As a young man, Lamar Hunt joined one of his brothers, Nelson, and his father H.L. In political action committees, and the family had a close relationship with future President Lyndon B. Johnson. Lamar Hunt became a passionate sports advocate in the United States and focused much energy on getting involved with professional football. Hunt's leadership in bringing professional football to the state of Texas reached its apex in 1959 with the creation of the American Football League , a rival league to the NFL. The AFL launched its first season with eight teams in 1960. To avoid competition with the new NFL franchise in Dallas, the Cowboys, Hunt moved his team to Kansas City before the 1963 season, and the Texans franchise was renamed the Chiefs.
The first four Super Bowls matched the champions of the two competing leagues with Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs representing the AFL in Super Bowls I and IV. The Chiefs won the latter contest in 1970 with a 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. Throughout his business career, Hunt remained active in sports. He was a founder of World Championship Tennis, and he helped bring about the North American Soccer League, which put the game in major league stadiums across North America.
He also owned the minor league baseball Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs for a time. More recently, he and his sons owned Hunt Sports Group, which manages professional soccer teams in Dallas and Columbus, Ohio. Lamar Hunt, son of Texas oil magnate Haroldson Lafayette "H.L." Hunt, gained renown as a sports owner and promoter.
He helped found the American Football League in 1959 and also helped create a pair of professional soccer leagues in the United States. At the time of his death he was the chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs football team in the National Football League as well as the Columbus Crew franchise in Major League Soccer . Among the notable innovations credited to the AFL was the recruitment of many more African-American players into the league. Lamar Hunt was at the forefront of negotiating a merger between the NFL and AFL.
The agreement was completed in 1970; at that time the AFL consisted of ten teams. Throughout his life Hunt made major contributions to professional football that shaped the game in the modern era. He helped design the playoff format and is credited with coining the term "Super Bowl." Hunt also advocated naming the Super Bowl Trophy after Vince Lombardi.
He put players' names on their uniforms, added an extra Thanksgiving Day game, and was ultimately responsible for the allowance of the two-point conversion in professional football. Lamar Hunt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1981 he was inducted into the Order of the Leather Helmet of the NFL Alumni Association. The NFL honored him by naming the American Football Conference championship trophy the Lamar Hunt Trophy. "Reds" Bagnell Award from the Maxwell Football Club of Philadelphia in 1993. Was an American businessman who promoted professional-level sports including American football, soccer, basketball, tennis and ice hockey in the United States.
Along with his brothers, William Herbert Hunt and Nelson Bunker Hunt, he made efforts to corner the silver market in the late 20th century. He was the principal founder of the American Football League as a competitor to National Football League, and also coined the term 'Super Bowl' after the two leagues merged. He helped found the North American Soccer League, the predecessor to Major League Soccer, for which he was an original investor as well. He owned the Kansas City Chiefs ; the Kansas City Wizards, Columbus Crew and FC Dallas ; and the Chicago Bulls . He also founded the theme parks Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun. In 1996 Hunt once again promoted and invested in professional soccer by becoming the owner of two teams, the Columbus Crew and the Kansas City Wizards, in the newly organized Major League Soccer circuit.
The Crew played for its first three years in Ohio State University's football stadium, but Hunt realized the team needed its own facility. At a cost of $28.5 million he bankrolled a 22,485-seat stadium that opened to the public in 1999. The Wizards played in Arrowhead Stadium, home to Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs. In the 2000 Major League Soccer Championship game, the Wizards defeated the Chicago Fire to win their first MLS title. Not content with having already founded one professional sports league, Hunt was one of the founding investors of Major League Soccer.
At the league's inception, he owned two of the teams — the Columbus Crew and Kansas City Wizards. He continued to invest in the building of professional soccer in the US, including the construction of just the second soccer-specific stadium at the time in the USA. He then purchased the Dallas Burn in 2003 and financed the building of their own soccer-specific stadium. Lamar Hunt's father, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, was the founder of Hunt Oil, and was worth about $2.5-billion when he died.
Young Lamar was always a sports fan, and played second-string tight end at Southern Methodist University. In the 1950s, he approached the National Football League on several occasions, seeking to buy a franchise for his hometown of Dallas, but he was repeatedly rebuffed. Frustrated but fabulously rich, Hunt began calling other millionaires, and organized a rival pro football circuit, the American Football League, in 1960. Born on August 2, 1932 in El Dorado, Arkansas, Hunt is recognized as one of the greatest sports visionaries in American history and a pioneer professional soccer in the United States. Hunt helped make pro football history in 1960 by founding and organizing the American Football League. Long known for his role in the development of football as founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, Hunt's contributions to pro soccer have also had a major impact on sports in the U.S.
The newly created league and team faced stiff competition from the National Football League, which also established a Dallas franchise. In May 1963 Hunt moved the Dallas Texans to Kansas City, where no other professional football team operated, and the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs. The two football conferences continued to battle each other for supremacy, and finally in the spring of 1966 the two leagues merged.
Hunt, who figured prominently in the merger negotiations, served as the AFL representative in talks with the Dallas Cowboy owner Tex Schramm and the NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Hunt was also instrumental in negotiating the first football television contract for the AFL teams. In 1970 Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs captured a Super Bowl victory for their owner.
Hunt finally caught on to the NFL's conservatism, and decided to start a league of his own. The result was the American Football League, one of the most successful American professional sports leagues of all time, and the true genesis of modern professional football. Revenue sharing of home receipts and television income? Moving cameras instead of static fifty-yard-line shots? A clock on the scoreboard, so that fans knew the time remaining? Flashy offenses instead of three yards and a cloud of dust?
A Thanksgiving Day game in a different city every year? All those innovations were made by Hunt's brainchild, the AFL. Both companies are based in the greater Kansas City area. Lamar is a member of the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs, a National Football League member team. He is also the owner of the Kansas City Mavericks, a franchise member of the ECHL, the premier "AA" professional hockey league in the USA/Canada.
Hunt, founded his professional football team as the Dallas Texans in 1960. He paid $25,000 for the franchise, and a lot of people thought he'd been taken. But it's what I've read about your integrity, honesty, and sense of fair play that impresses me the most. When an NFL franchise was offered to you if you abandoned your upstart league, you refused, knowing that AFL owners like Billy Sullivan, Jr. had everything they owned invested in their teams. I've also heard that you personally wrote game checks for the New York Jets when Harry Wismer was unable to make payroll.
Never before, and not since, has anyone with so many resources spent so much time watching, participating in, and being captivated by the absorbing ritual of sports and the suspended state of play. His accomplishments would put him in the company of the other giants of American sports–Charles C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle, Abe Saperstein, George Halas, Branch Rickey, Red Auerbach, Pete Rozelle. But Hunt, significantly, was present at a number of revolutions. Before his death in 2006, Hunt revolutionized three different sports–pro football, tennis, and soccer–winding up in the Hall of Fame of each.
Hunt revolutionized three different sports—pro football, tennis, and soccer—winding up in the Hall of Fame of each. Drawing on 50 years of Hunt's personal papers and more than 200 interviews, MacCambridge provides an intimate, original portrait of the man forever captivated by these serious pursuits we call games. He was a key player in merging the American and National football leagues into what is now the NFL. Hunt's contributions to other major league sports included significant support of soccer in the United States. He helped found both the North American Soccer League and later Major League Soccer. In 1998 he helped build Crew Stadium, the first American soccer-specific facility, in Columbus, Ohio, and also oversaw operations of that city's soccer team.
He was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1982. The U.S. Open Cup in soccer, the oldest ongoing soccer competition in the United States which dates back to 1914, was officially named the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in 1999. S. Soccer Foundation gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Hunt, best known as the founder of the American Football League and the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, is also remembered for tirelessly promoting professional soccer and tennis. His induction into the football, soccer, and tennis halls of fame validates his success as a professional sports promoter. Hunt was one of six children born to Harold Lafayette "June" Hunt, Jr., an oil executive, and Lyda Bunker Hunt, a homemaker.
The family moved to Tyler, Texas, in late 1933 and in 1938 relocated to Dallas, Texas, where Hunt's father established the offices of the Hunt Oil Company. As a youngster Hunt and his older brother Bunker Hunt read the newspaper and digested the sports page by discussing the box scores and attendance numbers of various sporting events. Lamar Hunt received his high school education at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where he played halfback and served as captain of the varsity team during his senior year. 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.
What Did Lamar Hunt Do For A Living 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. 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. 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.
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 response, in 1960 Hunt led several other vectors in forming the American Football League. He encouraged, wheedled, and cajoled seven other like-minded 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. The silver scheme became a footnote in Lamar Hunt's storied career in professional sports.
The longtime Chiefs owner played a crucial role in the NFL's development as a major sports league and was credited with coining the phrase "Super Bowl." He was also an original investor in Major League Soccer. Giants fans have been calling sports talk shows with memories about Mr. Mara personally answering letters, helping them get tickets to a special game or just taking the time to talk with them. It sounds like Mr. Mara was a wonderful husband, father, and man.
"At the time, there were only 12 teams in the NFL, and Hunt recognized that as the game grew in popularity, there would be markets in other cities that would want to have a major pro football team," he said. In the late 1950s, Lamar Hunt, the son of a Texas oil tycoon, was determined to make his mark in professional football. After years of unsuccessfully trying to buy or start a new NFL team, Hunt decided to start an entirely new league – the American Football League.
And he started with a new team in Dallas – the Dallas Texans. Along with Namath, the league possessed several household names that included Jack Kemp and Chargers receiver Lance Alworth, whose career earned him a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As far back as 1982, Hunt was honored for his efforts to help establish pro soccer in America by being inducted into the U.S.
Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, N.Y. Hunt has also been inducted into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, as well as the sports halls of fame of both Missouri and Texas. Soccer Foundation, the major charitable arm of soccer in the United States, presented Hunt with the Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. Lamar Hunt died on December 13, 2006, at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. He was married twice and survived by his wife of forty-two years, Norma, and their four children, Sharron, Lamar Jr., Daniel, and Clark. His son Clark also attended SMU where he played on the school's men's soccer team.
Upon his father's death, Clark Hunt took over control as chairman of the board of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Columbus Crew. Lamar "Games" Hunt was buried in Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas. Lamar Hunt received numerous honors during his lifetime. Hunt co-founded the World Championship Tennis circuit in 1968 and was honored with induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993. Other halls of fame honors include induction into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1984, Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1990, Texas Business Hall of Fame in 1997, and Kansas City Business Hall of Fame in 2004.
In 2001 he established the Heart of a Champion Foundation. Hunt constructed the Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun theme parks in Kansas City as well as a vast underground business complex known as SubTropolis in Clay County, Missouri. Lamar Hunt's shares in his father's oil empire had vaulted him to the top ten in Fortune's 400 wealthiest Americans list by the year 1995. Although he became one of the most important owners in pro football, with the American Football Conference championship trophy bearing his name, he was not always part of the establishment. In fact, the N.F.L. failed to appreciate having a rival league in the burgeoning city of Dallas, where Hunt's Texans had set up shop, so it decided to put an N.F.L. franchise there — the Cowboys.
