When the little guys hit it big: Helping to bring AFL and NFL together turned into a covert operation for Chiefs owner

The clandestine meeting occurred in front of the Texas Ranger statue in the lobby of Love Field in Dallas.

In a scene out of a spy novel, Lamar Hunt, the maverick founder of the upstart American Football League and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, was changing planes, and he signaled to Tex Schramm, general manager of the Dallas Cowboys of the established National Football league. They adjourned to Schramm's car and secretly began discussing a merger of the two leagues in April 1966.

The rebel AFL, which began play in 1960, had caused a bidding war for players that neither side could withstand, so unbeknownst to the public, Hunt and Schramm exchanged proposals.

The result was a merger announced on June 8, 1966, uniting two sides in what would become the most successful sports league in the world.

"The greatest thing of all was nobody knew about it except for Lamar, Tex and (commissioner) Pete Rozelle," recalled Gil Brandt, then the Cowboys' personnel director. "It was a very, very, well-kept secret. It was fortunate that there were two guys who really had the best interest of the entire league in their minds, and that's why it was done. Lamar is very league-conscious and always has been, and Tex was league-conscious.

"Because there were two people with a broad understanding without their own agenda, that's why the whole thing came about."

As the NFL celebrates the 40th anniversary of the merger, Hunt is still amazed they were able to pull it off.

"There was common sense that said that something needed to be done," Hunt said. "That was the spirit in which Tex Schramm came to me. He and Pete Rozelle felt there were economic hardships on teams in the NFL as well as the AFL.

"Tex laid out the parameters that he thought would work. I thought they were reasonable. I took them to our nine-person ownership, and seven of the nine felt it was the right thing to do. The two not in strong favor were the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. They felt the NFL was asking for too much."

The merger called for the nine AFL clubs to pay a total of $18 million over a 20-year-period to join the NFL. A common draft would be instituted in 1967. Rozelle would serve as the commissioner. Two new franchises, Cincinnati as the AFL's 10th franchise and New Orleans as the NFL's 16th franchise, would be added by 1968. Interleague preseason games would be played in 1967, and a common schedule would begin in 1970.

Best of all, all existing franchises would remain intact.

"It was the right thing to do," Hunt said. "It consolidated the sport. It assured the continuity of every team in both leagues. There have been mergers in sports before, like between the NFL and the All-America Football Conference (in 1950), where only three teams out of that league came in and four others went out of business. What's happened has gone beyond anyone's expectations. This gave the public the Super Bowl."

When Hunt and the seven other original owners of the AFL -- better known as "The Foolish Club" -- plunked down $25,000 apiece plus a performance bond of $100,000 for their franchises in the fall of 1959 and formed their league, he didn't envision an eventual merger with the NFL.

"The new league was to create a structure similar to baseball, where there was an American and a National League," Hunt said, "and I was vaguely aware the American League in baseball was a rebel league. It started in 1901 and fought with the National League ... and then they agreed to have a World Series.

"In a naïve sense, I was looking at the structure that a second league could survive and go from there."

Once the merger talks began, Hunt wanted to keep the leagues separate, have a common draft, and meet in a championship game.

"The first thought was to have the champions of the two leagues play each other," Hunt said. "The fans wanted it, the media wanted it. ... My personal druthers were to keep the AFL teams pure as a separate league. There were strong feelings on both sides.

"When Paul Brown came into the AFL after the merger, he felt strongly he was an NFL-oriented person, and he felt he paid for an NFL franchise and wanted equality."

Hunt still closely monitors the interconference games between the AFC and NFC and takes great pride in the AFC's overall lead of 952-866.

The Chiefs won the AFL championship in 1966 and went on to play in the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, losing 35-10 to Green Bay. By the next year, the title game was called the Super Bowl, a nickname coined by Hunt's children, based on a toy known as a "super ball."

Kansas City also won the last AFL championship in 1969, leading up to beating Minnesota 23-7 in Super Bowl IV.

"That was a wonderful culmination of the 10-year history of the American Football League," Hunt said.

COMMENTARY

THEIR TAKES: Columnists around the country write about Lamar Hunt

PHILADELPHIA --- I've never much cared for rich people, particularly ones born with silver spoons in their mouths. I'm the son of a couple of factory grunts who worked too hard and died too young, and I tend to get a little nauseated around people with money. Particularly those who enjoy flaunting it.

Lamar Hunt never flaunted it. Despite the considerable difference in bank account balances, the Kansas City Chiefs' owner never acted like he was better than you. Mainly because he didn't think he was.

"He was a real gentleman and a tribute to the game," said former Chiefs tight end Fred Arbanas. "A lot of owners have been boisterous and arrogant. You never saw Lamar that way. All the trips we took on airplanes, Lamar would be helping serve food to the players, bringing them drinks and picking up the trash. He just pitched in."

Hunt, the son of a wealthy Texas oilman and a graduate of the Hill School in Pottstown, was a regular guy who just happened to have a lot of money and own a football team.

I remember a long-time-ago Super Bowl shortly after Hunt had hired former Philadelphia Stars president Carl Peterson to be the Chiefs' general manager. Peterson pulled up at his hotel in a stretch limo, as did most of the league's owners and executives. Hunt? He and his wife, Norma, pulled up a few minutes after Peterson in a midsize rental from Hertz.

About eight years ago, my wife and I sat next to the Hunts at a dinner party that former Stars owner Myles Tanenbaum hosted for Peterson before the Chiefs played the Eagles at the Vet. When we first saw the seating arrangement, we thought it was going to be a long night. I mean, what were we going to talk to them about for an hour and a half? Ended up being easier than chatting with the neighbors.

"He was not one to flaunt it," said Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams, who was one of the eight original American Football League owners with Hunt. "He just did it."

Yes, he did. When the NFL rebuffed his attempt to buy a franchise and move it to Dallas, he founded his own league, the AFL, in 1960. Six years later, he was instrumental in negotiating a merger between the AFL and NFL.

"Everyone who played or coached in the AFL and went on from there is indebted to Lamar Hunt," said John Madden, who got his coaching start in the AFL. "There are owners, and there are top guys. Lamar Hunt was a top guy."

Hunt, who came up with the name for the Super Bowl while watching his kids play with a SuperBall, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972.

"He was the founder, the energy really, that put together half of the league," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "And then he was the key person in merging the two leagues together. You'd be hard-pressed to find anybody that's made a bigger contribution (to the NFL) than Lamar Hunt."

And you'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer man.

--- Paul Domowitch, Philadelphia Daily News

DALLAS --- America has lost its last great sportsman.

Lamar Hunt wasn't a rich guy who aspired to be a sportsman. He was a sportsman who happened to be rich. The choices the Dallas oilman made in life were always in the best interest of his sports, not his wallet.

That set him apart from the new breed of franchise owners in America. Hunt didn't involve himself in sports for wealth or ego. His involvement was based on his love for the games, not a love of himself. It was always about the "sports," never about the "man."

If Hunt was in it for the fame or fortune, he'd have become the owner of the NFL Cowboys in 1960. He also never would have involved himself in pro tennis, pro soccer or the NBA. But all four sports were enriched from his participation.

Hunt wanted to bring pro football to his hometown of Dallas in the 1950s and was steered by the NFL to the Wolfner family, who owned the struggling Chicago Cardinals.

But having been rebuffed twice by the Wolfners, Hunt decided to start his own league --- the AFL --- and recruited fellow millionaires Bud Adams, Barron Hilton, Ralph Wilson and three others to own the franchises.

The NFL tried to short-circuit Hunt's plan by offering him an expansion team in Dallas in 1960. If Hunt was in it for his own ego, he'd have accepted that offer. This time, the mighty NFL was coming to him.

What Hunt did next certainly wasn't in his own best interest, but rather the best interest of the fledgling AFL. He showed his integrity by turning down the NFL.

"I had actively sought people for a new league," Hunt said. "I wasn't in a position to desert them."

His Texans stayed in Dallas for three seasons, battling the Cowboys head-to-head for football fans. The Texans drew larger crowds than the Cowboys and won the state's first pro football championship in 1962.

If it was about his ego, Hunt would have continued to fight the Cowboys for his home turf --- a fight he was capable of winning with his fortune and philosophy of signing the best players from the state.

But again, he put aside his own ego and acted in the best interest of the AFL. Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City, where they became the Chiefs in 1963.

"It was a matter of economics," Hunt said. "We needed to have a successful league, so we needed eight teams that could succeed. We were not succeeding in Dallas. Neither were the Cowboys. It was kind of a standoff.

"It was hard ... emotional. I was a Dallas resident since 1938. The whole basis of the American Football League plan was to have teams in Dallas and Houston as rivals, much like the NFL had the Rams and 49ers in California.

"The move was difficult, but it was the right thing to do. What made it a lot easier was the fact that we sold enough season tickets that first year to get us into the black. It was something we needed to do."

The rapid rise of the AFL forced a merger with the NFL that was negotiated by Hunt, Cowboys president Tex Schramm and NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Hunt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972, and the AFC championship trophy has since been named after him.

Hunt also started the first pro tennis league in the U.S., the World Championship Tennis circuit, in 1967. That year, Hunt created the United Soccer Association, which planted the seed for the other sport of football in this country. He owned the Dallas Tornado, which gave his hometown the North American Soccer League championship in 1971.

Both leagues bled money for years, but Hunt continued to be a primary benefactor of the two sports. Both soccer and tennis have since taken root in this country as spectator sports. Hunt was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1982 and the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993.

Hunt also was an original investor in the Chicago Bulls --- and when he died, he still owned 11 percent of the NBA franchise. He attended championship-clinching games in the 1990s, sitting in the stands. But he never went to the locker room afterward, and he never even met Michael Jordan.

Hunt won championships in basketball, football and soccer. But the success of his teams was never about him. You never saw Hunt on the sideline at NFL games or in television views from his stadium suite. He stayed in the background, forcing the spotlight to focus on his teams, not himself.

It was always about the sport, never about the man. Dallas, the NFL and the American sporting scene won't be the same without him.

--- Rick Gosselin, The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON --- The NFL is losing its titans, one by one.

"Lamar Hunt was a founding father of modern professional sports," former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in a written statement released by the league.

The NFL lost one titan last year when longtime New York Giants owner Wellington Mara died, and now it has lost another.

When the owners gathered last week near Dallas, where Hunt lived, they knew his health was deteriorating. He'd been hospitalized for a partially collapsed lung, and doctors had found that his prostate cancer, diagnosed in 1998, had spread.

Chiefs president Carl Peterson, who had visited Hunt during that trip, stood outside the meeting room in Frisco, Texas, and talked about what his boss meant to the sport.

"I'm one of the most privileged executives to have worked for this man for 18 years," Peterson said. "He is, I think, the finest owner in all of professional sports. He calls once a week from Dallas and says, 'What are we doing, and how can I help?' We meet once a month during the season. Up until this season, in 17 years he'd missed one regular-season game. This year, unfortunately, he's missed five. He's a pillar and a founder in this league. ... He's always done what's best for the league first and for his franchise second."

Hunt was the founder of the American Football League and was a key figure in its merger with the NFL in 1970. Peterson spoke last week of being told stories by Hunt about his clandestine meetings in a parked car at Love Field in Dallas with Tex Schramm, the late president and general manager of the Cowboys, to plot the merger.

"He's probably the most unique person I've known," said San Diego Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer, who formerly coached the Chiefs. "The best story that I can remember of him came after the AFC championship game in '94. (It was) January in Buffalo. We had played them in the regular season and beaten them easily, and then (Chiefs quarterback Joe) Montana got hurt. They beat us pretty well. The point differential wasn't as great as the one when we beat them earlier in the year. We get on the bus. I'm upset: 'Marty loses in the playoffs again.'

"Lamar sits down in the seat in front of me, and after a few minutes he turns to me and says, 'They didn't beat us by as much as we beat them.' He's a very giving person and clearly one of the architects of the NFL as we know it today."

This is a time of division among owners. Owners of large-market franchises and small-market teams battle bitterly over labor and revenue-sharing issues. Some from the old guard have grown resentful of the ways of the newcomers, while many newcomers scoff at the antiquated attitudes of the old-timers.

But, new or old, the owners revered Hunt. They awarded a Super Bowl to Kansas City out of respect for Hunt, although that fell through when the Chiefs were unable to secure public funding for a rolling roof at Arrowhead Stadium. The owners awarded this season's Thanksgiving night game to the Chiefs because of Hunt. But he went into the hospital the day before Thanksgiving and was unable to watch the game because the hospital didn't get the NFL Network. He listened to the broadcast over the phone. At last week's meeting, the owners awarded $42.5 million from the league's stadium subsidy fund to the Chiefs to renovate Arrowhead.

Hunt's legacy will endure in the NFL: The AFC championship trophy is named for him. And Hunt's 41-year-old son, Clark, remains the Chiefs' chairman of the board.

"Everyone who follows professional football has lost a great friend in the passing of Lamar Hunt," said Bills owner Ralph Wilson, a fellow member of the old guard, in a written statement. "He was an unparalleled fighter battling a serious disease for 8 1/2 years. He was responsible for bringing the game to all parts of the United States. He was respectful and generous to everybody. I have tears in my eyes in expressing my condolences to (Hunt's wife) Norma and his family."

--- Mark Maske, The Washington Post

FORT WORTH, Texas --- There simply never was or never again will be a man more important to professional soccer in the United States than Lamar Hunt.

I've known people with a sliver of Hunt's financial fortune who propped themselves up with filthy egos and a woeful sense of entitlement.

Yet, in my experience, the billionaire Hunt never looked down on anyone.

He spoke with fans and reporters like people, without a pompous air of superiority.

I first discovered Hunt's sensible nature during an FC Dallas team picture day.

I arrived at training camp, where a black Lamborghini sat in the parking lot. I asked the team trainer if the supercharged sports car belonged to one of the Hunt boys.

The trainer laughed and said something along the lines of, "Are you kidding me? If one of those boys showed up driving that, Lamar would send them straight back to the dealership to return it."

Turned out, the hot rod belonged to the former team doctor.

See, for Hunt, it wasn't about showing off; it was always about the sport.

Certainly, his work in the AFL/NFL would be noteworthy enough.

However, Hunt was a fan of all sports and fell in love with soccer.

True to his personality, he supported it, while others even today bash the game.

Known as "Uncle Lamar" by the loyal soccer audience, Hunt invested in American professional soccer long before ESPN, adidas or investors such as Phil Anschutz and Robert Kraft ever believed in the sport.

Hunt invested in the Dallas Tornado of the North American Soccer League, which eventually folded because of other folks' reckless overspending. However, he wasn't ready to give up on the notion of professional soccer in the United States.

When Major League Soccer began in 1996, Hunt jumped into soccer again with teams in Columbus and Kansas City. He eventually added FC Dallas to reconnect his ties to the local soccer market.

He pioneered the MLS stadium building boom by constructing the nation's first MLS soccer-specific stadium --- Columbus Crew Stadium.

He then took the stadium model to a new level by helping build Pizza Hut Park in Frisco. With its 17 adjacent amateur fields, it has become the blueprint for financial success for the 11-year-old league.

The National Soccer Hall of Fame has issued only three Medals of Honor, including the one to Hunt on May 15, 1999. The 1991 U.S. women's national team and former U.S. soccer president Alan I. Rothenberg, who brought the World Cup to the U.S. in 1994, are the only others to receive the award.

Soccer Hall director Jack Huckel said, "The game at every level is richer for his contributions."

"When he created the Dallas Tornado of the North American Soccer League, soccer in the Dallas/Fort Worth region was virtually nonexistent," Huckel said. "Truly, every soccer player and soccer fan in the area owes a debt of gratitude to his commitment to the game, as does every soccer fan across America."

--- Tobias Xavier Lopez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

COMMENTARY

Reporter recalls: With Hunt, life was always interesting, upbeat

For someone whose family name smacked of wealth, Lamar Hunt simply never showed it. Literally. Lamar was a genuinely nice person, but he never carried cash with him.

I found that out first-hand one day back in the 1960s while walking through the Oakland airport after a Chiefs game against the Raiders.

"Bill," Lamar said. "Could you lend me 50 cents so I can buy a milkshake?"

I came up with the change as we approached a concession stand. Along came Jack Steadman, the Chiefs' general manager, and Lamar beckoned him to pay me back. So the loan didn't last long.

Such stories about Hunt not having cash on hand are legendary. Somehow I never got around to asking him why. But it would have spoiled a good story of the trying-to-make-it-to-next-payday sportswriter lending money to one of the world's richest men.

Hunt was probably most famous in sports for organizing the American Football League in 1959. Rebuked by the NFL for a franchise in his home base of Dallas, Hunt and seven other prospective owners began the AFL as a rival circuit in 1960. They became known as "The Foolish Club."

The owners struggled to gain acceptance, but the Foolish Club had fun along the way. At a league meeting in Kansas City in the mid-'60s, the club executives decided to play a joke on San Diego coach/general manager Sid Gillman, who missed the meeting because of illness. They sent him a telegram that read: "The AFL board of directors wishes you a speedy recovery. The vote was 4-3."

"And," Hunt chuckled, "with San Diego abstaining."

Finally, the NFL owners had enough of skyrocketing bonuses and salaries to players and agreed to a merger.

Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas conceded by saying, "You can't kill the bankrolls of Lamar Hunt and (Houston owner) Bud Adams."

Hunt had a longstanding relationship with Hank Stram, his coach with the original Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs. It began when Stram was an assistant coach and Hunt was a reserve on the SMU football team.

Stram later joked about the longtime security he enjoyed with Hunt. "It pays to be nice to your third-string end," Stram said. "You'll never know if someday he'll be your boss."

Stram was the best man at Hunt's wedding and in January 1970 brought his owner the Chiefs' only Super Bowl championship.

Hunt was an optimistic sort who always believed that the Chiefs had a chance to win every time they played. There was one notable exception. It came in an exhibition game against the Los Angeles Rams. The NFL had been hit by a players' strike, and most of the Chiefs regulars were latecomers to training camp. The Rams were loaded with veterans who walked in early, creating an obvious mismatch. Stram figured his veterans weren't ready to play, and he went with a team of rookies and assorted free agents who had little chance of making the squad.

Hunt's pessimism was justified. The Rams routed the Chiefs 58-16 in the L.A. Coliseum.

On the eve of the 1978 NFL opener in Cincinnati, Hunt met with the writers for dinner and asked them to jot down their predictions on the team's record that season. It wasn't a good outlook. Marv Levy's first Chiefs team went 4-12. Hunt, as usual, foresaw a brighter year, although he didn't disclose his own prediction.

To Hunt's delight, the Chiefs upset Cincinnati in the opener. To which Hunt said, "It's always good to win that first game. That way, you can't go 0-16."

Before a Chiefs exhibition game in Dallas in the early 1970s, Hunt invited the players and press to a cookout and tour of his palatial estate in the Dallas suburbs. Halfback Ed Podolak, noticing an enormous closet, remarked to linebacker Bob Stein, "Where are the hashmarks in here?"

Hunt was a world traveler. He sent back postcards to our office from Victoria Falls in Africa and from snowy Austria. He loved being a tour guide for team followers on the charter trips around the league.

On a flight into Buffalo, Hunt told us, "I've asked the pilot to circle the (Niagara) Falls."

It was a great view and an exciting time, as it was with all of the years spent with Lamar Hunt.

Bill Richardson was a longtime Star reporter on the Kansas City Chiefs beat and covered their victory in Super Bowl IV.

COMMENTARY

KC, we lost a very dear friend

I lost a friend Wednesday night.

Not the kind of friend you talk to every day. I hadn't spoken to Lamar Hunt in nearly 10 years. But a friend, nevertheless. You, Kansas City, lost a friend as well --- whether you realize it right now or not.

See, it's been popular the last few years in this town to snipe at the man who changed the face of American sports some 40 years ago. You're footing too much of the bill on stadium renovations at Arrowhead while the millionaire owner is rolling in dough. He cares only whether the stands --- and his pockets --- are filled, not whether there's a Super Bowl contender on the field. He has this silly rolling-roof idea and tries to sell it to you every few elections or so, trying to pick your pocket even further. He represents everything bad about the big business of sports because the NFL is the bully on the block.

Well, take a breath. Kansas City is a big-league sports town because of Lamar Hunt. The National Football League might have arrived eventually. But we didn't have to wait. When Hunt formed the American Football League, he brought professional football to places where the NFL had expressed no interest. He took a chance on Kansas City, and over the years having the Chiefs here has enriched our lives.

Maybe baseball would have returned to Kansas City after Charlie Finley left anyway. Ewing Kauffman certainly was willing to step up. But it didn't hurt that baseball's owners could see how supportive sports fans in this city could be of successful teams after the Chiefs' 1966 AFL championship. And a new stadium on the horizon didn't hurt, either.

The history will be recounted elsewhere in much greater detail. Here's the reason Kansas City lost a friend. Lamar Hunt --- whether you believe it or not, with escalating prices and the cost of stadium improvements --- was about the sport and the fans. In sports, a league is only as strong as its weakest team. Hunt's AFL pioneered the concept of revenue sharing. The NFL copied it two years later, making the merged league the most financially stable in all of sports.

The Truman Sports Complex is better for the fans because there are sport-specific stadiums. Fans have a better view of the games, and Kansas City never suffered the misguided efforts of dual stadiums like those in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati (which no longer exist, by the way). Although she is showing her age in many areas, Arrowhead remains the only stadium of its generation that even remotely resembles what she looked like on opening day more than 30 years ago. That is, in part, because Hunt made regular inspections and took meticulous notes of which toilet wasn't working. And it was fixed.

Besides pro football, Hunt helped expose us to other big-time sports: World Championship Tennis, the North American Soccer League, Major League Soccer, exhibition games of the U.S. women's soccer team, and college football. Hunt attended most of the games, just as a fan would. He enjoyed them, just as a fan would.

Whether another owner would have done the same thing ... it's possible. Lamar Hunt did do those things. And that's why, Kansas City, we all lost a friend. Not just a friend. A very good friend.

To reach Kent Pulliam, Star sports wire editor and former Chiefs beat reporter, call (816) 234-4370 or send e-mail to kpulliam@kcstar.com.

Undaunted beats heart of the Chiefs: Despite daily radiation treatments, team owner keeps up a grueling schedule with aplomb, goodwill and a winning sense of humor

LAMAR HUNT | 'I'm happy to be here eight years later'

DALLAS | The elevators zoom down 40 stories, out of the airy Texas skyline and into the bowels of a dark parking garage.

Suits ramble on their earpiece cell phones, secretaries dash by in their pantsuits and sneakers, and Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt slowly inches to his BMW. He uses the cane in tough spots. He doesn't want it today, holding it at his side.

Hunt is on his way home, and that's reason enough to smile. He's not going to the hospital today.

For the last few weeks, at straight-up five minutes after 3 o'clock, Hunt has left the plush Thanksgiving Tower in downtown Dallas, or a mountain of paperwork at home, and gone for daily radiation treatments. The radiation was fast. Easy almost, he says. Ten or 12 minutes, and Hunt was back on his way, back to his crushing schedule.

If the man is on borrowed time, like a doctor said eight years ago when the words "prostate cancer" and "three or four years to live" were uttered, he won't dare return a second of it. He's a vintage Rolls Royce with rusted paint and worn tires, a 74-year-old body and a brand-new motor. He has so much to do.

"I'm doing OK," Hunt says as he eases into a leather chair upstairs in his offices. "I don't feel great every day, but it comes and goes. I'm happy to be here eight years later, and hope I can continue some more."

Hunt says the cancer has never gone away, and it's been a constant stream of good days, bad days and doctor visits in Dallas and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. This would appear to be one of the rough stretches. He's tired, he's missed two Chiefs games already this season, and his gait is slow and measured.

Hunt peels a cough drop out of its wrapper and takes a sip from a large Styrofoam cup of ice water. Pardon him, he says. He's caught a cold.

Most days, the Chiefs owner stares out a massive window into downtown. In the distance he sees Texas Stadium, and it no doubt reminds him of Kansas City's renovation project at the Truman Sports Complex. All over the office are pictures of his family, the 14 grandkids, and the 47 football teams he's embraced through the years.

"Hey, I've got a factoid for you," he says. "My son Daniel told me this yesterday. The three teams we've beaten in a row, all three of them start with an S. San Diego, Seattle and St. Louis. So we're going to get Miami to change its name to something S ... South Florida."

On a sun-splashed, short-sleeved day in north Texas, Hunt chats for two hours, with construction plans scattered on the table and a big alarm clock that's running an hour fast. He's asked if he has to leave.

"Don't worry, I've got ... I don't have anything that is more pressing than this," Hunt says. "Nothing is more important than this."

Hunt just returned from a 650-mile road trip to St. Louis. The Chiefs were underdogs last week -- again -- and pulled out a 31-17 victory with a backup quarterback and a slapped-together lineup that had lost four starters.

Hunt loves this 5-3 team. Says they're tough. He'll tell you this now: When quarterback Trent Green went down in the season opener, and the Chiefs started 0-2, he threw up his hands and braced for a 3-13 season.

"That was a number I used," Hunt says. "Because there's such a fine line between a really successful season and one game."

He hasn't been there to see all of it. When the Chiefs were rallying in Arizona, Hunt was watching from a hospital bed. He missed San Francisco, too. Hunt jokes that he's trying to limit his feel-bads to earlier in the week. When he goes to the hospital on Fridays, they lock him up all weekend.

If life was a merger, or a free-agent acquisition, then Hunt could ride his tenacity and it would probably come out all right. Like the time he wanted a football team nearly 50 years ago and the NFL turned him away. Hunt just went out and started the American Football League. But cancer, he says, is an inexact science. In 2003, he had his prostate removed. It was a radical surgery, but one the doctors recommended because it could give him more of a chance to live.

"Let's do it," Hunt told them.

Stomach problems and fevers laid him up recently. Minor setbacks, he says. He wrapped up his last round of radiation about a week ago, and now Hunt says he's just "waiting for the next steps" from his doctors. He says he has too many doctors.

Three to four years, that's what one doctor said would be a reasonable expectation when Hunt was diagnosed in 1998.

"That sounded like a pretty long time," Hunt says. "But you start thinking about things differently."

Hunt had to be in St. Louis last weekend. It was for the Governor's Cup, and he loves that state bragging rights stuff. After the game, the Cup lay on the floor in the middle of the locker room as Hunt weaved his way through the discarded towels and grungy uniforms. He had to do his traditional handshakes with the players.

Hunt talks to the players about how they felt that day or how their college team did that weekend, the short exchanges usually ending with giant hands reaching down to a weary grip.

"Thank you, Mr. Hunt."

Defensive end Eric Hicks doesn't play much anymore, but he still gets the handshake. A long time ago, when Hicks was new to Kansas City, his wife was waiting in the parking lot when she eyed Hunt pulling up in a Ford Escort.

"He actually went up to her and said, 'Hey, Erica, how you doing?' " Hicks says. "And we'd only been here for a minute. He knows everybody's name in this locker room, from the highest-paid to the lowest-paid guy. He knows everybody who works in the equipment room and the training room. He's truly involved."

Generations X and Y buzz through the revolving glass doors in the lobby of the Thanksgiving Tower and pass a giant bronze statue of Hunt's father, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. Most don't know who he is. H.L. Hunt was a legendary oil man. A gentle man, the inscription says. In the statue, H.L. looks as if he's ready to move.

It's often debated how many hours a week Lamar Hunt puts in these days. He'll say around 40, but his son Dan argues that it's closer to 60 or 70. They've tried to get him to slow down, before the cancer, between the treatments and surgery.

"Even when he feels really poorly, he is still working," Dan says. "I'll go to the house to check on him and say hi to my mother and he's working away. He's an amazing person. I am a lucky son."

Last spring, outgoing NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue asked Hunt to be on the committee searching for his replacement. Hunt pushed through for months, but when the finalist interviews started, he needed to be back in Texas for chemotherapy. His son Clark went in his place, a passing of the baton that has been in motion since about 2001. Clark is the Chiefs' chairman of the board, and he represents the family at board and league meetings.

Four months later, Lamar still hates the fact that he missed it.

Roger Goodell was eventually appointed commissioner, and afterward, Hunt sent him an e-mail. Actually, he had his secretary do it because he doesn't deal with e-mail messages. The note mentioned Goodell's twin daughters.

"I said something like, 'And you thought managing twin girls was difficult,' " Hunt says. "Because now, he's got to manage 32 idiots."

If Hunt's schedule is breakneck now, consider the years of 1966 and '67. He had the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, was one of the founding investors of the Chicago Bulls, and dabbled in professional soccer and tennis.

Oh, and in 1967, the stadium referendum passed.

The stadium renovation project is Hunt's baby, the bright glimmer in his tired eyes. He moved a radiation appointment recently so he wouldn't miss one of the meetings. Hunt used to take his kids to Arrowhead Stadium before they were toddlers. He showed them the massive parking lot, the tailgating, the spectacle. He always told them one thing.

"We need to take care of it so it can be here for a very long time."

Arrowhead, Hunt says, is the heart of the franchise. He is proud that while nearly every NFL city tears down stadiums and starts again, the old haunt is still standing.

"We're looking at improvements that will definitely last 25 years, or probably more," Hunt says. "I won't be here to look at it and worry with it 25 years from now, but it's hard to imagine at any time that Arrowhead will be replaced."

Former Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil likes to tell this story about Lamar Hunt. Vermeil was sitting in his office after a game a few years ago, and Hunt was still wandering around in the building, alone.

He asked if Hunt wanted to come over to his Country Club Plaza condo for leftover Oklahoma Joe's spareribs.

"I'd love that," Hunt said.

They stayed up for hours, laughing and talking. Vermeil came to Kansas City in 2001 after winning a Super Bowl in St. Louis, and he always had one goal -- to win one for Hunt. After all, the man hasn't held the Lombardi trophy in nearly 40 years, and he's never hoisted the AFC championship hardware that bears his name.

The 2003 Chiefs rolled to a 9-0 start while cancer was kicking Hunt around. That year, Vermeil tacked pictures of his boss on the goals board. On top was a saying: "From visionary to legendary." But after finishing the season 13-3, the Chiefs lost to Indianapolis in the playoffs, and Kansas City hasn't been back since.

The 2005 team, Vermeil says now, was better than '03. The Chiefs won 10 games, missed the postseason, and Hunt went back to Texas empty-handed. He never complained.

When Vermeil retired at the end of the season, the most emotional part of the news conference was directed at Hunt, who was seated in the back of the room.

"I didn't get you to a Super Bowl, Lamar," Vermeil said as he choked back tears. "But you'll get there some day, and I'll go with you."

Hunt sits at the head of a massive table in the board room at Unity Hunt, and the place is eerily quiet. Across the hall, past two heavy doors, Clark is busy in a meeting. Lamar wants to show off his antique map collection.

There's one from 1719, that's his favorite. California is an island; the world is an unknown. He runs his finger through the journeys of Magellan. He has at least 10 of these framed maps, and each one comes with a story.

He's been married to his wife Norma for 42 years, and they do a lot of antique shopping. They bought an ancient Venetian painting that hangs on a wall in the board room. Hunt stares at it and jokes that it's a depiction of Super Bowl I.

When he was younger and stronger, he'd garden at least one hour a day, seven days a week. Trimming the bushes into shapes and forms helped him find peace. Now Hunt is simply happy to maneuver through airports and locker rooms.

"I just marvel at the guy," Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson says. "He's got to exist on four hours' sleep because nobody can churn out the stuff he does. Despite some of his health problems ... he doesn't seem to slow down.

"I know where his heart is and where his mind is all the time. He's excited about the Chiefs."

Peterson feels the urgency to win for Hunt. So do the Chiefs. They wonder if it will happen this year, when so many things have gone against the franchise but the team has held strong. They walk faster to meetings and practices while their owner slowly inches on.

Nothing is more important than this.