1969 American Football League Championship Game
The 1969 AFL Championship Game was the 10th and final championship game of the American Football League, and the league's final game prior to its merger with the National Football League on February 1, 1970.
Kansas City Chiefs
(Western runner-up)
(11–3)
January 4, 1970
54,544
The game was held on January 4, 1970, at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum between the Western Division champion Oakland Raiders (12–1–1) and the division's second-place team, the Kansas City Chiefs (11–3). The two teams had the best records in the AFL regular season and both had won divisional playoff games two weeks earlier to advance to the championship. Oakland had swept the two hard-fought regular season games between the two teams,[5][6][7] were favored by 4 to 5½ points,[1][2][3] and had taken seven of the last eight meetings.[8]
Tied at halftime, the Chiefs won 17–7 on the strength of seventeen unanswered points in the last three quarters and represented the AFL in Super Bowl IV the following week.[9][10][11][12] This was the 616th and final AFL game.[8]
The AFL (and NFL) had six game officials in 1969; the seventh official, the side judge, was added in 1978.
Aftermath[edit]
The Chiefs went on to win the Super Bowl against the Minnesota Vikings, in a final showing of the AFL and its strength. Kansas City is the only team in the Super Bowl era to win the title without allowing as much as ten points in any postseason game.
The two leagues merged into one after this game, with the ten AFL teams and three NFL teams (Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Colts, and Cleveland Browns) forming the American Football Conference. Super Bowl V was the first game for that conference, which the Colts won. After losing their first two appearances in 1993 and 2018, The Chiefs won the AFC Championship in 2019 and 2020. Conversely, the Raiders have appeared in eleven, winning four and losing seven; their last appearance (and win) was in 2002.