In late 1959 the Minneapolis ownership group led by Max Winter was all set to join Lamar Hunt, Bud Adams and Bob Howsam in the upstart American Football League. All four had tried on several occasions to gain entrance into the National Football League. All had been turned away. Those four would bring laughter and then fear to George Halas and the other old farts in the NFL. Eventually Boston, Buffalo, New York and Los Angeles would join Dallas (Hunt), Houston (Adams), Denver (Howsam) and Minneapolis (Winter) as cities with a new football team in a new football league. That's right. The Minnesota Vikings that we all love was, at one time, an AFL franchise. This was the case up to and including the new league's first draft in late November 1959. Halas didn't much care for the new league having a team in his midwest. After years of telling everyone that they wouldn't expand the NFL expanded. When it became clear that these rich clowns weren't joking around the NFL acted. They introduced the Dallas Cowboys to challenge Hunt's Dallas team. Then they stole the AFL's Minnesota franchise. Winter went to that AFL meeting and draft with an invite, from Halas, to join the NFL. Minnesota went into that weekend as an AFL team. They came out as an NFL team. Lamar Hunt felt betrayed. He was.
Hunt's Dallas Texans would become the Kansas City Chiefs. With Minnesota's shenanigans in 1959, it was only fitting that the last Super Bowl before the full AFL-NFL merger would match the Minnesota Vikings and the Kansas City Chiefs. Lamar Hunt and Max Winter would end up in the same elevator just before Super Bowl IV. Not a word was spoken. Now, Lamar Hunt was perhaps the most soft-spoken, mild-mannered professional football team owner. Ever. In any league. After the elevator ride with a man that he once trusted and before a championship game between their teams, Hunt sat down for a nice dinner with family and friends. Soon, all Hunt could say was Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill..... The Chiefs thrashed the Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Winning that game wasn't just winning a championship game for Lamar Hunt. It ended a war that no one said he could win. It confirmed a decade of exhausting work that everyone said was pointless. The only people in his corner were his fellow owners. The AFL owners called themselves the "Foolish Club" with Hunt standing as the leading fool. Hunt might not have said that revenge was a thought in his mind when his Chiefs played that Super Bowl. The people that knew him best probably would.
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