'Lamar Hunt' (
2 August 1932 –
13 December 2006) was a promoter of
American football,
soccer,
tennis,
basketball, and
ice hockey in the
United States and an inductee of the first three sports'
halls of fame. He was one of the founders of the
American Football League (AFL) and
Major League Soccer (MLS), as well as MLS predecessor the
North American Soccer League (NASL). He was also the founder and owner of the
National Football League's
Kansas City Chiefs, and at his death owned two MLS teams,
FC Dallas and the
Columbus Crew. The oldest annual team tournament in the
U.S. in any sport, soccer's
U.S. Open Cup (founded 1914) now bears his name in honor of his pioneering role in that sport stateside. In
Kansas City, Hunt also helped establish the
Worlds of Fun and
Oceans of Fun theme parks. He was inducted into the
Pro Football Hall of Fame in
1972; into the
National Soccer Hall of Fame in
1982; and into the
International Tennis Hall of Fame in
1993. The National Soccer Hall of Fame bestowed upon Hunt their Medal of Honor in 1999, an award given to only 3 recipients in history thus far. He was married for 42 years to second wife Norma, and had four children, Clark, Sharron, Lamar Jr. and Daniel.
Early life
Hunt was born in
El Dorado, Arkansas, the son of oil
tycoon H. L. Hunt and younger brother of tycoon
Nelson Bunker Hunt. Lamar was raised in
Dallas, Texas. He graduated from
The Hill School in
Pennsylvania in
1950 and
Southern Methodist University in Dallas in
1956, with a B.S. degree in
geology. Hunt was a
college football player who rode the bench but was still an avid sports enthusiast during his time in college and throughout his entire childhood. While attending SMU Hunt joined the
Kappa Sigma Fraternity and in 1972 was named "man of the year".
Founding of the American Football League
On the strength of his great inherited oil wealth, Hunt applied for a
National Football League expansion franchise but was turned down. In 1959, professional football was a distant second to
Major League Baseball in popularity, and the thinking among NFL executives was that the league must be careful not to "oversaturate" the market by expanding too quickly.
[1]
In response, in
1960 Hunt took the lead in forming the
American Football League. He encouraged, wheedled, and cajoled seven other like-minded wealthy men to form this new league. The group of the eight founders of the AFL teams was referred to as the "Foolish Club." One of them, fellow
Texan Bud Adams of
Houston, had likewise tried but failed to be granted an NFL franchise. Hunt's goal was to bring professional football to Texas and to acquire an NFL team for the Hunt family. Hunt became owner of the
Dallas Texans and hired future hall-of-famer
Hank Stram as the team's first head coach.
Ownership and AFL/NFL merger
The Dallas Texans won the AFL Championship in
1962 over the 2-time defending champion
Houston Oilers in the longest professional game ever played as of that time and were one of the most successful AFL teams in the league's early days. But the Texans' success failed to draw fans in large numbers, as the Texans had to compete for fan loyalty with their cross-town NFL rivals, the
Dallas Cowboys. In 1963 Hunt began to consider moving the team.
Kansas City quickly became one of the contending cities for the franchise. During cloak-and-dagger negotiating sessions, in order to convince Hunt to move the team to Kansas City, mayor
H. Roe Bartle promised Hunt home attendance of 25,000 people per game. Hunt finally agreed to move the team to Kansas City and in
1963 the Dallas Texans became the
Kansas City Chiefs.
In the Chiefs' early days, attendance did not match the expansive claims Mayor Bartle had made. But in 1966 average home attendance at Chiefs games picked up and reached 37,000. By 1969 -- aided by some very successful and entertaining teams -- Chiefs' home attendance had reached 51,000. In
1966 the Chiefs won their first AFL Championship and reached the first ever
Super Bowl (a name coined by Hunt, who took it in part from the then popular toy, the
Super Ball[2])-- then called the “AFL-NFL Championship Game†-- where they lost to the
Green Bay Packers. The Chiefs remained successful through the 1960s, and in
1970 the Chiefs reached the pinnacle of success, winning the AFL Championship and later went on to win
Super Bowl IV (the last Super Bowl played when the AFL was a separate league prior to it being absorbed into the NFL as the
American Football Conference) over the heavily-favored
Minnesota Vikings. The Chiefs became an icon in Kansas City, and Hunt never considered moving the team again.
The rosters of the AFL were always stocked with a certain number of players who would have excelled in any league -- and that number grew as the 1960s progressed. The best AFL coaches and owners, many of them new to the pro game, brought color, excitement and important new strategic and marketing ideas to pro football, which had often been dominated by play-calling which overrated the value of eliminating mistakes and underrated the element of surprise. While the NFL was always almost certainly the better league as a whole, the best teams of the AFL were increasingly the equals of any team in the NFL.
The AFL also substantially raised football players' salaries by frequently bidding against the NFL for the top college stars. It was the NFL's concern for containing salaries, more than anything else, that led a reluctant NFL to accept a merger between the two leagues in 1970. The older league could no longer claim to be far superior because by then the AFL champion
New York Jets had defeated the vaunted
Baltimore Colts of the NFL to win the Super Bowl. The Chiefs' triumph over the Vikings the following season further showcased the AFL's ability.
Today's "descendants" from the AFL, the Patriots, Bills, Jets, Titans, Broncos, Chiefs, Raiders, Chargers, Dolphins and Bengals would not have existed if it hadn’t been for Lamar Hunt. What’s more, the NFL’s Cowboys, created specifically to drive the AFL out of Dallas, would not have existed. Neither would the Vikings, an NFL franchise that was given to Max Winter to pull out of the original eight-team American Football League; nor would the Falcons, which the NFL gave to Rankin Smith to deter him from the AFL’s Miami franchise. And neither would the Saints, whose franchise was granted by the NFL after certain Louisiana congressmen pushed the AFL-NFL merger to completion. Thus, fourteen professional football teams would not have existed in fourteen cities today, if Lamar Hunt had not had the vision and the courage to “fight the establishmentâ€.
In 1972, Hunt became the first American Football League personage inducted into the
Pro Football Hall of Fame. The trophy presented to each year's
AFC Champions is named the Lamar Hunt Trophy. In
1984, Hunt was also inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.
Hunt has also been influential in
soccer and
tennis, and has contributed to the growth of those sports in the US. He has been elected to the Halls of Fame of both sports.
The NASL: ownership and battles with the NFL
With much already accomplished in the world of American football, Hunt moved on in 1967 to help jump start soccer in the U.S. In 1966 he had become enthralled with the
World Cup on TV, and when it was decided that new pro leagues were to be formed in the US, Hunt wanted to be one of the initial movers and shakers.
His team in the
North American Soccer League was the
Dallas Tornado, and they debuted in 1967 as a part of the USA:
United Soccer Association. In a more fledgling version of what was occurring with the AFL and NFL, in 1968 a pro soccer merger took place to form the
North American Soccer League. Eventually, the
NASL reached 24 teams, and at times, the most popular teams such as the
New York Cosmos outdrew their NFL and MLB counterparts in the same cities. With Lamar Hunt as an active advocate for the sport and the league, his team the
Dallas Tornado won the NASL championship in 1971 and were runners-up '73.
The NFL was not happy with Hunt's ownership in and promotion of pro soccer, a sport that was taking away attention and spectators from the American football game. The NFL attempted to force legal requirements that would disallow team ownership in more than one sport for owners of NFL franchises. This strategy backfired onto the NFL, and in fact, the NASL won an anti-trust case against the NFL. A primary benefactor of this outcome was Lamar Hunt, and his legacy of leadership and ownership of pro soccer in those times remains to this day.
[ Hunt a quiet pioneer of U.S. soccer ]
Major League Soccer
Lamar Hunt was also one of the original founding investors of Major League Soccer, which debuted in
1996. This time he owned two teams: the
Columbus Crew and the
Kansas City Wizards. In
1999, Hunt financed the construction of the
Columbus Crew Stadium, the first of several large
soccer-specific stadiums in the USA. In
2003, Hunt purchased a third team, the Dallas Burn (now
FC Dallas), after announcing that he would partially finance the construction of their own
soccer-specific stadium. On
31 August 2006, Hunt sold the Wizards to a six-man ownership group led by
Cerner Corporation co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig.
Other sports and activities
'Basketball:' Hunt was one of the founding investors of the
Chicago Bulls of the
National Basketball Association. He remained a minority owner until his death.
'Tennis:' In
1967, Hunt co-founded the
World Championship Tennis circuit, which gave birth to the open era in tennis. He was inducted into the
International Tennis Hall of Fame in
1993.
'NHL:' Hunt and
John H. McConnell formed Columbus Hockey Limited, L.L.C. (CHL) in an effort to obtain a
National Hockey League franchise for
Columbus, Ohio. Following disagreements over the financing for an arena, McConnell accepted an offer to lease a new arena from Nationwide Insurance Enterprise. McConnell froze-out CHL and Hunt and was awarded the NHL
Columbus Blue Jackets franchise. See ''McConnell v. Hunt Sports Enterprises'', 132 Ohio App.3d 657, 725 N.E.2d 1193 (1999).
'Amusement Parks and Caves:' Hunt was also the founder of two theme parks in Kansas City:
Worlds of Fun and
Oceans of Fun, which opened in
1973 and
1982 respectively. The two parks were an outgrowth and adjoined a vast industrial park he developed in the bluffs above the
Missouri River in
Clay County, Missouri. Immediately south of the parks is the Hunt-developed
SubTropolis, a 55,000,000 square foot (5,060,000 m³), 1,100-acre manmade
limestone cave which is claimed to be the ''World's Largest Underground Business Complex (TM).'' Hunt's extensive business dealings in Clay County were to contribute to the Chiefs having their
NFL Training Camp at
William Jewell College in
Liberty, Missouri until 1991.
Honors
★ For service to
Dallas, Texas, Lamar Hunt was honored during
halftime of the
Dallas Cowboys/Kansas City Chiefs game in
2005.
★ For his efforts in building the sport of soccer in the United States in the modern era, Hunt was inducted into the
National Soccer Hall of Fame in
1992, and given their prestigious Medal of Honor in 1999, an award so far given out only 3 times in history.
★ The
United States Soccer Federation changed the name of its oldest and most prestigious competition, the U.S. Open Cup (est.1914), to the
Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in
1999.
★ The
NFL's trophy for the champion of the
American Football Conference is named in honor of Lamar Hunt.
★ On
December 17,
2006's ''
Sunday Night Football'' game against the
San Diego Chargers, the Kansas City Chiefs wore an emblem on the back of their helmets with the initials "LH" and continued to wear them until the end of the season. For the 2007 season, see "Tribute".
★ On
March 11,
2007, the inaugural
Lamar Hunt Pioneer Cup match was held at
Pizza Hut Park between Hunt's
MLS teams,
FC Dallas and the
Columbus Crew.
★ For the 2007 season, Major League Soccer players will wear a small patch on their arm with the initials LH as a memorial to Lamar Hunt and his contribution to soccer in America.
Death
Lamar Hunt died December 13, 2006 at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas of complications related to a ten-year battle with
prostate cancer. Upon his death, Cowboys owner
Jerry Jones called Hunt, "a founder of the NFL as we know it today.... He's been an inspiration for me."
[3]
Said
Dan Rooney, chairman of the
Pittsburgh Steelers: "Lamar Hunt was one of the most influential owners in professional football over the past 40-plus years, He was instrumental in the formation of the American Football League and in the AFL-NFL merger, which helped the
National Football League grow into America's passion."
The Mayor of
Kansas City, Missouri,
Kay Waldo Barnes, requested that all city flags fly at half-staff the following Thursday and Friday of his passing.
Upon his death his son
Clark Hunt was named chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs. He was elected by his other three siblings, Lamar Jr., Sharron Munson, and Daniel.
Tribute
In 2007, the Kansas City Chiefs will honor Hunt and the AFL. The Chiefs ''2007 Media Guide'' is full of images, logos and anecdotes about the league and each of its original teams. Prominently featured in the ''Guide'' and in the Chiefs ''2007 Yearbook'' is a special AFL patch. The ''Yearbook's'' description of the patch states: ''"As part of a year-long tribute to Hunt in 2007, the Chiefs will wear a commemorative patch that prominently features the American Football League logo to serve as a reminder of Hunt's formation of the AFL and the lasting impact the American Football League has made on the game of Professional Football. The patch will be affixed to the left chest of both Kansas City's home and away jerseys, meaning this piece of woven symbolism will be worn over the heart of every Chiefs player."''
References
1. Hunt remembered for energy, integrity
2. Archive footage of an interview with Hunt. ''SportsCenter'', ESPN, December 14 2006.
3. Sports innovator Lamar Hunt dies
See also
★
Other American Football League players, coaches and contributors
★
Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
External links
★
Pro Football Hall of Fame
★
International Tennis Hall of Fame
★
U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame
★
ESPN Soccer Net bio and Hunt's soccer legacy
★
FOX Sports Net information on Hunt's death
★
''Dallas Morning News'' article on Hunt's death
★
Sports E-Cyclopedia's Memoriam to Lamar Hunt
★
Program from the ''Celebration of the Life of Lamar Hunt''
★
Excerpts from Chiefs 2007 ''Media Guide'' and ''Yearbook''
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