Hunt's game won't be same

From the time I began covering Lamar Hunt and his brainchild American Football League in 1959 until we last met in 2006, I never heard this modest, soft-spoken man raise his voice. But I missed that dinner party at Antoine's in New Orleans' French Quarter one night in January 1970, before Lamar's Kansas City Chiefs played the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

Table talk turned to the oddsmakers making the Vikings 13-point favorites, and the elegant old dining room grew warmer.

"Everyone was all fired up after reading and hearing all week how the poor Chiefs didn't have a chance against the mighty Vikings," said Jack Steadman, longtime general manager for Lamar's football club in Dallas and Kansas City. "Lamar began talking about how the Minnesota owners had double-crossed him and the other AFL owners in November 1959 by pulling out and accepting an NFL franchise. He wound up pounding the table and yelling, 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' "

Veteran Chiefs broadcaster Bill Grigsby wondered whether the chandelier might shatter.

"The crowd in Antoine's was shocked," he said.

But no more shocked than most of America the next day when the Chiefs whipped the Vikings, 23-7, on a bright, cold afternoon at old Tulane Stadium. This was the last time the AFL competed against the NFL before it merged with the older league the next September, and the Chiefs closed the AFL's 10 seasons with a bang.

In the locker room, I congratulated Hunt, and he shook my hand. He had a frozen expression on his face, like a little boy on Christmas morning who had gotten everything he wanted. Some people had written off the Jets' beating the Colts in Super Bowl III as a fluke. But now the Chiefs had physically and strategically dominated the Vikings. It was obvious the AFL had really grown up, and this quiet, bespectacled man beamed like a proud father.

It showed the passion he felt for the league and team he founded when he was 27 years old. Sure, he got a kick out of founding World Championship Tennis, helping start two professional soccer leagues and remaining an original investor in the Chicago Bulls. But all of that came later.

"Of all Lamar's loves in sports," Steadman said, "his first were the Texans-Chiefs and the AFL."

His love, and his leadership, will be saluted again today when another AFC champion receives the Lamar Hunt Trophy and heads for the Super Bowl, a game he named and helped create. Hunt, sadly, will not be there for the celebration. He died in Dallas on Dec. 13 after an 8 1/2 -year battle with prostate cancer.