1969: The Kansas City Chiefs

By Corinne H. Smith

1969:  I turned twelve years old.  I was in seventh grade (section 7FL) at Centerville Junior High School, where Mr. Bailey was my homeroom teacher.  Daddy was 40, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was beginning to work as a nurse for a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  (Did you notice the change in scenery?  We moved to a brand-new house a few miles from our first one.)  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my twelfth birthday was “Wedding Bell Blues” by The Fifth Dimension.  Mom snapped this photograph.

     My father taught me about music.  My mother taught me about football.

     Mom was the youngest of four, and she had two older brothers.  Maybe that’s why she knew about sports, specifically about baseball and football.  She grew up within walking distance of the Allentown High School stadium, so she probably went to games there when she was a teenager.  She definitely used to go to the college football games both when she was a student and then when she began working as registered nurse at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  She once even witnessed Penn daring to tie Notre Dame, much to the chagrin of her Irish-supporting date that day.  (The 1952 home opener, 7-7)  He was so upset that he had to throw up.  She was overjoyed, and spent the rest of her days madly cheering on every one of Notre Dame’s opponents.

     Daddy played in the marching bands at Emmaus High School and at Lehigh University, so he spent eight years in a row on football fields.  I followed in his footsteps and did the same at Hempfield High School and Clarion State College.  Daddy had seen enough football in person, and he understood the game.  He just preferred participating in or watching the halftime shows.

     So it was Mom who explained the rules of the game to me, as we sat down to watch football on TV each weekend in the Fall.  College ball on Saturdays, the pros on Sundays.  Four downs, the line of scrimmage, the difference between offsides and illegal procedure.  When to go for it and when to kick.  The beauty of the downfield spiral.

     Based on mere geography alone, we should have rooted either for the Philadelphia Eagles or for the Baltimore Colts.  Mom had been a Phillies baseball fan when she was young, but for some reason her loyalties to the City of Brotherly Love never extended to the Eagles.  And the Colts?  Well sure, Johnny Unitas was a talented player.  But how could we ever cheer for a Southern team?  We were firmly entrenched Northerners.  A full 30 miles of buffer-zone landscape lay between us and that crucial Mason-Dixon line.  Was that all?  It sure seemed like a lot more.

     By the late 1960s, the two of us were scrambling for a good pro team to root for.  The NFL and AFL were still separate entities.  We gravitated toward the AFL teams, which then consisted of the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Houston Oilers, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, and the San Diego Chargers.  Mom thought that Joe Namath was too much of a showboater, even though he was a native Pennsylvanian and therefore otherwise could have won our favor.  But after eliminating the Jets, we still weren’t sure who “our” team could be.

     Then during one broadcast in 1967 or 1968, Kansas City quarterback Len Dawson was lined up at center and shouting the count.  He turned toward us:  well really, to the line-of-scrimmage camera.  “Wow, look at those beautiful blue eyes!” Mom said.  And that was that.  We started watching the Chiefs.  OK, so I’ll admit that at first, we were attracted to Len Dawson’s eyes.  But we liked his leadership style, and the way he lined up his teammates in two rows instead of in a huddle.  And the Chiefs had a number of other great players then, too:  Bobby Bell, Willie Lanier, Otis Taylor, Curley Culp, kicker Jan Stenerud, and a rookie running back named Ed Podolak.  I loved it when Otis Taylor leapt up to catch one of Len’s passes.  And what wasn’t to like about Hank Stram, the quintessential pro coach?  Coincidentally, we made this choice in time to follow them all of the way to the Super Bowl during the 1969 season.  What a great ride!

 

My honorary contract with the Kansas City Chiefs, for the 1972 season

     In 1972, I spent a few dollars to become an “official” Kansas City Chiefs fan.  I got an honorary contract (“signed” by Lamar Hunt himself), a felt wall pennant and a few other gim-gaws that I may still have in a box in the basement.  I taped a Len Dawson poster to the back of my bedroom door.  We watched and cheered for the Chiefs whenever they were on TV.  In high school, I checked out a football manual from our school library.  It had a photo of Hank Stram on the cover, and he may even have written part of the book.  Yes, I was quite proud that the Chiefs were my team.  It was even more fun that they weren’t local, and that not many people around us shared in our support.

     Of course, loving the Chiefs meant that we had to hate the Oakland Raiders, their natural rivals.  These guys turned out to be easy to hate.  That’s why I was watching the Raiders-Steelers game on TV on December 23, 1972, and why I was hoping the Steelers would win.  My mother and I were at a friend’s house; and as the clock wound down on the game, we got ready to leave.  It was all too obvious that the Steelers weren’t going to be able to prevail against The Enemy.  Mom was already out in the kitchen, goading me to get a move on.  “Wait a minute,” I said, as I watched the TV screen for what was sure to be the last play of the game.  That’s when it happened.  Franco Harris made a shoe-string catch – The Immaculate Reception – and ran for the touchdown.  I screamed and drove everyone back into the living room to watch the replay.  Steelers 13, Raiders 7.  Take that, John Madden.

     When I went off to college in western Pennsylvania in the Fall of 1975, it was in the middle of the Steel Curtain run of the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Everyone on campus was wearing Black and Gold.  This wasn’t a bad bus to jump onto.  I still liked the Chiefs, but I didn’t get to see their games very often on local TV.  I turned into a Steelers fan.  I also grew to have a soft spot in my heart for the Buffalo Bills too, especially once Jim Kelly started playing for them.  Gosh, if he’d only gone to the college closest to his home, we would have walked on the same sidewalks of the same campus and would have been able to share that same football field…

     When I lived in northern Illinois from 1995-2003, I had difficulties sustaining my AFC allegiances.  The Bears-Packers tension of the region gave preference to NFC games on TV.  I kind of liked both teams.  (But you can’t say that in public out there.  Or anywhere, really.)  I eventually became more of a fan of the game in general instead of donning specific colors, one way or another.  I will admit that I bought and wore a foam Cheesehead to a pro game, however.

     I have attended five pro games.  Bills-Oilers at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, 1997.  Packers-Lions at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, 2001.  (Both were my birthday presents to myself.)  I’ve been to three or four games at Orchard Park, N.Y.:  Bills vs Colts, Bills vs Patriots, Bills vs Steelers, and perhaps one other.  I’d have to check my ticket stubs.  Yes, I have had lake-effect flakes fly off of Lake Erie and into my face, and I have sat in snow to watch the Buffalo Bills play ball.  Life is good.

     I have made four visits to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.  One was just to see the place and to take the tour in 1994.  The other three were to watch my favorite players get inducted into the Hall:  Lynn Swann and Marv Levy (2001); John Stallworth and Jim Kelly (2002); Rod Woodson and Bruce Smith (2009).  At one of those ceremonies, I saw Len Dawson from a distance and waved to him.  He must not have seen me.  I guess I blended in with the rest of the crowd.  He’ll never know what he started.

     I gave up watching college football long before the BCS system was created.  But I still have to watch the pros on Sundays in season.  I still cheer for the Bills and the Steelers, and still root consistently against the Raiders, the Cowboys, the Eagles, the Dolphins, and the Browns (in both their current permutation and their previous one, now known as the Ravens).  I believe the cities of Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Seattle, and Charlotte (i.e. “Carolina”) host merely untested expansion teams that don’t really account for much in the grand scheme of the game.

     When I moved to Massachusetts in 2003, I additionally became a New England Patriots fan.  Again, this was not a bad bus to jump onto.  I mean, really.  Tom Brady?  Mom never got to see him play, but she sure would have fallen hard for him.

     As we were saying our goodbyes for the last time, a former boyfriend once quipped:  “At least I know where you’ll be every Sunday, every Fall.”  Yup.  Sitting on the living room couch, watching the big boys pass the pigskin and run for touchdowns.  I would have been insulted by his remark, if I hadn’t known in my heart that it was all too true.