It’s been 43 years since San Antonio native Willie Mitchell played in the first Super Bowl.
But even after all this time, he still gets a nervous feeling in his stomach when he sits down to watch pro football’s championship game.
“You never forget the emotion and the pride you felt,” Mitchell, 69, said Thursday. “That never goes away.”
Mitchell, a 1959 Wheatley High School graduate, was a starting cornerback with the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs when they played the NFL champion Green Bay Packers on Jan. 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Bart Starr completed 16 of 23 passes for 250 yards and three touchdowns, helping lead the Packers to a 35-10 victory in what was then called the AFL-NFL World Championship.
“Even though we lost, I’ll always have the satisfaction of playing in the first game,” Mitchell said. “That’s something I’ll always be able to talk about. No one in either the AFL or the NFL could have envisioned how big the Super Bowl would become. It just keeps getting
bigger and bigger.”
While Mitchell is mostly remembered for having played in the first Super Bowl, he also was a member of the Chiefs team that beat the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 three years later.
“I got to experience both winning and losing a Super Bowl,” said Mitchell, who still lives in San Antonio.
Mitchell will be in Washington, D.C., on business this weekend, but he plans to watch the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints clash in Super Bowl XLIV.
“I think the matchup is pretty good,” Mitchell said. “It should be an exciting game. Indianapolis is favored, but I think it’s a tossup. It could be like last year’s game between the Steelers and Cardinals. The team that gets the ball last could win.”
Always a defensive back at heart, Mitchell gave his take on Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and Saints quarterback Drew Brees.
“There’s no doubt that Manning is one of the all-time greats,” Mitchell said. “You can’t give him too much time to throw because he’ll really hurt you. He’s a very difficult quarterback to stop because he’s so good at completing those 10 to 15-yard passes.
“Brees is very good, too. If he gets going, the New Orleans offense can score a lot of points. I’ve been very impressed with what Brees has done. That’s why I think the Saints have a good chance of winning.”
Mitchell said he will pull for the Colts because they are in the American Conference, which includes the Chiefs and all the other former AFL teams.
Now the owner of a construction company, Mitchell was inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 and is one of the city’s most respected community leaders.
He has been recognized nationally as chairman of San Antonio Fighting Back, which focuses on substance abuse, crime and violence prevention, and community development.
Mitchell was a three-sport letterman at Wheatley and attended Tennessee State on a football scholarship. He made the Chiefs’ roster as a free agent in 1964 and played with the team for seven seasons before ending his career with the Houston Oilers in 1971.
After all these years, Mitchell still gets calls from reporters before the Super Bowl. He also can count on a few calls from friends who still tease him about the big day Packers backup wide receiver Max McGee had against him.
“I don’t mind,” Mitchell said. “It’s all part of the game.”
While Starr was voted the game’s most valuable player in the historic victory over the Chiefs, it was Packers McGee who became a legend with his performance that day.
Covered by Mitchell most of the afternoon, McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns after entering the game when starter Boyd Dowler suffered a shoulder injury on the Packers’ second possession.
McGee had only four receptions during the 1966 regular season, but he played like an All-Pro that day.
McGee, then 34, was so sure he wouldn’t play in the big game that he broke curfew and partied until the wee hours.
When Packers coach Vince Lombardi yelled for McGee on the sideline early in the game, McGee said years later he thought the “old man,” as the players called Lombardi, had found out he had broken curfew and was about to light into him. Instead, Lombardi was yelling for him to replace Dowler.
Mitchell should have known he was in trouble when McGee made a one-handed catch on a slant route and turned it into a 37-yard TD a few plays after entering the game.
“I had prepared for Boyd Dowler,” Mitchell said in an interview a few years ago. “McGee was just tremendous. He made some fantastic catches.”
Although Mitchell and McGee never crossed paths again after that game, Mitchell said he felt as though he had lost a friend when
McGee died in 2007.
“We’ll always be linked by that game,” he said.
And in the memories of pro football fans.
