The Chiefs’ Super Bowl jersey patch ‘NKH,’ explained

Today’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will be a rematch of the title game from four years ago. While it remains to be seen if the game will end with a similar result — back then, the Chiefs won with a final score of 31-20 — it will look quite familiar from a visual perspective.

The Chiefs, after all, will again go with their standard look on Sunday. As the designated home team for the Super Bowl, the AFC champions decided to wear their red jerseys with white pants — same as they did in Super Bowl LIV.

Kansas City’s ensemble will not be an exact carbon copy from February 2020, though.

For starters, the Super Bowl patch on the right chest will look slightly different to reflect this year’s game and host city. In addition, the Chiefs will also wear another, less familiar patch that they did not have back in February 2020: a football shape featuring the letters ”NKH.”

The “NKH” in question stands for Norma Knobel Hunt, the matriarch of the Hunt family. A Chiefs minority owner and the mother of current Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, she passed away on June 4, 2023, at the age of 85.

In September, the team announced that it would wear the “NKH” patch in her honor throughout the season. The Super Bowl versus the 49ers will be no exception.

“My family and I are so proud to honor our mother’s life and legacy this season,” Clark Hunt said in a statement at the time. “My mom loved football, and she loved the Chiefs. She also believed in the power of sports to unite communities, and the impact sports can have on young people.”

The Chiefs’ Super Bowl matchup versus the 49ers will also mark the first without Norma Hunt in attendance: prior to her passing, she was one of the few people to attend every title game since its inception as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game in 1967.

Five of those saw her Chiefs play, including the first and last one: a 35-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl I, and a 38-35 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII last February.

The last Super Bowl Norma Hunt attended ended in a Chiefs victory. Now, the hope in Kansas City is that the first after her death will do as well.