KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. He learned about Randy Schmidt's story after he called and spoke with a colleague, Addi Weakley, in the newsroom. Share your story idea with Tod.
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When Randy Schmidt headed to Municipal Stadium on Christmas Day in 1971, he had no idea the history that awaited.
Not only did Schmidt, who hailed from Raytown, get to see the longest game in NFL history, but he also snagged a unique souvenir from the game — a game-used ball from the last NFL game in Municipal Stadium’s history.
“A friend of mine from church invited me to go to the game,” Schmidt said from his Overland Park home.
Schmidt, 73, knew Jeff Nixon from the youth group at First Baptist Church of Raytown.
He was a diehard Chiefs and Royals fan, but didn’t get to games at Municipal Stadium as often as he might have liked.
Schmidt, who spent 39 years as a Southern Baptist pastor and missionary in Argentina after college, was 19 at the time. He was a few years from entering the seminary, but still didn’t have many Sunday afternoons free for games in those days.
“A lot of them were on Sundays, so we were just getting out of church, and it wasn't a comfortable time to really go to the games,” Schmidt said.
With the Christmas Day playoff game falling on a Saturday, he was thrilled for the chance to catch the Divisional Round playoff game against the Miami Dolphins.
“We were in Stenerud’s Roost,” Schmidt said. “That was on the Brooklyn (Avenue) side of the old Municipal Stadium.”
Field-goal posts were still at the front of the end zone rather than the back, like they are in the modern NFL, which meant Garo Yepremian’s 14-yard field goal late in the second quarter flew rather wildly into the stands.
“It was a pretty extreme angle,” Schmidt said. “When he made the field goal, it bounced off of one of the light posts and I caught the ricochet and stuffed it down in my stadium coat.”
Little did he know he’d have to keep that ball stashed for the longest game in NFL history.
The Chiefs and Dolphins, who each featured eight future Hall of Famers, were tied at 10-10 at halftime and 24-24 at the end of regulation.
Neither team scored in the first 15-minute overtime period, so it went to a second overtime — effectively, a sixth quarter — before another Yepremian field goal gave Miami a 27-24 win after 82 minutes and 40 seconds of game time.
That game remains the longest game in NFL history 54 years later.
“I think I just felt lucky,” Schmidt said. “It's one of its kind. Nobody else would have, that I know of, one of the field goals from the longest game in history.”
He’s had four players from that game — Ed Budde, Otis Taylor, Len Dawson and Jan Stenrud — autograph the ball through the years.
It even went missing for a while after being packed away when Schmidt and his wife, Cindy, were serving in Argentina.
“We thought we had lost it for a few years,” he recalled. “We couldn't find it, and then it finally surfaced, you know, going through boxes and things like that. I was very relieved after that.”
Schmidt would still love to add signatures from Ed Podolak, who had 274 all-purpose yards in the game, and two of the Chiefs’ future Hall of Fame defensive stars from the game, Willie Lanier and Bobby Bell.
He’s also lost touch with the friend he went to the game with, Jeff Nixon.
“I have no idea where he is, if he's alive or anything, but it'd be fun to reconnect,” Schmidt said.
That was the Chiefs’ first Christmas Day game, but it’s become a staple of Kansas City’s schedule in recent years.
The Chiefs — who host Denver at 7 p.m. on Thursday at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, a game that can be seen on KSHB 41 — will play on Christmas for the third straight season later this week.
Kansas City is 3-2 on Christmas, including wins against the Raiders in 2004 and the Broncos in 2016.
The Chiefs suffered a stunning loss to Las Vegas on Christmas in 2023 before going on to win the Super Bowl and beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh last year en route to a third straight AFC championship.
Miami’s 27-24 win in the 1971 Divisional Round was the final NFL game played at Municipal Stadium.
The Chiefs moved into Arrowhead Stadium, which opened in August 1972, eight months later, though the Royals played one more season on the grounds before moving to Kauffman Stadium beginning with the 1973 season.
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