Kansas City Chiefs - Logos and Uniforms

Logos and Uniforms

When the Texans began playing in 1960, the team's logo consisted of the state of Texas in white with a yellow star marking the location of the city of Dallas. Originally, Hunt chose Columbia blue and orange for the Texans' uniforms, but Bud Adams chose Columbia blue and scarlet for his Houston Oilers franchise. Hunt reverted to red and gold for the Texans' uniforms, which even after the team relocated to Kansas City, remain as the franchise's colors to this day.

The state of Texas on the team's helmet was replaced by an arrowhead design originally sketched by Lamar Hunt on a napkin. Hunt's inspiration for the interlocking "KC" design was the "SF" inside of an oval on the San Francisco 49ers helmets. Unlike the 49ers' logo, Kansas City’s overlapping initials appear inside a white arrowhead instead of an oval and are surrounded by a thin black outline. From 1960 to 1973, the Chiefs had grey facemask bars on their helmets, but changed to white bars in 1974.

The Chiefs' uniform design has essentially remained the same throughout the club's history. It consists of a red helmet, and either red or white jerseys with the opposite color numbers and names. White pants were used with both jerseys from 1960–1967 and 1989–1999. Beginning in 2009, during the Pioli/Haley era, the team has alternated between white and red pants for road games during the season. When the Chiefs wear their red uniforms, they always wear white pants. The Chiefs have never worn an alternate jersey in a game, although custom jerseys are sold for retail.

The Chiefs wore their white jerseys with white pants at home for the 2006 season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals. The logic behind the uniform selection that day was that the Bengals would be forced to wear their black uniforms on a day that forecasted for steamy temperatures. The only other time the Chiefs wore white at home was throughout the 1980 season under Marv Levy.

In 2007, the Kansas City Chiefs honored Lamar Hunt and the AFL with a special patch. It features the AFL's logo from the 1960s with Hunt's "LH" initials inside the football. In 2008, the patch became permanently affixed to the left chest of both Kansas City's home and away jerseys.

In select games for the 2009 season, the Chiefs—as well as the other founding teams of the American Football League—wore "throwback" uniforms to celebrate the AFL's 50th anniversary and the 1962 Dallas Texans team that won the AFL Championship.