The Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles Feb. 12 in Super Bowl LVII. It marks the Chiefs’ third championship appearance since 2020, when the team won its first Super Bowl title in 50 years. This interview with Clark Hunt took place after his team won the AFC championship to earn its 2020 Super Bowl berth.
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Dallas billionaire Clark Hunt and his family waited a half-century for their Kansas City Chiefs to get a crack at winning a second Super Bowl.
They’re about to get that shot when the Chiefs square off against the San Francisco 49ers in Miami to tonight.
Two Sundays ago, Hunt celebrated on the field of Arrowhead Stadium, lifting the Lamar Hunt Trophy after his team won the AFC Championship game.
The 54-year-old chairman of the Hunt family’s $3 billion sports empire had just received a trophy named for his iconic father, who’d been instrumental in creating what is now the National Football League.
The moment was both sublime and surreal.
“It was so special — not just for me but for my entire family and the Chiefs organization,” Hunt said at his office in downtown Dallas. “Not only had we qualified for the Super Bowl, but for the first time in club history, we’d won the trophy with my dad’s name on it. ... And to get to do it in Arrowhead Stadium in front of our fans was a very, very special and emotional moment for me and my family.”
Arrowhead is his second home — literally. Hunt, his wife Tavia and their three children live in Highland Park, but they also have a six-bedroom, two-story apartment atop the owners box at the stadium.
Many viewers watching the post-game ceremony on TV had no idea the Hunts are Dallasites. It was clear that Kansas City considers the Hunt family one of its own.
But the irony wasn’t lost on even those who knew the Big D connection. Hunt’s friend, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, had entered the season with great expectations. But it would be Dallas’ “other” NFL owner, not Jones, jet-setting to Miami for the big game.
Hunt remembered looking up into the stands at Chiefs Kingdom, where fans stood resolute despite braving below-zero wind chills for more than five hours.
“They had to be freezing,” he said. “But it was that special for them, too. A lot of them had waited for a large part of their lives for the team to make it back to the Super Bowl. Getting the Lamar Hunt Trophy probably meant as much to them as it did to me and my family.”
But as poignant as all that was, Hunt said there’s unfinished business.
“I have a full appreciation for how hard it is to get to the Super Bowl, particularly since it’s taken the Chiefs 50 years to get back,” he said. “But given how rare the opportunities may be to get there, we need to close the deal and win the Lombardi Trophy now.”
Early Dallas roots
Lamar Hunt, son of legendary oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, founded his professional football team as the Dallas Texans in 1960. He paid $25,000 for the franchise, and a lot of people thought he’d been taken.
Three years later, Lamar moved the team to Kansas City and changed its name.
But he cut a wider swath than just being an NFL team owner.
He was a founder of the American Football League and Major League Soccer, coined the name Super Bowl, created World Championship Tennis, brought major league soccer to the United States and was an original investor in the Chicago Bulls. He was a key player in merging the American and National football leagues into what is now the NFL.
Lamar died in 2006, and his widow, Norma Hunt, will head to Miami as one of a dwindling dozen who have attended every Super Bowl since the first was played in January 1967.
Clark was just 4 in January 1970, when his parents took him to his first Super Bowl. They saw the Chiefs upend the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings 23-7 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans. He doesn’t remember anything about the game.
But he does remember the playoff home game the next year on Christmas Day 1971, when the Miami Dolphins beat the Chiefs in double overtime on a mud-caked field in Kansas City. The two teams included a dozen future Hall of Famers and represented a seismic shift.
“That is still the longest game in NFL history,” Hunt said. “It was the beginning of the end for those great Chiefs teams and the beginning of the success of the Miami Dolphins.”
Lamar’s young protégé
Clark was his dad’s protégé early on — with good reason.
He graduated at the top of his business school class at Southern Methodist University in 1987 with a degree in finance and was a four-year letterman on the Mustangs' nationally ranked soccer team. He earned first-team Academic All-America honors as a junior and senior and served as a tri-captain his final season.
After graduating, Clark worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in New York and Los Angeles. He came back to Dallas two years later to work with his dad.
“I knew that my dad had big shoes that I would never be able to fill,” Clark said. “But he taught me to be my own man. That’s really how I’ve tried to run both the Chiefs and FC Dallas — to be my own independent thinker.”
In 2005, a year before Lamar died, he officially turned over stewardship of his Hunt Sports Group LLC to Clark, who’d just turned 40.
Today, Clark, his mother Norma and his siblings Dan Hunt and Sharron Hunt, who all live in Dallas, and Lamar Hunt Jr., who lives in Kansas City, own the Chiefs, FC Dallas and a chunk of the Chicago Bulls — the NBA’s fourth most valuable franchise at $2.9 billion, according to Forbes.
In September, Forbes valued the Chiefs at $2.3 billion, a figure that’s undoubtedly risen. Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas is said to be worth nearly $200 million. Throw in the Hunts’ undisclosed minority (but significant) stake in the Bulls and various stadium lease agreements, and the family’s sports empire — not including its other investments — is worth more than $3 billion.
That has doubled since early 2013 — the first year of coach Andy Reid’s contract — when the family’s sports holdings were estimated to be about $1.3 billion. Under Clark’s guidance, the Hunts sold their MLS Columbus Crew franchise and its soccer stadium in Ohio for a record $68 million later that year.
People are quick to point out that Clark is definitely his father’s son. That’s true, most of the time.
“My mom is an unbelievable sports fan, but she has a passionate edge,” Clark said. “My dad was always very, very calm no matter the circumstance. When my mom’s at a game, she really gets into it and can be very outspoken in her support of the team or what she sees on the field that she doesn’t like, particularly as it relates to the referees. I try to emulate my dad, but sometimes my mother’s genes in me sneak out.”
True to his word
Ray Hunt was 14 years younger than Lamar, his half-brother, but they enjoyed a close bond.
And while Ray hasn’t spent as much time with Clark as he did Lamar, he’s seen Clark in action as a fellow member of SMU’s board of trustees during the last 11 years.
“Like his father, Clark is soft-spoken, always very polite, and when he offers an opinion, people pay attention,” said the 76-year-old executive chairman of Hunt Consolidated Inc. “It is exceptionally difficult to be the son of a man who is a legend and beloved by millions of people. Most individuals who find themselves in that situation fail miserably.
“Lamar would be extremely proud of how Clark has maintained the extremely positive image and reputation that he created during his lifetime. Clark has absolutely succeeded in making his own mark.”
By happenstance, Ray and his wife, Nancy Ann Hunt, are members of the Chiefs Kingdom.
She’s a Kansas City native, whose late father was an illustrious U.S. federal judge and an ardent Chiefs fan. When her father died, the Hunts held on to his season tickets. They donate them to good causes.
Ray Hunt remembers getting a letter to season ticket holders from Clark at the end of 2012, when everything that could go wrong with the team had.
“It was an unbelievably wonderful one-page letter that essentially said, ‘I want you to know that this city deserves better than what we provided. We can do better. And I promise you, we will do better.’ This demonstrated a remarkable amount of class and explains why Clark — and the entire Lamar Hunt family — are so beloved by the citizens of Kansas City.”
Clark kept his word, hiring Reid as head coach in January 2013 and cleaning house. He restructured the leadership so that for the first time in club history, the head coach, general manager and team president all reported directly to him.
Then he stepped back and let everyone do their jobs.
“I try to hire the very best people and give them the resources they need to be successful,” Clark said. “I do hold them accountable, but I give them a lot of runway to do things the way they think they need to be done.”
Coach Reid thanked him for that as Hunt handed over the trophy. So did general manager Brett Veach at a postgame news conference. “To see Clark holding that trophy tugged at all of our hearts,” Veach said.
NFL owner buddies
Clark Hunt is a low-key, erudite and collaborative guy. He and Jones seem as different as night and day — except when it comes to athletic wiring and intense competitiveness.
While Jones is owner, president and general manager of the Cowboys, Hunt leaves managing the franchise to others. Yet they consider themselves kindred spirits.
When Jones was elected to the 2017 Pro Football Hall of Fame, Hunt was quick to lavish praise on his late father’s buddy, calling Jones an innovator totally worthy of the recognition.
And sure, Jones would like for the Cowboys to be squaring off against the Chiefs, but he isn’t about to begrudge Hunt’s achievement.
“Clark is a very unique NFL asset,” Jones said last week. “In my time of ownership in the NFL, I have not known of a bigger figure than Lamar Hunt, but Clark is to be commended, especially on this historic trip to the Super Bowl in the NFL’s 100th season.
“He has done it with a lifetime’s worth of NFL experience under his belt, an amazing grasp of how to operate in the world of professional sports and also with an extraordinary amount of intelligence. Those virtues have made him an invaluable contributor to not only the Chiefs’ current level of success but also to the growth and visibility of what the NFL has become and is today.”
Hunt was one of five NFL owners chosen by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to directly negotiate the NFL’s collective-bargaining agreement in 2011. And in addition to Hunt’s role as chairman of the NFL finance committee, he’s a member of the highly visible conduct, international and management council executive committees.
Burning desire to win
No one has known the inside skinny about Hunt longer than Dallas private equity investor Robert Alpert, his first-grade mate at St. Mark’s School of Texas nearly 50 years ago. They were summertime ball boys for the Chiefs, played high school football together and were roommates during their early careers in New York and when they returned to Dallas.
Hidden beneath Hunt’s reserved nature lies a dry sense of humor and an intense competitive spirit, Alpert said.
“When he gets on the Peloton, he’s going for his personal best. It’s not just a workout. That drive goes into fun, into work, across the board. He has a burning desire to win.”
SMU President R. Gerald Turner is a fan of one of the school’s youngest trustees.
“Like his dad, he is very unassuming and in Dallas doesn't try to grab headlines,” Turner said. “He is very friendly, though somewhat reserved, unusually smart, dedicated to his family. He’s restricted the number of causes he gives his time and resources to support. Thankfully, SMU is one of them.”
Hunt is also president of the board of trustees at St. Mark’s. He and Tavia focus their philanthropic efforts on children’s health and youth education, including Crystal Charity Ball, “Just Say Yes” and Special Olympics.
Those green earplugs
Hunt spent last week ironing out game details, getting some non-football work done and fielding local media requests. He was also hit up by a flood of friends hoping to score tickets.
“It’s great,” Hunt said. “I’m excited everybody’s fired up and wants to go to the game.”
He headed to Miami last week for the team’s practice and a slew of Kansas City media interviews. He’s their darling these days.
“That’s true,” he said, “but it’s a byproduct of [superstar quarterback] Patrick Mahomes and his teammates and Andy.”
Hunt will come back to Dallas for a couple of days before going back for round two.
“Super Bowls are always exhausting, even when you’re not in them,” he said. “I can just imagine with all the festivities and the full schedule, it’s going to be even more tiring. But we’re hopeful that it’s going to be a good tired. As red-eyed as we might be the Monday after the Super Bowl, that’ll be fine by all of us if we’ve been up partying.”
Hunt laughed at the mention of those nerdy looking, bright green earplugs he wore during the on-field celebration after the conference championship.
“The green was completely unintentional,” he said. “When I’m speaking at a stadium, I always put in earplugs to kill the reverberation. Green is what we had.”
He plans to have red ones on hand tonight, just in case he needs them.
Clark Knobel Hunt
Age: 54
Resides: Highland Park and an apartment in Arrowhead Stadium
Title: Chairman and CEO of Hunt Sports Group LLC, the Kansas City Chiefs and FC Dallas
Education: St. Mark’s School of Texas, 1983; bachelor’s in finance from Southern Methodist University, 1987
Boards: SMU Cox School executive board of trustees and SMU Board of Trustees; president of St. Mark’s board of trustees
Personal: Married to Tavia Hunt for 26 years. They have two daughters, 20 and 13, and a son, 17
