When I was researching my latest book on the Kansas City Chiefs, “For Chiefs Fans Only,” I was amazed at the loyalty players from the old American Football League had for each other.
“I don’t know if there would be a Super Bowl today – at least, a Super Bowl like we know it – if it hadn’t been for Joe Namath and the Jets,” Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame linebacker Bobby Bell said earlier this week.
“When we played in the first Super Bowl, we felt like we had the entire American Football League on our back. We weren’t just playing for pride, or each other or Kansas City – we were playing for every team in the American Football League.
“The NFL guys were calling us ‘Mickey Mouse,’ and things like that and we wanted to win that game so badly. But we didn’t – Green Bay was the better team that day.”
The Oakland Raiders then lost Super Bowl II (to that same Green Bay squad), but a brash young quarterback from the University of Alabama guaranteed a victory for the New York Jets in Super Bowl III and he delivered.
And a legend was born.
“When Joe guaranteed the Jets would win, people thought he was crazy,” Bell said. “When the Jets beat the (Baltimore) Colts, we found out he was crazy like a fox.”
When Namath and the Jets returned to their hotel following the upset win, Bell and many of the former AFL greats were in the lobby waiting for the party to begin.
“That was the biggest win in the history of the AFL. Back then, it was AFL vs. NFL – and the next year, the NFL and AFL was merging,” Bell said, “so Super Bowl IV had the last ever game for an AFL team.”
And that AFL team was Bell’s Chiefs.
“All the AFL guys were there to support us, and we were the big underdogs – big underdogs! – but that didn’t bother us,” Bell said, chuckling. “Coach (Hank) Stram played that up. He liked the ‘us against the world’ approach to a game and we were all fired up and ready to play.”
The Chiefs routed the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings 23-7 and the Super Bowl suddenly became the most talked about single-day sporting event in the United States.
“If the Jets had lost, and we had lost, who knows, there might not even be a Super Bowl today because no one would have cared,” said Bell, who was recently honored at the announcement of the 40th annual nominees for the 101 Banquet, which honors the top offensive and defensive players in the NFL, along with the top coaches and honorees from the hometown Chiefs. “But we showed we were as good as the NFL teams. We were so good, the NFL wanted us to become a part of their league. That was a good feeling, and I know it made (AFL founder and late Kansas City Chiefs founder) Lamar Hunt feel good.”
