History of The Kansas City Chiefs - AFL Origins

AFL Origins

For more details on more information on the AFL's origins, see American Football League.

In 1959, Lamar Hunt, son of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, began discussions with other businessmen in establishing an American football organization that would rival that of the National Football League. Since as early as 1958, Hunt had the interest of purchasing an NFL franchise and moving them to Dallas, Texas. His desire to secure a professional football franchise was further heightened after watching the historic 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The team that Hunt was most interested in buying was the Chicago Cardinals.

The NFL convinced Hunt to contact Cardinals owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner, and her husband Walter Wolfner eventually agreed to sell Hunt 20 percent of the Cardinals franchise. Hunt declined the opportunity. He then conceived the concept of forming a second league. “Why wouldn’t a second league work,” Hunt recalled. “There was an American and National League in baseball, why not football?” Hunt contacted several other individuals who had expressed interest in the Cardinals franchise—Bud Adams, Bob Howsam, Max Winter and Bill Boyer—and gauged their interest in forming a second league.

On August 14, the first meeting of the new league was held in Chicago. Charter memberships were issued to six original cities—Dallas, New York, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. The league was officially christened the American Football League on August 22. Ralph Wilson was extended the league’s seventh franchise on October 28 and Billy Sullivan became the league’s eighth team's owner on November 22. Minneapolis withdrew its franchise from the AFL in November after receiving an offer for a team in the NFL, and Oakland, California instead joined the AFL as the Oakland Raiders.