Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team was founded in 1960 as the Dallas Texans by businessman Lamar Hunt, and was a charter member of the American Football League (AFL). In 1963, the team relocated to Kansas City and assumed their current name. The Chiefs joined the NFL in the 1970 AFL–NFL merger. The team is valued at just under $1 billion. The Chiefs are the only NFL team based in Missouri with no team based in St. Louis, Missouri. The Chiefs won three AFL championships, in 1962, 1966 and 1969, and became the second AFL team (after the New York Jets) to defeat an NFL team in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game when they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. The team's victory on January 11, 1970, remains the club's last championship game victory and appearance, and occurred in the final such competition prior to the leagues' merger coming into full effect. The Chiefs were also the second team, after the Green Bay Packers, to appear in more than one Super Bowl, and the first to appear in the championship game in two different decades. In the 2015 AFC Wild-Card playoff game, held at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas on January 9, 2016, the Chiefs defeated the Houston Texans 30–0 to earn their first NFL playoff win in 23 seasons, dating back to the 1993–94 NFL playoffs. The Chiefs' Wild-Card playoff victory ended what was at the time the third-longest drought in the NFL, and it also ended an NFL record eight-game playoff losing streak.

Kansas City metropolitan area

The Kansas City metropolitan area is a 14-county metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri that straddles the border between the U.S. states of Missouri and Kansas. With a population of 2,393,623, it ranks as the second largest metropolitan area with its core in Missouri (after Greater St. Louis) and has a population in Kansas larger than the Wichita metropolitan area. Alongside Kansas City, the area includes a number of other cities and suburbs, the largest being Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; and Independence, Missouri; all over 100,000 in population.The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) serves as the Council of Governments and the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the area.

Geographic overview

The larger Kansas City Metropolitan Area as seen on a map can be visualized roughly as four quadrants:

The northeast quadrant of the map is locally referred to as "north of the river" or "the Northland". It includes parts of Clay County, Missouri including North Kansas City, Missouri. North Kansas City is bounded by a bend in the Missouri River that defines a border between Wyandotte County, Kansas and Clay County, Missouri running approximately North-South and a border between North Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Missouri running approximately East-West. The sharpest part of the river bend forms a peninsula containing the Kansas City Downtown Airport.

New England

New England is a region which comprises six states of the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by New York to the west, Long Island Sound to the south, the Atlantic Ocean and the Canadian province of New Brunswick to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north.

In one of the earliest English settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, forming the Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 126 years, New England fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British and their Iroquois Confederacy allies defeated the French and their Algonquin allies in North America.

In the late 18th century, the New England Colonies initiated the resistance to the British Parliament's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Great Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, which were termed the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists. The confrontation led to open warfare in 1775, the expulsion of the British authorities from New England in spring 1776, and the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

New England Patriots

The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team plays its home games at Gillette Stadium in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is located 21 miles (34 km) southwest of downtown Boston and 20 miles (32 km) northeast of downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The Patriots are also headquartered at Gillette Stadium.

An original member of the American Football League (AFL), the Patriots joined the NFL in the 1970 merger of the two leagues. The team changed its name from the original Boston Patriots after relocating to Foxborough in 1971. The Patriots played their home games at Foxboro Stadium from 1971 to 2001, then moved to Gillette Stadium at the start of the 2002 season. The Patriots' rivalry with the New York Jets is considered one of the most bitter rivalries in the NFL.

The Patriots have appeared in the Super Bowl eight times in franchise history. The team advanced to the playoffs four times before appearing in Super Bowl XX in 1986, losing to the Chicago Bears 46–10. The team also appeared in Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, losing to the Green Bay Packers 35–21. The Patriots won their first Super Bowl championship in 2002, defeating the St. Louis Rams 20–17 in Super Bowl XXXVI. Their next Super Bowl victory was in 2004, when they defeated the Carolina Panthers 32–29 in Super Bowl XXXVIII. In 2005, they repeated as Super Bowl champions, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 24–21 in Super Bowl XXXIX. They also made Super Bowl appearances in 2008 – following a perfect regular season – and 2012, where they lost to the New York Giants both times. They defeated the Seattle Seahawks 28–24 in Super Bowl XLIX to win their fourth Vince Lombardi Trophy in 14 seasons.

Kansas

Kansas ⁱ/ˈkænzəs/ is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind", although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans". For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue.

When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 34th most populous of the 50 United States.