AFL Memories: The Day Lamar’s Baby Was Introduced

This year, pro football is celebrating the creation of the American Football League some 50 seasons ago. Over the rest of the year, we will bring you some moments from the AFL’s history book.

It was a Congressional hearing of the kind that goes on hundreds of times each year in our nation’s Capital.

There was nothing on the hearing’s agenda that day indicating anything substantial was going to happen.

But on July 28, 1959 during testimony in front of a Senate judiciary anti-trust and monopoly sub-committee the existence of what would become the American Football League became public for the first time.

The sub-committee was meeting to discuss different bills that had been introduced by Senators C. Estes Kefauver (D-TN), Kenneth B. Keating (R-NY), Everett M. Dirksen (R-IL) and Thomas C. Hennings (D-MO). The bills were designed to provide certain exemptions for professional sports teams to anti-trust laws.

Giving testimony on this Tuesday morning was NFL Commissioner Bert Bell (left). Here’s how it was reported the next day by the New York Times:

“Bert Bell, the Commissioner of the National Football League announced today the imminent formation of a new professional football League. He said the sponsors of the new league planned to field teams in six cities, probably including New York, in the 1960-61 season. He said that the owners of the new circuit intended to expand to at least eight and possibly twelve teams in subsequent years. The league, at least initially will operate independently of the existing twelve-team National Football League, but definitely not as an “outlaw” to organized football according to Bell.”

Just a few days before his appearance in Washington, Bell had met with former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Davey O’Brien. It was O’Brien who requested the meeting and he was there as a go-between, representing Lamar Hunt, the instigator of this new league.

O’Brien was not involved in the new football venture, but was sought by Hunt because of his status and relationship with Bell. O’Brien won the 1938 Heisman Trophy while playing quarterback at Texas Christian. He then spent two years playing for Bell’s Philadelphia Eagles team, including winning All-Pro honors as a rookie in 1939. After two seasons, O’Brien quit pro football to become an FBI agent. After he retired from the bureau, O’Brien worked several years for Hunt Oil in land development.

Sitting in the gallery that day listening to Bell tell the senators about this new league was Lamar Hunt.

(At left are O’Brien and Bell not long after the quarterback was drafted by the Eagles.)

Bell testified that he told O’Brien that “we were definitely in favor of the new league” and that he had spoken with all the NFL owners about the potential competitor. He did not identify Hunt or his only committed partner at the time, Bud Adams, saying only they were “people from Texans. I know they don’t need money.”

He also said: “There’s enough in the way of talent from the colleges for all of us. After all, only three to five new players a year make our teams. It will take the new league several years to build up teams to match the NFL in equal competition on the field.”

Contacted after Bell’s testimony, O’Brien said: “I have talked to Mr. Bell. What he had to say about me being a go-between is strictly my position. As far as Identifying the teams and owners, I am not at liberty to go into that. I hate to give you that kind of answer but to do otherwise would break confidences.”

Bell said during his testimony that Houston, Denver and Minneapolis were among the first six cities and he was pretty sure the other cities were Dallas, New York and Los Angeles. Other cities mentioned that day included Louisville, Buffalo, Miami, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. He said teams in the new league would be free to compete for players against teams in the NFL. He testified that no player recruiting agreements had been reached and none would be entered into between the two leagues except that contracts with players by teams in either league would be recognized by teams in the other.

This moment came at an interesting time when the world of professional sports was seeking to expand its horizons. The day before Bell’s appearance, the Continental League was announced as a third major league for baseball. It was set to begin in 1961 and at the time included teams in New York, Houston, Toronto, Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul. There were going to be a minimum of eight teams and a 154-game schedule.

Also at the time there was talk of another new football league. In New York on July 29th, plans were announced by former New York Giants quarterback Travis Tidwell that a 12-team league was ready to operate in 1960 as the Trans-America Conference. At the time, Tidwell said many of the investors in the football league were the same people investing in the new baseball league.

The day after his testimony, Bell met with Hunt and O’Brien at the Commissioner’s vacation home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. By then, Hunt’s name was becoming public, as the Dallas newspapers identified him as the man behind this new league. He came out from behind the curtain, admitting he was the “wealthy Texan” who Bell had referenced before the sub-committee.

Lamar told the Dallas Morning News that the new league would not take only NFL castoffs. “We certainly don’t plan for our teams to be staffed by what’s left,” Hunt was quoted as saying. “We expect to have an open market in dealing for players.

“The competition for players will be on a rookie basis. We’ll let the law of supply and demand take care of the salaries we pay.”

He was forced to publicly say that his father H.L. Hunt, then considered the richest man in the country and possibly the world, would have no interest in the venture, financial or otherwise.

Lamar addressed several other items at the time:

• His league has nothing to do with the Trans-America Conference. Hunt said he never heard of that league until he read it in a newspaper.
• His league had no name yet.
• O’Brien went along “as an advisor and as a friend of Bert Bell.”
• Bud Adams was the man to take over the Houston franchise and one unnamed man who was also involved with the third major league in baseball was involved in the new football league (Bob Howsam in Denver.)
• There was no offer from Bell to let six cities join the NFL as a third division, “unless I was asleep at the meeting that was never discussed,” said Hunt.

At the time, Lamar said of his role as organizer: “I sort of put the proposition together. I knew of the interest in several cities and put it to the National League and Bert Bell in a way I thought would be acceptable to them. We would be a separate league, not a division. We’d work on friendly terms with the NFL, not as outlaws.”

This two-day whirlwind in Washington and Atlantic City ended for Hunt and O’Brien when they spent the night trying to sleep in the waiting area of the Newark Airport. They returned the next morning to Dallas.

And pro football would never be the same.