Dallas Texans (NFL) - History

History

After the 1951 NFL season, the financially troubled New York Yanks franchise were put on the market. Ted Collins had founded that franchise in 1944 as the Boston Yanks, moved it to New York City in 1949 as the Bulldogs, and renamed it the Yanks in 1950. The franchise was reported to have been "sold back" to the league by Collins, but it is more likely the NFL revoked it.

A few months later, a Dallas-based group led by a young millionaire, Giles Miller, bought what was ostensibly a new franchise--the first-ever major league team based in Texas. However, it also acquired the entire Yanks roster. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Miller's group bought the Yanks and moved them to Dallas. Home games were scheduled to be played at the Cotton Bowl. Miller originally wanted to name the team the Rangers, but later decided to name them the Texans instead.

Miller thought that Texas, with its longstanding support of college football, would be a natural fit for the NFL, and NFL owners approved the move with an 11-1 vote. Miller declared, "There is room in Texas for all kinds of football." However, the first game, against the New York Giants, set the tone for the season. While the Texans managed to get the first touchdown, they missed the extra point. They never found the end zone again and lost 24-6. In what proved to be another harbinger for the franchise, only 17,499 fans showed up at the Cotton Bowl (capacity 75,000) for the opening game. Attendance continued to dwindle as the losses piled up and the team showed no sign of being competitive. The nadir came with a November 9 game against the Los Angeles Rams, which attracted only 10,000 fans.

As it turned out, this would be the last game the Texans would play in Dallas. Unable to meet payroll or get financial support from area businessmen (an important factor even in those days), Miller returned the team to the league with five games to go in the season. The NFL moved the franchise's operations to Hershey, Pennsylvania (though it kept the "Dallas Texans" name). It also moved the Texans' last two home games out of Dallas, making them a traveling team.

The team wound up playing one of its final two "home" games at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, where the franchise's only win occurred — over the Chicago Bears of George Halas, in front of an estimated 3,000 fans on Thanksgiving Day. Head coach Jim Phelan suggested because of the small turnout — where a high school game earlier outdrew the NFL contest (a measure of how low the NFL still ranked on the sports scene at the time)— that instead of being introduced on the field, they should "go into the stands and shake hands with each fan." Halas had been so certain that the Bears would overpower the lowly Texans that he started his second-stringers. The Texans jumped out to a 20-2 lead before hanging on for a 27-23 win. With the victory, the NFL avoided having a franchise with a winless regular season, something that had not happened since 1944. The team's final game was a 41-6 flogging at the hands of the Detroit Lions. That game was supposed to be played in Dallas, but was moved to Detroit after the league took over the team--forcing the Texans to make their second trip of the year to Briggs Stadium.

George Taliaferro, the team's leading rusher, was selected to the Pro Bowl at the end of the season.

The NFL was unable to find a buyer for the Texans, and folded the team after the season. A few months later, the NFL granted a new franchise to a Baltimore-based group headed by Carroll Rosenbloom, and awarded it the remains of the failed Texans operation. Rosenbloom named his new team the Baltimore Colts. However, the Colts (now based in Indianapolis) do not claim the history of the Yanks/Bulldogs/Yanks/Texans as their own. Likewise, the NFL reckons the Colts as a 1953 expansion team. It does not consider the Colts to be a continuation of the Yanks/Bulldogs/Yanks/Texans franchise, or even the Dayton Triangles for that matter considering that franchise's successor, the Brooklyn Dodgers/Tigers, merged with the Yanks in 1945. As a result, the Texans remain the last NFL team to permanently cease operations and not be included in the lineage of any current team.

In 1960, the league made a second venture into Dallas and established what would become a more successful team, the Dallas Cowboys. Also in that year, the American Football League began with its own Dallas Texans; that team moved after winning the 1962 AFL Championship and became the Kansas City Chiefs. The "Texans" name has since been revived by the NFL for the current Houston Texans, which started play in 2002.