DALLAS — A team from Dallas will be playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Well, kind of.
The Kansas City Chiefs are led by star quarterback and native Texan Patrick Mahomes, but the team itself was born 60 years ago in the city of Dallas as the Dallas Texans.
Chiefs owner and Dallas businessman Clark Hunt spoke at the Park City Club last week about his Super Bowl-bound team and sitting next to him were two red helmets: One with the arrowhead and interlocked “KC” for the Chiefs, the other with the outlined state of Texas with a star on the city of Dallas for the Texans.
“We appreciate the team’s history in Dallas,” said Hunt. “Several players for the 1962 team are still alive and excited to go to Miami and cheer the team on.”
Before the Dallas Cowboys became "America’s Team" they first had to win their own town. The Texans were the dream of Clark’s father, Lamar Hunt. He wanted to bring professional football to his hometown but the National Football League was reluctant to put a team in Texas where college football was king.
So Hunt launched his own professional league. The American Football League gave him his opportunity to bring pro football to Dallas and Texans began to play in 1960. Worried the new league would steal the heart of Texas, the NFL responded by awarding owner Clint Murchison a franchise that would become the Dallas Cowboys.
Both the Texans and Cowboys shared the Cotton Bowl for their first three seasons from 1960-62. The two teams battled it out for the best players and for the most fans but never on the field of play.
Eventually, the power of the more established NFL won out and Lamar Hunt moved the Dallas Texans to Kansas City after their third season. During a 2009 interview with, Clark Hunt said his father always wanted to see Dallas Texans vs. Dallas Cowboys in the Cotton Bowl.
“My dad, deep in his heart, wanted to challenge the Cowboys to play but the Cowboys probably would not have accepted the game for fear of being embarrassed by the upstart AFL.”
It was called “The Game that Never Was.”
But three years after Lamar Hunt passed away in 2006, "The Game that Never Was," finally was.
As part of the celebration of the AFL’s 50th anniversary in 2009, the Kansas City Chiefs wore the uniforms and helmet of the Dallas Texans in week five when they hosted the Cowboys, who were also clad in their 1960s Cotton Bowl era throwbacks.
After 50 years, the Cowboys and Texans squared off on the field. The game went into overtime and just as they did 50 years earlier, the Cowboys prevailed on a 60-yard touchdown from Tony Romo to Miles Austin.