When Lamar Hunt and an entourage of his Dallas Texans staff and players arrived at Municipal Airport on April 15, 1963, to spark a ticket drive to assure their proposed move to Kansas City, the small group that greeted them included Shawnee Mission East students holding a banner that read, “Welcome Home, K.C. Somethings.”
The move became a reality weeks later, and so it was time for a more specific name. And for all the genius and vision that defined owner Hunt and coach Hank Stram, their first instinct was myopic.
“Lamar and Hank, they wanted to call it the Kansas City Texans,” longtime Chiefs executive Jack Steadman said in a 2013 interview, laughing and adding, “So finally I convinced Lamar that it wasn’t going to work, and we decided to have a naming contest.”