For some reason, the recent game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans reminds me of the 1962 AFL Championship game. If you’re a South Park fan, my train of thought might remind you of the character Jeff from the cartoon’s ‘Chaos Theory’ episode.
On Thursday, the Chiefs play the Texans. Texans used to be the name of the Chiefs franchise when it was located in Dallas. Houston used to have a team known as the Oilers. The Houston Oilers and Dallas Texans played for the 1962 AFL Championship.
However tenuous the connection between the 2020 opener and that game nearly 58 years ago may be, it is a significant moment in both the Chiefs’ and the AFL’s history.
A Solid Regular Season for the Texans and Oilers in ‘62
Coming into that game, both teams finished the season 11-3. Houston led the AFL’s Eastern Division, while Dallas led the Western Division. By AFL standards, both teams were talented. Houston had a roster with 12 AFL all-stars and featured AFL greats George Blanda and Billy Cannon. Dallas’ roster also had 12 all-stars including Len Dawson, Abner Haynes, Fred Arbanas, and David Grayson.
With eight teams in the AFL at the time, the season format was simple: play each team in the league once at home and once on the road, thus forming a 14-game schedule.
The Game: A Tale of Two Halves
Dallas and Houston split the season series in 1962 with the road team winning each game. Although oddsmakers favored the Oilers by a touchdown in the Championship game, the even records and season split were a more accurate indication of how the game would play out.
The 1962 AFL Championship game took place on December 23, 1962 at Jeppesen Stadium in Houston with nearly 38,000 fans in attendance. It got off to a slow start in the first quarter, reminiscent of Woody Hayes’ “Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust” brand of offense with very conservative play by both teams. Dallas had a 3-0 lead on a Tommy Brooker field goal when the quarter ended.
Things opened up in the second quarter; at least for Dallas anyway. Haynes scored two touchdowns, one coming on a pass from Dawson; the other on a two-yard run. Houston showed no signs of having a pulse as the Texans went into the intermission leading 17-0.
Houston played with a sense of urgency in the second half as Blanda and the Oiler D took over. It also helped the Oilers that Dallas was content to sit on its lead, a strategy that Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid would find blasphemous today.
In a manner more consistent with how current Chiefs’ offense would play, Blanda used his arm (and his foot) to put the Oilers back in the game. He connected with Willard Dewveall to put Houston within 10 at 17-7.
Blanda continued moving the ball down the field. One stalled drive resulted in Blanda kicking a field goal (yes, the QB kicked a field goal! More on this later) to put the Oilers within a touchdown, trailing 17-10.
Houston would tie the game in the fourth quarter when Blanda connected with Charlie Hennigan at the Texans’ one-yard line. the play set up a short touchdown run by fullback Charlie Tolar, a.k.a. ‘the human bowling ball’.
Overtime: Almost a Dallas Disaster
Dallas could not answer the Oilers’ second-half surge and the game went into overtime.
One of the 1962 AFL Championship Game’s unforgettable moments came on the coin toss for overtime. Dallas had won the toss and Haynes, who was one of the captains, told the referee that the Texans wanted to kick to the clock.
Not good. Haynes had messed up. Apparently he had been instructed to choose the side of the field going with the wind if the Texans won the toss, but you cannot choose both to kick, and what direction to kick to. So his choice to kick was honored, but Houston chose the direction, which meant the Texans would be going into the wind.
Fortunately for Haynes and the Texans, Houston would not score in the first overtime period and the game would go on to a second overtime period.
This meant the teams would switch directions, and with the wind at their backs, the Texans would march down the field. After 2:54 elapsed into the second overtime, Brooker kicked the game winning field goal, giving Dallas a 20-17 victory and its first AFL championship. The win broke Houston’s two-game streak of league championships.
Historical Game a Throwback to a Different Era
At over 77 minutes of game time elapsed, this game is the longest championship game, and third longest game overall in pro football history.
If you have a chance to watch the broadcast of the 1962 AFL Championship Game on YouTube or some other video site, you’ll notice a lot of differences between that era and today. Of course I won’t list all the differences, but a few that stand out.
Blanda, for example, was a multi-dimensional player in an era before players became specialized. As both a quarterback and placekicker, he scored a lot of points, finishing with a career total of 2,002 points, the most at the time he retired, and a total that still ranks seventh overall, nearly 45 years later.
The First Fantasy Football League in History
It’s not surprising that Blanda was the first player known to be picked in any fantasy football draft. The Oakland, CA-based Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) is recognized by many fantasy football sources as the first fantasy football league, and formed in 1962. Blanda was the first player chosen in that league.
Such multi-dimensional play was not unusual at the time. Texans kicker Brooker also played at end on offense.
Drafting and signing players in those days was also different. The announcers for the ABC broadcast of the game talked about a few players being ‘signed under the goalpoast’.
Back then both the AFL and NFL would draft players in December, and then try to sign them after their college eligibility ran out. This often meant scouts would hunt college players down after a bowl game ended and sign them right there.
For the first few years of the AFL’s existence, there was no common draft for all of pro football. Until a merger agreement was in place in 1966, both leagues were going after the same players coming out of college.
As a former football official, one of the things I noticed was the lack of crispness of the signals the officials used. I noticed the players getting away with late hits and offenses snapping the ball frequently without being set long enough. You can’t get away with that stuff today.
But there were more important ramifications than officiating mechanics. This game was a turning point in both the AFL’s and Texans’ history.
Hunt Unable to Claim Dallas Market in Spite of Team’s Success
Obviously a league championship like the Texans had just won is significant to any franchise, but this one had an ironic twist.
It would seem that winning a league championship would help both the Texans and the startup AFL become more stable financially, but it did not make much difference.
This championship game would be the last time Lamar Hunt‘s team would play a game as the Texans. The team would move to Kansas City in the offseason and become the Chiefs. It was a necessary move to save the AFL.
Hunt and the AFL were in a decade-long battle (for respect, market share, and players) against the NFL, the establishment of pro football at the time.
The Dallas market was important to both leagues as the NFL Cowboys franchise began play in 1960, the same season the Texans began play in the AFL. Both teams shared the Cotton Bowl as their ome venue for three seasons.
Although the Cowboys were horrible their first three seasons and the Texans were competitive during the same timeframe, Hunt had seen the writing on the wall. He had to take off his team owner hat and put on his league founder hat instead.
Why Hunt Made the Right Choice
The reality was that Hunt did not have the financial wherewithal to duke it out with the NFL in Dallas. To keep up the fight would have jeopardized both his team’s and the AFL’s future.
When you look at how expansive the Cowboy fan base is today, how it crosses multiple state lines and covers a large portion of the U.S. (especially in surveys of favorite teams by county) you can see that Hunt made the right decision.
The AFL and Texans would have been eaten alive if the team had not moved. Besides, the move allowed the Chiefs to grow their own multi-state fan base, previously underserved by the NFL.
With that information in mind, when you watch the Chiefs, Cowboys, Titans, and Texans play, you are watching the end result of over 60 seasons of pro football economics largely influenced by the state of Texas. The 1962 AFL Championship game is just another chapter in the rich football history of Texas.
About the Author
Christopher Mohr is a freelance writer from Wichita who has followed several professional sports for over 40 years. When he’s not writing about Chiefs’ history, he likes to bicycle on the rural areas of southern Kansas or online in the virtual worlds of Zwift.
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