Most avid Chiefs fans can cite the exploits of the great players in team history, but there are many other players who have escaped the hype, but yet played vital roles in their teams' success and, for one reason or another, have slipped from the minds of many fans then and now. Throughout the year, we profile some who did more than simply play a part when they took the field for the Kansas City Chiefs.
The image I take with me when I think of Jon Gilliam, who manned the center position for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1961 until 1967, is one of him standing aside fellow team captain Jerry Mays as they met Green Bay Packers captions, Willie Davis and Bob Skoronski, at midfield of the Los Angeles Coliseum moments before the coin toss of what would become known as Super Bowl I.
Gilliam's career as a professional football player took the course of many men who tried their hand at the professional game in the early 1960s. It was a time of growth for what would become the nation's most popular sport as the American Football League, a creation of future Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, went to battle for players of the older and more prestigious National Football League.
Gilliam came out of East Texas State (now known as East Texas A&M University) and was a 14th round pick of the Green Bay Packers. He had also been selected in the first round by the Buffalo Bills. It is ironic that the photo at midfield would find Gilliam standing with players from the team that had drafted him.
Green Bay's Vince Lombardi had traded Gilliam to the New York Giants out of training camp, and they then moved him on to the expansion Dallas Cowboys, who released him three days later. He returned to college but came back and signed with Hunt's Dallas Texans, where he took over the center spot along the offensive line and became one of the league's early all-pros at the position.
He was the starting center on the Texans' 1962 AFL championship team and moved with the club to Kansas City, where he was the starter until 1968 when EJ Holub took over the role to give his aching knees a break from playing linebacker. Gilliam's last year with Kansas City was 1967, and he quickly was gone from professional football, or so he thought.
Back in everyday life, he suffered a bout with cancer and eventually ended up working in the financial world. But Gilliam's fame continued to exist courtesy of that Sports Illustrated cover and the photo taken by celebrated sports photographer, Neil Leifer. The photo's significance would only grow as the championship game did in the history of sports in this country.
"You know when you're a kid and you're growing up," Gilliam said later, "everybody fantasizes about playing professional athletics. If you're lucky enough to play, you fantasize about having your face on the cover of a magazine. But in reality, you know that's not going to happen."
But In Gilliam's case, it did, and as much as any sports fan can remember, the image of those four players will resonate down through the years, especially as it serves as a perfect contrast to how the game has grown in stature, and how many people now crowd around a similar spot at midfield as today's championship game is about to start.
Gilliam passed away in Granary, Texas, at the age of 81 in 2020.
