Early life
Hunt was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, US, on August 2, 1932.[1] He was the son of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt[2] and younger brother of tycoons Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt. Lamar was raised in Dallas, Texas. He attended Culver Military Academy and graduated from The Hill School in Pennsylvania in 1951 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 in 1952, Hunt joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In 1972, he was selected as Kappa Sigma's Man of the Year.[3]
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 American 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.[4] Hunt also attempted to purchase the NFL's Chicago Cardinals (now based in Arizona) franchise in 1959 with the intention to move them to Dallas, but was again turned down (the team moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960).[5]
In response, Hunt approached several other businessmen who had also unsuccessfully sought NFL franchises, including fellow Texan and oilman Bud Adams of Houston, about forming a new football league, and the American Football League was established in August 1959.[6] The group of the eight founders of the AFL teams was referred to as the "Foolish Club".[7] Hunt's goal was to bring professional football to Texas and to acquire an NFL team for the Hunt family. Hunt became an owner of the Dallas Texans and hired future hall-of-Famer Hank Stram as the team's first head coach. The team, along with the AFL, began play in 1960.
Ownership and NFL merger
As a response to the newly formed league and the presence of an AFL franchise in Dallas, the NFL quickly placed a new franchise of their own in Dallas, the Dallas Cowboys, who also began play in 1960. As a result, the Dallas Texans, despite being one of the more successful AFL teams in the league's early days, had little luck at the gate, as they had to compete with the Cowboys for fans.
By the end of the 1962 season, Hunt concluded that Dallas was not big enough to support two teams, and began to consider moving the team. Kansas City became one of the contenders, as Hunt wanted a city to which he could easily commute from Dallas.[8] 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 were rebranded the Kansas City Chiefs.
While the Chiefs' first two seasons had attendance not matching the levels Mayor Bartle had promised, in 1966 average home attendance at Chiefs games increased and reached 37,000. By 1969, Chiefs' average home attendance had reached 51,000. In 1966, the Chiefs won their first AFL Championship (after having previously won it in 1962 as the Dallas Texans) and reached the first-ever Super Bowl, which the Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Packers. The Chiefs remained successful through the 1960s, and in 1970 the Chiefs won the AFL Championship and 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
Coinage of the term "Super Bowl"
In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge, with a championship game between the two leagues to be played after that season. In a July 25, 1966, letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt wrote, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon." Hunt would later say the name was likely in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy. Although the leagues' owners decided on the name "AFL-NFL Championship Game", the media immediately picked up on Hunt's "Super Bowl" name, which would become official beginning with the third annual game in 1969, which was won by the AFL's New York Jets over the NFL's Baltimore Colts.[10]
The NASL: ownership and battles with the NFL
In 1967 Hunt helped promote professional soccer in the United States. Hunt's interest in soccer began in 1962 when he accompanied his future wife, Norma, to a Shamrock Rovers game in Dublin, Ireland.[11] In 1966, he viewed the FIFA World Cup in England, and then attended nine of the next 11 World Cup tournaments.
In 1967, Hunt founded the Dallas Tornado as members of the United Soccer Association. In 1968 the league merged with the National Professional Soccer League to form the North American Soccer League. Hunt was an active advocate for the sport and the league and the Dallas Tornado won the NASL championship in 1971 and were runners-up in 1973.
The NFL owners were not happy with Hunt's ownership in and promotion of pro soccer. 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 on the NFL, and the NASL won an anti-trust case against the NFL. A primary benefactor of this outcome was Lamar Hunt.[11]
In 1981, after 15 seasons and losses in the millions, Hunt and his Dallas Tornado partner Bill McNutt decided to merge their team with the Tampa Bay Rowdies
Major League Soccer
Hunt returned to soccer as one of the original founding investors of Major League Soccer, which debuted in 1996. He originally owned two teams: the Columbus Crew and the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City). In 1999, Hunt financed the construction of the venue now known as Historic Crew Stadium, the second, and first since 1913, 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 August 31, 2006, Hunt sold the Wizards to a six-man ownership group led by Cerner Corporation co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig.
Tennis
In 1968, Hunt co-founded the World Championship Tennis circuit, which gave birth to the Open Era of tennis. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993.[14]
