The name Warren McVea often gets lost when considering the names of great players from the Chiefs Super Bowl IV championship team. Fewer still might remember McVea's groundbreaking role in the opening of college athletics to African Americans.
McVea died last week at the age of 79 in San Antonio, Texas. A celebrated schoolboy football star in his hometown, McVea joined the University of Houston in 1965, breaking racial barriers as the first black athlete at a major Texas school to receive a football scholarship. During his time with Houston, he received numerous death threats but set a school record with 3,009 all-purpose yards and caught a 99-yard touchdown pass against Washington State in the first college football game played on artificial turf. He was a second team All-American his senior year.
Drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the fourth round of the 1968 American Football League draft, he was traded to Kansas City the next year where he joined an already talented backfield of Mike Garrett and Robert Holmes.
Why would Kansas City trade for another running back when it appeared to have that position settled?
Coach Hank Stram had a fancy for small but speedy backs, and McVea was 5'9" and 185 pounds.
More importantly, he ran a 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash. As was typical of Kansas City in those days, Stram and his celebrated talent scout, Lloyd Wells, were familiar with McVea and his exploits as one of Texas' greatest high school talents. Stram had kicker Horst Muhlmann, who had only recently been acquainted with football, and offered him as trade bait to Bengals coach Paul Brown.
By this time, the Chiefs already had future Hall of Fame kicker Jan Stenerud and had no need for Muhlmann.
With Garrett, Holmes and McVea, the Chiefs quickly became the AFL's number one rushing team behind the league's best offensive line.
Garrett was the starter with his quickness, Holmes offered a bull-like running style, and McVea was the "slasher with blazing speed," Stram said. McVea gave the Chiefs an outside attack that they had missed.
In the Chiefs championship year, he was key to breaking open closely fought games against Denver, where his 12-yard burst for a touchdown clinched the game, and a few weeks later, he did the same in a six-point game on an 80-yard run in the fourth quarter. Against San Diego, he flipped a 51-yard touchdown pass to Frank Pitts, and that game was suddenly wrapped up.
All three backs were relatively small men, but Stram saw that as an advantage. The enormous size of Kansas City's offensive line made it hard to find the backs, and to get to them. Jets' Defensive Coordinator Walt Michales said playing against the Chiefs' offense in those days was "like running through a haystack to find a needle."
McVea's best year was his first in Kansas City, gaining 500 yards on 106 carries, and included 104 yards against the world champion New York Jets, the best-single game effort of any Chiefs running back that year. He carried 12 times against the Vikings for 26 yards in Kansas City's victory in the Super Bowl. His numbers fell off to 260 and 186 yards over the next two years, and he missed the 1972 season with a knee injury.
All totaled, he spent five seasons in Kansas City and was waived late in the 1973 season. He was expected to join the Detroit Wheels of the World Football League the next year, but never did. His professional football career was over.
He will forever be remembered for Kansas City's magical season leading to a world championship.
