Chiefs honor only woman to attend all Super Bowls
With the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday's Super Bowl, sharp-eyed fans may spot a patch on the players' jerseys bearing the letters “NKH.”
The initials are a tribute to Norma Knobel Hunt, a former minority owner of the Chiefs whose life and career were deeply intertwined with the Kansas City franchise and the early history of the NFL.
Hunt died last June at 85, leaving a remarkable legacy. She is believed to be the only woman who's attended all 57 Super Bowls. And she's credited with indirectly helping her late husband, Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, come up with the “Super Bowl” name for the championship game.
“Norma was a football fan first and foremost. And
she will forever be linked to one of the greatest franchises in sports history,” said Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, a women's sports advocate and author of “Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League.”
“Women were often kept on the outside in all aspects of football. Only recently have we begun to explore and recognize the contributions and participation women have made,” D'Arcangelo said.
The Super Bowl was born after the NFL agreed in 1966 to merge with its upstart rival, the American Football League. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 1970 — and then didn't win another for 50 years.
But Hunt said she attended 40 Super Bowls with her husband, describing the event as the “epitome of shared joy.”
SHE WAS PART OF PRO FOOTBALL'S BIGGEST MOMENTS >> A former teacher, she met her husband in 1963. Back then, the Chiefs were called the Dallas Texans and played in Texas. She was part of a group of women who sold tickets for the team, and she met Lamar Hunt at one of those events. According to an account on the Chiefs' website, her assured personality and passion for the game made an impression on him.
“Women liked her,” author Michael MacCambridge wrote in his biography of Lamar Hunt, who died in 2006. “Men were drawn to her, and she became adept at putting people at ease.”
Hunt was there when the franchise moved to Kansas City and changed its name. She was there when her husband founded the AFL and became a principal negotiator in its merger with the NFL, creating what would become the most popular and lucrative pro sports league in America.
Norma Hunt served as a sounding board for her husband and quietly shaped many of his decisions. After his death in 2006, she and their children became owners of the franchise..
THE NAME `SUPER BOWL' WAS INSPIRED BY THEIR CHILD'S TOY >> When it came time to name the expanded league's title game, team owners insisted on the unwieldy and very unsexy, “AFL-NFL Championship Game.” In 1967 NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle began soliciting ideas for a new name, which yielded such suggestions as the Merger Bowl, the Summit Bowl and simply, The Game.
Around then Norma Hunt had bought her young children Superballs, extrabouncy rubber balls that were a popular toy at the time. During a meeting with other team owners, Lamar half-jokingly referred to the championship game as the “Super Bowl,” a play on words inspired by the toy.
In the summer of 1966, Lamar Hunt wrote a letter to Rozelle, saying, “I have kiddingly called it the `Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon.”
He was wrong. By the expanded NFL's third title game in 1969, the media had picked up on his proposal. The league officially adopted the Super Bowl name that year.
“(Lamar) said, `I believe that this game will become one of the most important sporting events in America,'” Norma Hunt said in 2020. “And later, after going to many Super Bowls ... he said, `It's so much more amazing than I could ever have dreamed.' ”
After the Chiefs' win over Baltimore last month in the AFC championship game, QB Patrick Mahomes said he'd fulfilled a promise to win for Norma Hunt.
Now, on an even bigger stage at the Super Bowl, her initials on the team's jerseys are a reminder of how her legacy endures.