I was totally unaware of this. Interesting article....
Hunt was ready to bring team to New Orleans
Friday, December 15, 2006
Peter Finney
"I don't know if I ever knew a better person than Lamar Hunt," said Dave Dixon.
Dixon has known quite a few, but in his lifetime, which includes being the driving force in bringing professional football to this city, Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and the founder of the American Football League, will always occupy a special alcove.
"Lamar was a gentle giant," said Dixon, "someone who helped shape the sport, a man of great wealth, but also a man with a genuine compassion for his fellowman, whose wisdom and rock-solid honesty was responsible for the incredible success the game enjoys today."
Lamar Hunt's death Wednesday at age 74 left Dixon with a special sadness, also with the memory of an unfulfilled dream.
"If I had been smarter, if I had done a better job," Dixon recalled, "the New Orleans Saints already would have won a Super Bowl."
Come again.
"That's right," said Dixon. "The New Orleans Saints, owned by Lamar Hunt, coached by Hank Stram, would have won Super Bowl IV. Remember? They would have beaten the Minnesota Vikings, 23-7. You know where? In Tulane Stadium, that's where."
Remember Tulane Stadium?
In the early 1960s, Dixon was at work selling pro football, which meant he also was at work behind the scenes selling Tulane officials on making the university's 80,000-seat facility available to the pro game on Sundays.
With Lamar Hunt as one of the prime movers and shakers, the AFL began play in 1960, with Hunt's Dallas Texans sharing Big-D with Clint Murchinson's Dallas Cowboys of the NFL.
It was a battle between two millionaire owners. The winner would be the one who lost the least.
For example, any barber who wore his white jacket to a Texan game got in free. So did kids who wore white Texan T-shirts. So did high school students with ticket stubs to a game played the previous Friday night. If you purchased groceries, or the right brand of cigarettes or potato chips, at certain stores, you qualified for cut-rate tickets.
When Lamar Hunt's father, H.L. Hunt, reportedly one of the richest men in the world, was told his son was going to lose a million dollars in 1960, the old man said, "at that rate, he's only going to last 150 years."
Still, it was useless playing home games in front of paid crowd of 10,000. On the field, while the Texans enjoyed far more success than the Cowboys, the Cowboys were operating in a more established league.
Following the 1962 season, Dixon was well aware Hunt was looking to relocate.
"I had been talking to board members at Tulane regarding Tulane Stadium," Dixon said. "I also had been talking to Lamar. He would have come to New Orleans in a heartbeat if an arrangement could have been made with Tulane. That's where I didn't do a good job. It wasn't long after that Lamar decided to move the franchise to Kansas City."
In '63, the Texans became the Chiefs.
"I'll never forget some conversations I had with Lamar about a possible move here," said Dixon. "I told him we couldn't call them the New Orleans Texans. But how about New Orleans Saints? He laughed."
Well, the rest is history.
In 1966, the AFL landed a five-year TV contract with ABC. The New York Jets would sign Joe Namath. And two warring leagues came to realize a merger made financial sense.
At a parking lot in Dallas, at Love Field, Lamar Hunt and Tex Schramm, president of the Dallas Cowboys, got together in a secret meeting in '66 to discuss a common draft, inter-league play and a merger.
Lamar Hunt's Chiefs lost to Green Bay in the first Super Bowl. When they returned to upset the Vikings in Super Bowl IV, a year after Namath and the Jets had upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III -- an upset some regarded as a fluke -- the AFL, by winning two in a row, had finally shed its Mickey Mouse label.
"Lamar," said Dave Dixon, "was responsible for giving the Super Bowl its name. And, believe me, no one deserved to wear a Super Bowl ring more than that man."
