Rick Gosselin, The Team That History Forgot with Rainy Day Books

Join Rainy Day Books in-store to celebrate The Team That History Forgot

The 1960s Kansas City Chiefs with author Rick Gosselin.

This event includes a conversation with the author and an opportunity to get your book signed and personalized.

The Book

The Team That History Forgot: The 1960s Kansas City Chiefs

While the Kansas City Chiefs are the NFL’s newest dynasty, winning three Super Bowls since 2020, most fans don’t recall the team’s earliest successful years before decades of futility. What about the underdog losers of that very first Super Bowl? 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 Author

Rick Gosselin has covered the NFL – and other sports — for 52 years. Upon graduation from Michigan State University in 1972 with a degree in journalism, he worked for United Press International for two years in his hometown of Detroit. Then he transferred to New York City in 1975 to cover the New York Giants and coordinate NFC coverage for the wire service. He transferred to Kansas City in 1977, spending nine years as UPI’s Midlands Sports Editor covering the MLB Royals, NFL Chiefs, NBA Kings, the Big Eight, NCAA and golfer Tom Watson. Gosselin moved to The Kansas City Star in 1986, where he covered the Chiefs and the NFL for four years. He then went to work for The Dallas Morning News in 1990. He covered the Cowboys from 1990-91, then served as the newspaper’s NFL columnist from 1992-2011 until his appointment as a general sports columnist in August 2011. He retired from the newspaper in February 2019.

Gosselin won the inaugural Bill Reed Award as the outstanding student sports writer in the Big Ten in 1971. He was named the Missouri Sports Writer of the Year in 1980 by The National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters, and won the Dick McCann Award in 2004 for “long and distinguished reporting on professional football.” He has won writing awards from The Associated Press, The Professional Football Writers of America and The Dallas Press Club. He received a distinguished alumnus award from Michigan State University in 2014 and a “Legends of North Texas Journalism” award from the Dallas Press Club in 2019.

In his career, Gosselin has covered two summer and one winter Olympics, five World Series, five NCAA Final Fours, NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs, MLB and NHL all-star games and a World Cup in addition to 37 Super Bowls. He is the Dallas representative on the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee and also votes on the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Please Note: There are no refunds for this event. If you are unable to attend, your book will be available for pickup at the shop the following day. If you are not local, we'll be happy to mail it to you. Thank you for your support!