I’m 2-0 in Super Bowls I actually cared about

My sportsfansmanship is actually pretty much limited to the teams where I actually know the participants (Pea Ridge Blackhawks) and the professional teams I followed as a kid, in this case the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and the Kansas City Chiefs football team. I’m actually a Razorback fan in addition as who can live in this part of the world and not be. Having met Razorback coaches and athletes in the interim helped that along as well.

I watched the Chiefs 50 years ago when they beat the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV. I’m likely one of few on this area who can make that claim. While the Super Bowl was getting to be a big deal in the early 1970s, it was not nearly as a big a deal as it is today.

The Chiefs started the game up 9-0 on three Jan Stenerud field goals, then scored two touchdowns to the Vikings to take that early contest. Len Dawson (No. 16) was the Chiefs’ quarterback of that era, joining professional football in the 1950s and retiring in the 1970s with Hank Stram, the coach.

While they won their second Super Bowl title, technically this is the Chiefs’ first NFL title. The Chiefs won their first Super Bowl as representatives of the AFL, a rival league to the NFL. The Chiefs’ victory gave half of the of the first four Super Bowl titles to AFL team with the AFL’s New York Jets also winning a title in the early going. After the Chiefs’ win in 1970, the AFL merged with the NFL to form a much bigger and more powerful NFL. From a starting point of 26 NFL teams in 1970, the league has grown to 32 teams in 2020.

The Chiefs’ franchise was started by Arkansas native Lamar Hunt in 1960, originally called the Dallas Texans. The name Texans was the teams’ third choice after two more popular names were shot down. The Rangers mascot was abandoned as the next door Ft. Worth minor league baseball team was already using the Rangers handle. That minor league team later went on to become the Texas Rangers.

The other mascot proposal was the Steers, a name supported by many but after folks were made to realize what makes a bull a steer, that name idea was dropped.

Lamar Hunt died in 2006 with the team’s ownership passing to his wife and kids. It is now family run with Hunt’s son Clark now running things. The franchise is currently valued at $2 billion dollars. This year marks the 100th year of the NFL and the 60th of the Chiefs’ franchise.

The NFL started as the American Professional Football Association, then changed it to the National Football League two years later. Only two franchises still exist from that first year 10 team league.

The Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago and became the Bears, and the Chicago Cardinals moved to St. Louis for awhile before settling in Arizona. The Green Bay Packers joined the league in their second year of operations in 1921 and are thus the oldest team in the league in their original town. They became known as the Packers after the Green Bay Meat Packing company volunteered to pay their $500 franchise fee to enter the league.

Believe it or not, early pro football was backed and promoted by professional baseball organizations. The sport was wildly popular with the college fans, but the high overhead and limited game schedules made the early pro leagues a dicey prospect at best. Baseball magnates though they could use their stadiums for football in the offseason and make some extra cash. Nothing panned out until the 1920s.

A lot of teams came and went in the early going, like the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Tigers, Toledo Maroons, Rock island Independents, Muncie Flyers, Rochester Jeffersons and the Racine Legion.

Finally, at a car dealership in Canton, Ohio, a deal was struck for an 11-team league. However, only four teams had teams on the field by the end of 1920 due to financial hardship. In 1922, 22 teams started out but most folded.

It was a habit of a lot of early teams to take on the name of local baseball teams, which led to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees.

When the NFL started, there were both black and white athletes on their rosters. In 1932, one George Marshall wanted to expand football into the south so he lobbied to exclude black players, a policy that stood until the 1950s. It was in the 1950s that football re-integrated and then became a rival for college football. The first nationally televised game was in 1958 between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants and what would become the NFLs’ biggest source of income was born. With the big TV revenue stream, the NFL will make close to 9 billion dollars this year.

Well, the game is over and my Chiefs won. I really liked the commercials that were scattered throughout the broadcast, but I had little use for the halftime show. That I could have done without.

Now I might just watch another Super Bowl in 2021 — if the Chiefs are in it.

Standings and polls as of Jan. 30:

4A-1 Conference standings girls

West Division

Farmington Gravette Pea Ridge Prairie Grove Gentry

Harrison 8-0 6-2 3-5 2-6 2-7

East Division

7-0