By Anthony Holden
CBS SportsLine Historian
During the first half of the 1990s, the Buffalo Bills made professional football history by appearing in an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowls.

Following the 1966 season, the Bills had a chance to be part of another piece of Super Bowl history -- even before the Super Bowl became the Super Bowl -- by becoming the first AFL team to qualify for the world championship game.

Mike Garrett's breakaway speed added another dimension to Kansas City's offense. (AP)

As part of the agreement between the two professional football leagues to merge in time for the 1970 season, it was decided that the winners of each league championship game would meet two weeks later in a AFL-NFL World Championship Game to determine ultimate bragging rights.

The name of the game would later be changed to the Super Bowl and it would become the largest, most-watched single-day sporting event in the world.

The Bills, two-time defending AFL champions, seemed like the logical candidate to face Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers at the Los Angeles Coliseum. However, fate and better opponents prevented the Bills from winning one of those four Super Bowls in the 1990s, and that was the case on a cold New Years Day 1967 in Buffalo as Kansas City steamrolled the Bills, 31-7.

"We fumbled on the opening kickoff and got progressively worse," said Bills coach Joe Collier. "They simply played much better than we did. We had no interceptions, no fumble recoveries, they executed everything well. The Chiefs played opportunistic football and when they don't make mistakes, they're tough to contain. We lost to a good team."

The Bills had overcome the departure of coach Lou Saban and an 0-2 start under new boss Collier to win the East for the third year in a row, needing a victory over Denver in the final game to clinch the crown. The Chiefs dominated their division, wining the West with a 12-2 record, but Buffalo's homefield advantage in the championship game was expected to be a major factor.

It wasn't.

The Chiefs star-studded defense held the Bills to nine first downs, 40 yards rushing and forced four turnovers in a performance, which had once been the standard for Buffalo's stout defense.

The Bills had allowed seven points combined in its two championship game victories over San Diego in 1964 and '65, but Kansas City matched that total 1:43 into the game when Len Dawson threw a 29-yard touchdown pass to tight end Fred Arbanas after Buffalo's Dudley Meredith had fumbled the opening kickoff.

Five plays later the score was tied as Bills quarterback Jack Kemp beat a blitz and hit Elbert Dubenion for a 69-yard touchdown as cornerback Fred Williamson slipped, leaving Dubenion wide open.

Kansas City then seized the initiative, took control and didn't let go. Early in the second quarter, Mike Garrett returned a punt 42 yards, and although a clipping penalty set the Chiefs back to the Bills 45, they scored six plays later as Dawson whipped a 29-yard pass to Otis Taylor on a third-down play to put Kansas City ahead 14-7.

The game's crucial play occurred late in the half as the Bills drove toward a potential tying touchdown. From the 11-yard-line Kemp tried to squeeze one in to Bobby Burnett at the goal line, but safety Johnny Robinson picked it off and raced 72 yards the other way, setting up a Mike Mercer field goal three seconds before halftime.

"He made a great individual play," Kemp said of Robinson. "I thought we had him occupied but he came in on a freelance to get between Bobby and the ball. I put everything I had on that pass, it was as hard as I can throw."

After a scoreless third quarter, Dawson produced two touchdowns to turn the game into a rout. He directed a 63-yard drive that was keyed by his 45-yard pass to Chris Burford. Garrett then scored on a fourth-down plunge from the one. On the ensuing series, Kemp was sacked and knocked out, he lost the ball and Bobby Hunt returned it to the Bills 21. Three plays later, Garrett broke an 18-yard touchdown run.

"Our defensive team was fantastic," said Chiefs coach Hank Stram. "It was their best game of the year. Johnny Robinson gave us the big play with his interception of Kemp under the goal posts, but we didn't need anything more than Dawson's direction and leadership. There isn't a finer quarterback or more accurate passer in the game, and that includes Johnny Unitas. We got control early with that touchdown, that's what started us, and we never stopped."

Of the upcoming date with the powerhouse Packers, Collier told Stram "If you play in the Super Bowl the way you played today, you'll give them all they can handle. Your execution was nearly perfect."

Of course, the Chiefs were far from perfect two weeks later and lost to the Packers, 35-10.

GAME PLAYER PROFILES
Mike Garrett, Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs had just clinched the AFL's Western Division title in 1966, and defensive lineman Jerry Mays, one of the team's captains, stood in front of his teammates and held one of the game balls aloft.

"The game ball goes to the little man they all said was too small to make it in pro ball, but who has been a giant on our team," Mays said, handing that ball to 5-foot-9 rookie running back Mike Garrett.

Garrett had won the Heisman Trophy in 1965 and in three years with the Trojans set an NCAA record with 3,221 yards rushing, but because of his lack of size, pro scouts did not think he would make an impact in the NFL or AFL. The Los Angeles Rams picked him in the second round, and the Chiefs -- figuring Garrett would stay in his native LA -- didn't bother with him until the 20th round. But when the Chiefs came up with a financial package that was a little better, Garrett trekked off to the Midwest.

Once there, he was greeted by teammates who scoffed at him because of his size. They called him Midget and Stumpy, and gave him extra forearms and elbows on almost every carry just to see if he could take it. "Sure we got on him," Mays said. "We rode him pretty hard for a while, but he just kept working and pretty soon we realized we had a rare kind of individual in him."

Added offensive tackle Jim Tyrer: "It was harder for Mike than most rookies. Acceptance in the pros is a strange thing. One morning you wake up and it's there. The kidding is just part of the maturing process. We all had to go through it."

Garrett's enormous pride and heart enabled him to survive that first training camp, and once he was accepted, he began to command respect, not only from his teammates, but also from the rest of the league. As a rookie he gained 810 yards and averaged a league-high 5.5 yards per carry as the Chiefs rolled to the Western Division crown and a date in Buffalo with the two-time defending champion Bills to decide who would be the new AFL champion and the league representative in the first Super Bowl.

It wasn't even a contest. Though Garrett rushed for only 39 yards, he scored two touchdowns as the Chiefs beat the Bills 31-7. It was sweet redemption for Garrett, who lost the AFL Rookie of the Year award to Buffalo running back Bobby Burnett. "The greatest miscarriage of justice in history," Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt proclaimed when that decision was announced.

USC coach John McKay once said of 1968 Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson, "He's not just the best athlete I ever coached, he's the best athlete anyone's ever coached."

But two years before McKay even knew Simpson was alive, he said of Garrett: "He's the greatest football player I've ever seen. And I didn't say just the greatest back, either."

"He's motivated by the fact that everybody thinks he's too small," Chiefs coach Hank Stram said following that 1966 season. "Every time he runs, he's doing a sell job. I use a phrase -- bleed yardage -- and I think he bleeds better than any runner I've ever seen. When he goes into the line, he comes out of it with some yards."

Garrett -- who today is back at USC in the position of athletic director -- gained 1,087 yards in his second season, but he never approached that figure again. He suffered numerous aches and pains, mostly attributable to the fact that his body simply wasn't designed for the brutality of pro football.

Still, he remains undeterred in the belief that small men can play in the NFL.

"There is room for the little man in this game," he once said. "But the little man must work twice as hard as the big man to achieve success. Every time I carry the ball, I feel I'm running for every small guy who ever wanted to play the game of football."

Buck Buchanan, Chiefs
It's funny how things work out sometimes. Junious ‘Buck’ Buchanan didn't even like playing football during his high school days in Birmingham, Ala., yet by the time his athletic career came to an end, he was such a prolific football player that he wound up enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"I didn't care for football in high school," said Buchanan before his death from cancer in 1992. "The only reason I played football during my junior and senior years was because the basketball coach wanted me to stay in shape."

When he graduated, Buchanan had no plans to attend college because he hadn't received any basketball scholarships, and his family was too poor to pay his way. He was prepared to follow his father off to the steel mills, but an uncle intervened and wrote a letter to Grambling's legendary football coach, Eddie Robinson, imploring him to take a chance on this young Buck.

Robinson was impressed with Buchanan's size, 6-foot-7 and 211 pounds, so that was enough to warrant a visit to the Buchanan home. Before he left, he offered Buck a grant-in-aid, and so began the making of one of football's greatest defensive lineman.

Buchanan teamed with future All Pros Ernie Ladd (San Diego) and Willie Brown (Oakland) to help Grambling become a powerhouse. Grambling was so good Robinson once remarked that his team's intrasquad scrimmages were more entertaining and interesting than the actual games.

While Ladd was drafted by San Diego and Brown later by Denver, neither of them went as high as Buchanan -- in the first round -- making Buchanan the first player from an all-black college to be selected in the first round of a pro football draft.

"That meant a lot to me," he said.

Buchanan was part of the legendary Dallas Texans draft of 1963 when Don Klosterman -- the former personnel man of the Chargers who had been hired by Lamar Hunt to be his team's chief talent evaluator -- selected Buchanan, Bobby Bell (linebacker), Ed Budde (guard), Jerrel Wilson (punter) and Dave Hill (offensive tackle). Bell also reached the Hall of Fame while Budde, Wilson and Hill started for the rest of the 1960s and were starters on the Chiefs’ 1969 Super Bowl championship team.

Buchanan won a starting position as a rookie, and by the mid-60s, he had filled out (270lbs.) and, thanks to his combination of size and speed, had become one of the best defensive linemen in pro football. Oakland's Al Davis watched Buchanan terrorize his teams for a few years, and finally in 1967 he did something about it. He chose offensive guard Gene Upshaw and presented him the task of blocking Buchanan in the Raiders-Chiefs wars of the late-60s.

"I figured if Buchanan was going to play for the Chiefs for the next 10 years, we better get some big guy who can handle him," said Davis. "Those two guys put on some stirring battles over the years."

Upshaw gave away inches and pounds, and he said his matches with Buchanan annually produced sleepless nights.

"I was big," Upshaw recalled, "but Buck was bigger and stronger and turned me every which way but loose. When you played Buck, you couldn't sleep the night before a game. You don't imagine a guy 6-foot-8, 300 pounds being so quick. You'd go to hit him and it was like hitting a ghost."

Buchanan’s 13-year career, spent entirely in Kansas City, ended following the 1975 season. He played on two AFL championship teams and one Super Bowl winner. He was voted to eight consecutive AFL all star teams or AFC Pro Bowl squads from 1965-72 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990.