KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As the Dallas Texans prepared to move to Kansas City after winning the 1962 AFL Championship, quarterback Len Dawson was skeptical about the idea. Some friends contended he'd be navigating livestock in the streets, after all, and he wasn't even sure what state it was in.
"I didn't know there were two of them: Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas," Dawson said in our 2013 interview about the 50th anniversary of the move. "(Friends asked) which one it was. I said, 'What do you mean?' "
He'd soon learn cows weren't running rampant around these parts ... and that the team's new home was in Kansas City, Missouri.
From this epicenter, first at Municipal Stadium and then at the Truman Sports Complex, the franchise became chiseled into the identity of the region by playing in two of the first four Super Bowls and captivating a fan base that later would make Arrowhead Stadium one of the most iconic sites in the NFL.
Now as much as ever: Decades of postseason futility have been paved over by coach Andy Reid and the advent of quarterback Patrick Mahomes; the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in half a century and have played host to four straight AFC Championship Games — accented by the long-awaited presence of the Lamar Hunt Trophy in the house that Hunt built.
Fifty years since the Chiefs debuted at Arrowhead, though, the anniversary isn't just one to commemorate. It's one that's prompting the Chiefs to consider the viability of their future there.
And even, apparently, to ponder a move across the state line to Kansas, as team president Mark Donovan told reporters in Florida at the NFL owners meetings last week.
The notion sent tremors through the region. But it would be at the end of a rainbow far out of view and obscuring the essence of what's at hand.
Because that hazy prospect is secondary to the most fundamental and tangible aspect of this discussion: Five decades into playing at a stadium that will turn nearly 60 by the time the lease expires in 2031, the Chiefs have to anticipate not just what's on the near horizon but look toward the next 50 years.
That's why the Chiefs have commissioned a financial study of best options ahead, investing what The Athletic reported was around $500,000 in the evaluation.
That figure was confirmed to The Kansas City Star by a team official, who said the "mindset" of the Chiefs is to be at Arrowhead for the balance of the lease and that the study is addressing what to do thereafter.
For all the hysteria this might be generating, and any leveraging notwithstanding, this should be understood as a matter of due diligence. If it seems abrupt, it's important to acknowledge the Chiefs spoke to this last fall, and to recognize that it wouldn't have been applied until two or three years from now but was accelerated by the reality that the Royals, their Truman Sports Complex counterparts, are actively exploring a move downtown before the lease expires.
This appraisal was inevitable, not to mention appropriate, with a crucial crossroads ahead.
From the Chiefs' perspective, anyway, the crux of the questions will be about whether to continue to enhance Arrowhead through periodic renovations (including $40 million the Chiefs have spent in the last few years), and at what point the treasured old bones have eroded beyond revitalization.
Whatever is to come is much deeper and more intricate and layered than whether the Chiefs would ever move across State Line Road, even though that prospect went at least locally viral after Donovan spoke in Palm Beach.
"Pretty consistently, we get inquiries from the state of Kansas, (that) if you're going to make a change, what if you brought the stadium here?" Donovan told reporters there, according to Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal. "So we're looking at that as well."
Now, it's tempting to dismiss any such talk as posturing toward financial negotiations and funding in the years ahead. Particularly since the Chiefs are intent on receiving public funding that at least matches any the Royals might secure.
From where we sit, too, we fret that this statement could muddle the message for a potential Royals move that we are convinced will be win-win for Kansas City because of the attached "particular focus on our underrepresented parts of the community" that Royals owner John Sherman has made a priority in the project.
Meanwhile, the very idea of the Chiefs moving to Kansas is heresy to many, including state and regional officials and fans in Missouri ...
Even as it surely sounds like nirvana across the border. Especially to a major number of season-ticket holders in Johnson County and politicians such as Gov. Laura Kelly.
Asked about the possibility of the Chiefs relocating to Kansas during an appearance on Thursday in Roeland Park, in fact, Kelly hinted at a willingness to push for economic incentives.
"I would be all for it, obviously," she said. "When I signed the (economic) border war truce with Missouri, it didn't include the Chiefs."
All of that talk feels jarring and sudden. But while it's certainly news that the Chiefs have made a more overt statement about looking to the future, it also shouldn't be a surprise if you were following along: Chairman Clark Hunt last fall publicly signaled they would soon be studying what to do next.
"Obviously we've been connected to the Royals for almost 50 years now here at the sports complex, and so their decision on their long-term future will have an impact on us," Hunt said in November. "And we're going to watch as they go through the process, and at some point here in the next year or so, start thinking about what's next for the Chiefs from a stadium standpoint."
While adding his belief that renovations (including the $375 million spent just over a decade ago, with $250 million furnished through Jackson County sales taxes) had restored Arrowhead to the top tier of NFL stadiums, Hunt referred to a different scale of ambition ahead.
"Obviously, things change, and the way fans want to consume the game and the kind of spaces that you need, those things change over time, and we're paying attention to that," he said.
Then he alluded to "beautiful stadiums" recently opened in Los Angeles and Las Vegas with amenities that Hunt suggested he was "sure we'll want to incorporate" when they get to the end of the lease.
SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, it might be noted, cost $5 billion; Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas had a price tag of $1.8 billion. Each is domed, making them suitable for hosting the Super Bowl (SoFi held the last one and Allegiant will be the 2024 site).
None of which is to say the Chiefs are declaring any such goal, including a roof. But it is to say that they are surveying a range of options even within a set of unknowns, such as what if the Royals don't move downtown?
Simplest of all, Hunt last November said "one possibility will be another renovation of Arrowhead."
If the Royals indeed move, another possibility is a combined renovation and expansion of the footprint at the stadium complex, perhaps in the spirit of the Patriot Place mall adjacent to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro or the Titletown development around Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
(Though the conspicuous absence of development in the area around the Truman Sports Complex in all this time may give pause to such thinking in terms of how much appeal such an enterprise might have on anything but game days.)
Speaking in generalities last fall, Hunt noted the vastness of the parking lot at the complex that provides "the tremendous tailgating experience," and said more space would "maybe allow us to do some different programming that we haven't done in the past."
Beyond that is the start of the unthinkable for many: an entirely new stadium on that site.
Or ... elsewhere.
That could perhaps include in the vicinity of Kansas Speedway and Children's Mercy Park, neighboring The Legends. That's coincidentally also near the intersections of Interstate 435 and 70 ... but on the other end of the metro, in Kansas City, Kan.
As of now, anyway, such a radical change still seems unfathomable for a franchise whose identity has been so entwined with a unique and vibrant site as to make anything different seem preposterous.
Moreover, the substantial issue of funding for whatever comes next is a multi-tiered variable within layers and layers of deeper questions.
This isn't about outcomes now, but input, and the traditionalist in me is hoping the more other things change the more this stays the same somehow.
But no matter how much we want to cling to the rich past and how we might wonder about bargaining chips being played and be dubious about the costs of all this, the Chiefs also would be negligent if they weren't scrutinizing these vital aspects of their own future.
