Inductees

It almost sounds too good to be true: A military kid who didn’t grow up under the impressionable Friday night lights of small-town football, who finds his way to a Minnesota high school and shifts to running back only in his senior year – all before heading off to a quaint NCAA Division II school for academics, not athletics – ultimately parachutes into the National Football League.

And not only that but he becomes a roster casualty of a certain West Coast team and yet goes on to star for its Midwestern rival.

Yes, that’s the Ted McKnight story, if you can believe it.

What a career it was for the man known as “Touchdown Teddy,” as McKnight became one of the most prolific running backs in Kansas City Chiefs history – and the reason why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to induct McKnight with the Class of 2019.

Call it the stuff of storybooks.

“I went to college for an education, not football,” McKnight proudly says. “And then I had two or three jobs. One was with Burlington Northern Railroad. And I worked on a construction crew laying blacktop on highways.”

A 1977 second-round draft pick of the Oakland Raiders out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, McKnight joined the Chiefs the week of that season’s opener and enjoyed a six-year NFL career, five with the Chiefs through 1981.

He led Kansas City in rushing from 1978 to 1980, averaging 6.0 yards per carry in 1978, and finished his career with 528 carries for 2,344 yards and 22 touchdowns. His 84-yard TD run against Seattle in 1977 stood as the Chiefs’ longest run from scrimmage until 2012, and he finished with 717 yards receiving.

In training camp 1977, he seemed destined for a Raiders roster spot for their opener in Kansas City. He did play in the game, only in a Chiefs uniform.

“John Madden called me into his office, and I was under the impression that I had made the team. And he said, ‘You’re on your way to Kansas City,’” McKnight said. “It was a pretty pivotal moment.’”

Fortunately for McKnight, two key things happened in his rookie season with the Chiefs: Veterans such as running backs Ed Podolak (MSHOF 2014) took him under their collective wing. Secondly, McKnight survived a coaching change, with the team hiring Marv Levy before the 1978 season.

Levy planned to install a single wing, run-based offense.

“Marv was a player’s coach. He fought for us and made his decision in what was going to be best for the team,” McKnight said.

That McKnight was even in the NFL was surprising.

Because his dad was in the Air Force, McKnight spent some of his grade school years on a base outside of Paris, France. The family eventually was stationed outside of Denver, Minneapolis and then in Duluth while his dad served in Vietnam in the mid-1970s.

Duluth Central High School’s coach moved McKnight to running back as a senior, and Minnesota-Duluth came calling.

“I wasn’t in school to go into pro football,” McKnight said. “I was the first person in my family who had the opportunity to go to college. So I was going to go into business and support my family.”

He spent two seasons on the Greenies team – not even the scout team – and jokes that the “tackling dummies” were higher on the depth chart.

However, UMD coach Jim Malosky moved him to running back his senior year.

“He would just scream so loud that it would ricochet off the high school about a mile away come back as an echo,” McKnight said. “He was tough as nails on us, but I have to give him all the credit for teaching me the game of football.”

Scouts soon took notice. McKnight led D-II in rushing (1,482 yards) his senior season and set the school’s single-game mark of 235 yards, as well as records for touchdowns in a single season (22) and single game (6).

Among the teams scouting him? The Chiefs.

So it’s no surprise that McKnight became a founding member of the Chiefs Ambassadors in 1988 and remains active. He is now Vice President & Producer of CBIZ Benefits and Insurance Services, Inc., after 25 years as a consultant and producer for the same company.

“It’s really rewarding,” McKnight said. “It brings a lot of guys together from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, and the reward is we’re all really good friends who want to give back to Kansas City.”