When the Kansas City Chiefs played the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I in 1967, they had only been in existence for seven seasons and were tasked with the monumental burden of representing the still-fledgling American Football League against the NFL’s team of the decade.

The Chiefs won their first AFL Championship in 1962, as the Dallas Texans, when owner Lamar Hunt decided the Dallas market couldn’t support two pro football teams—it could barely support one. After just three seasons, the Texans relocated to Kansas City, where they became the Chiefs. Under future Hall-of-Famers Len Dawson, Buck Buchanan, and Johnny Robinson, they were the winningest AFL team and helped integrate pro football more than any other team in the 1960s.

In The Team That History Forgot, Rick Gosselin explores the team’s struggles and triumphs in its early years, the competition created by the AFL in player signing wars, the recruitment of athletes from historically Black colleges and universities, the loss of the franchise identity with the move from Texas to Kansas City, the first Super Bowl and the humiliating loss against the Packers, and the moves the Chiefs made to recover from that loss and win Super Bowl IV, the last game before the two rival leagues finally merged in 1970. The early Chiefs set a bar for excellence that the team continues to pursue today.

The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

“The stories in here absolutely sing.” (Peter King, three-time National Sportswriter of the Year)

“Gosselin educates us with vivid detail and storytelling on the best team no one seems to remember.” (Michael Lombardi, author of Football Done Right)

“A wonderful journey back in time to the birth of the AFL...” (Ron Wolf, member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame)