The last time the Kansas City Chiefs played in New Orleans for a Super Bowl trophy, it was 1970, and the game was played outdoors at Tulane Stadium, and tickets cost $15.
It was a dud of a game, not worth the price of admission, many agreed, with Kansas City beating the error-prone Minnesota Vikings 23-7. Bill Carter, then the sports editor for the Alexandria Town Talk, wrote in his post-game column, “Citizens who paid $15 to see the Super Bowl didn’t think it compared with the Sugar Bowl game between Ole Miss and Arkansas, for thrills and execution.”
In that Sugar Bowl game, also at Tulane Stadium, earlier that month, Archie Manning passed for 273 yards and a touchdown to lead 13th-ranked Ole Miss to a 27-22 upset over No. 3 Arkansas.
In Super Bowl IV — the last matchup of NFL and AFL teams before the two leagues merged — the winning Chiefs got $15,000 each. The losing Vikings each got $7,500. Oh, how times have changed. The winners of this year’s Super Bowl will get $178,000 each, and the losers, $103,000 each.
Compared to that $15 ticket in 1970, the cheapest ticket for this Super Bowl, scheduled Sunday, Feb. 9 at the Superdome, is roughly $6,500 – just 1 grand less than what the Vikings each got as runners-up in Super Bowl IV.
No team has won three straight Super Bowls. As tough as it is to win one, it’s even tougher to win two in a row, and more remarkable to win three straight titles.
Yet this brings a “hold my beer” moment. Should the Chiefs accomplish a threepeat, they would still have some work to do to achieve the five straight World Series titles the New York Yankees claimed from 1949-53, and they’d have much more work to do to match the eight straight NBA crowns won by the Boston Celtics from 1959-66. Perhaps more remarkable, the Celtics competed for the NBA championship in 10 consecutive seasons from 1957-66.
The shivering snowy weather New Orleans just went through last week came to mind when I saw a newspaper clipping from days before the Super Bowl IV game with a picture of Chiefs quarterback Lenny Dawson wearing a coat and shivering in 24-degree cold. He was posing in front of a frozen fountain in front of the team’s hotel.
That Chiefs team had several players from Louisiana on its roster: safety Johnny Robinson and center Remi Prudhomme from LSU, defensive tackle Buck Buchanan and cornerback Goldie Sellers from Grambling and running back Bob Holmes and wide receiver Frank Pitts from Southern.
Robinson, who had two fumble recoveries and a big interception in the Chiefs’ victory, roomed with quarterback Lenny Dawson the week before the game, and he was quoted after the game as saying they both had trouble sleeping the night before the game. Dawson couldn’t sleep because he was in the news because of an alleged link (found later to be untrue) to gamblers, not to mention nursing the emotional wounds from losing his father to a heart attack earlier in the season. Robinson couldn’t sleep because of an exceedingly painful torn rib cage.
Robinson, a Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame member who was an All-American at LSU and member of the Tigers’ 1958 national championship team, got a shot of Novocain before the game and another one at halftime to help him endure his pain during the contest. Dawson, meanwhile, was cool, calm and efficient in leading the offense and winning the game’s MVP award.
That game is also remembered, thanks to NFL Films, for Chiefs coach Hank Stram agreeing (for $500) to wear a microphone during the game.
Probably his most remembered and widely quoted line from that experience was when he exhorted his offense to “just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys.”
Super Bowl IV is also remembered for a halftime show like nothing ever seen before or since. After performances from the likes of Carol Channing and the Southern University band, there was a re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, with many cannon blasts that left the field so smoky it was difficult to see the action on the field early in the third quarter.
For a dud of a game, it also lives on in memories for yet another scene, this during the pregame ceremonies. Two hot-air balloons were supposed to lift off for each team. The Chiefs balloon rose without incident, but the balloon with a Vikings mascot in the basket dragged across the field before crashing into the stands.
Maybe that $15 ticket was worth the price of admission after all was said and undone.