GRETZ: When Lamar Went Up Against The NFL

Dec 16, 2006, 7:14:55 AM by Bob Gretz - FAQ

Two years ago, Lamar Hunt was sitting in his suite at Arrowhead Stadium. He was using the cane to get around, although more often than not he would be twirling it, rather than using it to provide him balance.

The second day of the NFL Draft was winding down in other parts of the stadium, and Lamar had sat through several meetings that day, while sneaking down to the war room whenever he could to follow the selections. Back to the earliest days of the American Football League, Lamar always enjoyed the draft.

He paused for a moment that day to talk about the past, about the Chiefs 1965 season, one that brought the franchise and professional football in Kansas City to a crossroads. But the conversation quickly took another turn. I had been researching the early days of the American Football League, especially the weeks and months before the league’s first games were played in September of 1960.

As I found more information, talked with more people and discovered stories from the era, I was stunned. In no uncertain terms, once Lamar announced the creation of the AFL, the established league tried to destroy him. They lied, they cheated, they broke their own rules, broke their own word. They tried to buy him off, tried to bribe him, held out an olive branch in one hand, while slamming him and his new league with a sledgehammer with another.

Through it all, Lamar Hunt was steadfast. He did not abandon the AFL. He fought back against a pretty powerful establishment.

“It’s amazing some of the stories I’ve discovered,” I told him. “I had no idea what those days were like. They came after you with everything.

“Lamar, you had some pretty big stones to go against them like that.”

Now, normally I wouldn’t have used that sort of language in talking with Lamar Hunt, but it seemed appropriate.

And, it didn’t bother him. He just smiled.

“It was a different time, that’s for sure,” Hunt said. “I guess I was probably a bit naïve. I didn’t see how what we were trying to do would bother anybody. I was wrong.”

Because the Kansas City Chiefs were born in 1963, after three seasons of the AFL, most Chiefs fans have no idea about what went on in the early days of the league’s formation. Kansas City newspapers at the time carried short wire service pieces about pro football in the last-half of 1959. The double-dealing, the lies, the cheating, it all got little play in the local fish wrap, where they were more focused on college football.

Hunt had been chasing after an NFL team, specifically the then Chicago Cardinals, for several years. He wanted to move the team to Dallas. Despite financial losses, the Wolfner family did not want to sell, although they entertained plenty of offers. Hunt asked the NFL about an expansion team for Dallas. He was repeatedly told the league was not planning to expand any time soon. In the early months of 1959, he made contact with George Halas, owner of the Chicago Bears and the head of the league’s expansion committee. Hunt asked if he could come to Arizona to see Halas (that’s where the man known as Papa Bear spent his winters.) The message back from Halas was very clear: we have nothing to talk about, the NFL is not going to expand.

That led Hunt to create another league. He found comrades in others who had tried to buy the Cardinals, like K.S. “Bud” Adams in Houston and Bob Howsam in Denver.

Using former Heisman Trophy winner Davey O’Brien as an emissary, Hunt met with NFL Commissioner Bert Bell at Bell’s summer home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Days later, Bell was testifying before a Senate sub-committee on monopoly committee in Washington, D.C. and announced the formation of the new league. He testified that after polling the NFL’s 12 owners, he found no objections. “We’re in favor of the new league,” Bell said.

That did not last long. The AFL was officially introduced on August 14th in Chicago with six franchises: Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Minnesota, New York, and Denver. Minnesota pulled out by the end of the year because of lobbying by the NFL with Twin Cities politicians. This would happen while the AFL was holding its first college player draft in a Minneapolis hotel.

But the attacks started long before that move. Even before the end of August was over – two weeks to the day that Hunt formally announced the AFL – Halas announced that the NFL planned to expand in two years and that the two most likely cities were Dallas and Houston. Here’s what Lamar said at the time, as quoted by the Associated Press:

“The American Football League has tried from its inception to operate its relationship with the National Football League on the highest plane and with an amicable attitude on all matters. It is now apparent that Mr. Halas and the National Football League are not interested in this type of relationship but are interested in continuing the stalling and sabotaging efforts which have kept pro football out of Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Louisville, Buffalo, Dallas, Houston and Miami despite repeated efforts from these cities to expand the National Football League.”

In the next few months came the offers from the NFL to Hunt and Bud Adams in Houston. Abandon the new league concept and jump in with the established group was the message. It happened on a regular basis, although the league powers always denied the advances ever took place.

Then came the battle for college players. The AFL held its draft and followed the rules it had established, based on the NFL’s rules, about contact with college players. There would be no talks or negotiations until after the players’ college eligibility was complete. If his team played in a bowl games, then it would happen after January 1st.

That’s when the AFL found out the NFL was already breaking its own rules, signing a number of players to undated contracts, including that year’s Heisman Trophy winner, LSU running back Billy Cannon. He signed a deal with the Los Angeles Rams and their GM, Pete Rozelle. All of it was against NFL rules and regulations, but it was something done by the Rams, the Lions (with Johnny Robinson) and the Giants (with Charley Flowers.)

Eventually, those players would also sign contracts with the AFL and the double contracts ended up in court. In every case, the justice system ruled against the NFL and for the AFL. Rozelle, who would become the NFL’s newest Commissioner in late January of 1960, testified that despite the rules, teams regularly violated those standards to sign college players.

It was at the same NFL owners meeting in Miami Beach where Rozelle was elected to fill the job that became vacant when Bell died from a heart attack, that the league voted to approve an expansion franchise for Dallas that would begin play in the fall of 1960. Originally named the Rangers, they eventually became the Cowboys and went head-to-head for three years against Hunt’s Texans. Neither team thrived. The Texans were far more successful on the field, and both teams lost money because of the competition for the ticket buying public.

Ultimately, it was Kansas City’s luck that the NFL did what it did. Had they not tried to stomp on Hunt and the AFL, the Texans would probably still be playing in Dallas.

And Kansas City would have never really gotten to know the remarkable Lamar Hunt.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

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A former beat reporter who covered the Pittsburgh Steelers during their glory years, Gretz covered the Chiefs for the Kansas City Star for nine years. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Board of Selectors. He has been the senior columnist for the Chiefs web site since its inception.