Kansas City, Mo. – Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and popular radio and TV sports personality Len Dawson has passed away. He was 87.
He led the Kansas City Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in 1970 and even took the MVP title. “Lenny the Cool” also guided Chiefs fans through their ups and downs as a broadcaster for more than 50 years.
Dawson was admitted to hospice care earlier this month. In a statement from the Chiefs, “Len Dawson is synonymous with the Kansas City Chiefs. Len embraced and embodied Kansas City and the people who call it home. It would be hard to find a player who had a greater impact at the shaping the organization as we know it today than Len Dawson did,” said Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt.
Dawson was born in Alliance, Ohio, in 1935. Fifty-two years later, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame at nearby Canton, inducted after a 19-year football career. He was only the third person to enter the Hall of Fame as a player and announcer, after Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf.
“I was at work,” Dawson said with a laugh in 2017, when the broadcast booth at Arrowhead Stadium was formally dedicated to him. “Because my parents didn’t have much and they taught me, ‘If you want something, find a way to earn it to get it done.”
Dawson was a color commentator for the Chiefs radio broadcasts on the Chiefs radio network from 1984 to 2017. His broadcast play-by-play partner for 24 of those years, Mitch Holthus, was a longtime admirer.
“I got my mom to make a rough stitched sweater with 1 and 6 on it because I wanted to be Lenny Dawson,” Holthus said, referring to Dawson’s No. 16 sweater.
Dawson was a first-round draft pick from Purdue by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1957, but failed to earn significant playing time with the Steelers or in his two years with the Cleveland Browns in 1960 and 1961.
Meanwhile, Lamar Hunt founded the American Football League in 1960.
“I remember (Brown’s owner/coach) Paul Brown saying, ‘Hey, there are a lot of sons of rich people. This is a hobby for them,'” recalls Dawson. “‘It won’t be more than a year or two. It won’t be long.'”
Dawson signed with the Dallas Texans in the fledgling AFL for the 1962 season and was reunited with coach Hank Stram, one of his assistant coaches at Purdue. The Texans won the AFL Championship that year before moving to Kansas City.
In 1964, Dawson threw 30 touchdown passes, a record of the Chiefs until Patrick Mahomes smashed it with 50 in 2018. About to break Dawson’s record, Mahomes said he had talked to Dawson about it.
“If you throw 30 touchdowns in today’s league, where there are a lot more passes, you’re still going to have a great season,” Mahomes said in 2018. “To be so advanced, I mean he won a Super Bowl here. one of the best quarterbacks ever played.”
With Dawson on QB, the Chiefs lost in Super Bowl I, but defeated the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV. Dawson was the MVP.
“We were the underdog in that game,” he recalls. “We would be beaten by a few touchdowns. Luckily we didn’t believe that.”
Dawson’s last season was in 1975 when he was 40. Behind an injury-decimated offensive line, he was sacked seven times in one season-end game. By then, Dawson said, he knew his playing career was over.
“It made my decision,” he said. “I said, ‘That’s it. I don’t have to put up with these whippings anymore.'”
Unbeknownst to Dawson in 1966, Chiefs President Jack Steadman began discussions with the management of KMBC-TV and radio about involving Dawson in the broadcasts.
“I had no idea he was doing that, so it kicked off my broadcasting career,” Dawson said.
Not only did he remain an important figure in Kansas City, he also became known for a groundbreaking national show on HBO called “Inside the NFL.”