A summer statement

Aug 07, 2008, 1:31:47 AM by Jonathan Rand - FAQ

For Chiefs fans who are gray around the temples, tonight’s game against the Bears in Chicago should bring back memories of one of the most important pre-season games ever played. Actually, it may have been the only important pre-season game ever played.

The Bears came to Municipal Stadium on August 23, 1967, during the first summer of inter-league play after the AFL-NFL merger in 1966. For AFL teams, who had endured seven years of putdowns, pre-season games against NFL rivals presented a chance to defend their honor.

The Bears game 41 years ago marked a special grudge match for the Chiefs. They’d been walloped 35-10 by the Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl the previous January, and winning coach Vince Lombardi rubbed salt in the losers’ wounds.

Asked by reporters to compare the Chiefs to the cream of the NFL, Lombardi replied: “I don’t think Kansas City compares with the best teams in the NFL. Dallas is a better team. There. That’s what you wanted me to say, isn’t it?”

Though the Chiefs weren’t getting a rematch with the Packers, the Bears were a suitable substitute. George Halas, in his final season as both Bears owner and head coach, had been the NFL’s most aggressive opponent of the AFL in its formative days.

During the summer of 1959, Halas offered NFL franchises to Dallas Texans/Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt and Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams if they would desert the AFL. When they turned him down, Halas, who led the NFL expansion committee, went after the AFL with new two new franchises.

Halas urged fellow owners to put a team in Dallas in 1960 to try and knock out Hunt’s Texans. He originally wanted to go after Houston, too, but the NFL couldn’t find a home stadium. Halas instead convinced the AFL’s owners in Minneapolis to switch to the NFL. Such cutthroat tactics caused bad blood to fester even after merger.

On top of all that, Chiefs coach Hank Stram received the Super Bowl highlights film from NFL Films and found it insulting. Before the Chiefs left their training camp at William Jewell College for the stadium, Stram showed them the film.

“Smoke was coming out of their ears,” he recalled.

Stram took pre-season games seriously, anyway, and the Chiefs had beaten the Oilers, Jets and Raiders by a combined score of 102-26. Circumstances formed a perfect storm for what happened to the Bears. The Chiefs poured it on for a 66-24 victory.

Gale Sayers, the Bears’ Hall of Fame running back from the University of Kansas, recalled: “We knew it was going to be a tough game, but we didn’t think they would beat us like that. The horse (Warpaint) they had running around the track after each touchdown almost died. It was awful.”

Chiefs wide receiver Chris Burford recalled in Jeff Miller’s book, Going Long, “When we went in at halftime, all the people were standing, and it didn’t stop the whole 15 minutes for halftime. Then, we killed ‘em. We scored every way you could. This was a game when the starters did not go out.

“Late in the third quarter, Richie Petitbon was playing safety and said, ‘When are you guys going to let up?’ I told him, ‘Not tonight, Richie.’

“And that shut up a lot of that crap about the AFL. In those days, both teams were on the same side of the field in Municipal Stadium. When we were going off the field, I was watching George Halas walk by. He had tears in his eyes.”

He hadn’t counted on losing. Especially not like that.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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A former sportswriter and columnist in Kansas City and Miami, Rand has covered the NFL for three decades and seen 23 Super Bowl games. His column appears twice weekly in-season.