rozelle was originally interviewed for The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine.
PHOTO CREDITS
All photographs by Rod Hanna except the following:
Page 15: Courtesy Kansas City Star/McClatchy Co.
Page 17: Kansas City Chamber of Commerce
Page 18: Courtesy Kansas City Star/McClatchy Co.
Page 19: Kansas City Chamber of Commerce
Page 20–21: Courtesy Jack Monath
Page 24: Kansas City Chiefs Archive
Page 26: Photograph Kansas City Chiefs archives; projector courtesy Stram family
Page 32: Courtesy Stram family
Page 38: Courtesy Stram family,
Page 39: Courtesy John Beake /Kansas City Chiefs Archives
Page 38–39: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 40: Pro Football Weekly
Page 43: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Pages 44, 46, 47: Courtesy Todd Tobias/San Diego Chargers
Page 53: Courtesy Kansas City Star/McClatchy Co.
Page 64: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 66: Patty DiPardo Livergood
Page 67: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 70 ticket: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 71: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 105: Courtesy Sports Illustrated/The Meredith Corp.
Page 128: Courtesy Pro Football Weekly
Page 148: Courtesy Lou Lampson
Page 154: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 155: Newspaper courtesy Kansas City Star/McClatchy
Page 157: National Football League Properties/Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 158: Courtesy Kansas City Star
Page 162: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 172: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 175: Newspaper courtesy Kansas City Star
Page 175: Magazine courtesy Sports Illustrated/Meredith Corp.
Page 177: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 178: Newspaper courtesy Kansas City Star
Page 179: Record courtesy Cavern Records
Page 179: Tickets courtesy Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 180: Courtesy Lamar Hunt family
Page 181: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 183: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 185: Kansas City Chiefs archives
Page 192: Courtesy Dr. Rob Clemens
Len Dawson’s helmet, worn during Super Bowl IV.
Michael MacCambridge has written extensively about sports, music, movies, and popular culture. His award-winning book America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation is considered by many the definitive modern history of pro football. He edited the critically acclaimed ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, hailed by Sports Illustrated as “the Bible” of the sport. For eight years a columnist and critic at the Austin American-Statesman, MacCambridge was later a contributor to A New Literary History of America, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, and GQ. The father of two children, Miles and Ella, he lives in Austin.
Author photo by Tara Welch
Rod Hanna began his career as a staff photographer at the Davenport Times Democrat in 1962 before moving on to the Topeka Capital-Journal in 1965. In 1969 he moved to Kansas City to freelance, and among his clients were the Kansas City Chiefs, for whom he was the team photographer in 1969. After moving to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in 1975, he worked for ten years as the official photographer for the Denver Broncos. Also an accomplished artist in nature landscape photography, Hanna has published two books of photographs: Seasons of Light: Impressions of Steamboat Springs and the Yampa Valley, and Colorado’s Seasons of Gold. His photographs have appeared in virtually every major magazine in the United States, including Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, and Travel & Leisure.
Photographer photo by Jim Talaric
Ed Budde (71) congratulates Len Dawson, late in the Chiefs’ 23–7 victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV, in New Orleans, January 11, 1970.