February 23, 2026 - Timpson Area Genealogy and Heritage Society welcomed their friend, Scott Sosebee, as their speaker January 21, 2026, in the Timpson Public Library annex. His subject, just in time for the Superbowl, was “Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams: Two Texans Start a league to Challenge the NFL” Mr. Sosebee, a history professor at SFASU, is Executive Director of the East Texas Historical Association as well as serving as Executive Editor of East Texas Historical Journal. Included in his resume are several published works and collaborations.
Some smug and unlearned remarks from a couple of students in his class on the 1960s and 1970s prompted Sosebee to create this account of early football. When he remarked that the Houston Oilers captured the spirit and persona of Houston in that era, a couple of students responded sarcastically. “The Houston who?” “Their name is the Texans.” Realizing these students were born well after the Oilers transitioned to Nashville and became the Titans he bit his tongue and began this project he hoped would save his students from further embarrassing themselves with their ignorance of this cultural icon. Older people could join him in a trip down memory lane.
Football, overwhelming the most popular American sport today, did not always enjoy this status. Founded in 1920, the National Football League, at least through the 1960s, was widely eclipsed by Major League Baseball and even collegiate football. One reason the league struggled was its presence was entirely in the Eastern and Midwest markets, in predominantly working and lower middle-class communities. Fan loyalty and passion were not problems, but financial issues negatively affected in person attendance at games.in the 1940s and into the 1950s Sports popularity was calculated by in person attendance.
The advent of television was the most significant development in the history of how sports was presented to spectators, expanding fan bases and creating more revenue sources. Football, with its inherent violence, seemed made for television and was able to finally find its niche in the sports arena. Its timeouts could coincide with station breaks. Baseball did not enjoy the same optics on television as did football.
The game that set in motion the rise of football in popularity was played in 1958 between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts in Yankee Stadium. Although the contest was happenstance, its effect was as if it had been planned. The Giants, who played in the biggest market in the League, was the most popular team in the nation, thanks to its presence on television. CBS was contracted to broadcast the Giants’ games, and most televisions were tuned in to Giants’ games on Sundays. The Giants had some of the highest profile [layers in the League. Halfback/flanker Frank Gifford’s handsome looks garnered television and newspaper coverage. Sam Huff was the middle linebacker in future Dallas Cowboy head coach, Tom Landry’s innovative 4-3 defensive alignment. The Colts were a relatively young team, founded in 1953, but its roots extended back to Boston and New York as the Yanks, and a season in Dallas as the Texans. Initially not a powerful franchise, the leadership of the well-heeled owner, Carrol Rosenbloom, Head Coach Webb Eubanks, and quarterback, johnny Unitas, the Colts, by 1958, was likely the best team in the NFL. The game was a nailbiter, with the Colts ultimate winning 23-17 in the first “sudden death” overtime game in NFL history. The public appetite for more football was, thus, cemented.
Watching this game was Bud Adams, son of Oklahoma oilman,” Boots “ Adams, who had worked his way from an entry level position to president to chairman of Phillips Oil Company. The elder Adams received his nickname from the accounts of him wading in bright red waders to help victims of the 1907 Tulsa flood.
Bud Adams, born in 1923, lettered in three sports at Culver Military Academy and attended Kansas, playing on football team with Bob Dole, the future senator and Vice President. Having joined the Navy in early 1945 as an engineering officer he was discharged in September 1945 as a lieutenant. His plans to fly to New Orleans at that time for the Sugar Bowl were thwarted when heavy fog grounded him in Houston, where he took the opportunity to explore the city. Bud decided to move to Houston. His father staked him with cash, stocks, and exclusive PHILLIPS 66 distributorships on the Texas gulf coast. He eventually turned that stake into a multimillion-dollar empire as an oilman.
He was one of a community of ambitious, young oilmen transforming Houston, many of whom shared his ambition of owning a sports franchise. The Birdwell family; in early 1958, rejected bud’s offer to buy the Chicago Cardinals. Another Texas oilman, Lamar Hunt, son of Howard Lamar Hunt, and himself an athlete, also saw potential in professional football. NFL Commissioner counseled Hunt to buy an existing franchise rather than starting a new one. Hunt, too, was denied purchase of the Cardinals. He learned other Texans, Adams and Clint Murchisson, had likewise failed to buy the Cardinals. Other young men, Barron Hilton, Bob Howsam, and Max Winter, were being denied purchase of or expansion of franchises in the NFL.
Hunt saw football as a potential national product if it could truly grow. Since the establishment of the NFL was unwilling to expand, Hunt and his new league would fill this need.. Eventually the league consisted of Hunt’s’ Dallas Texans, Adams’ Houston Oilers, Barron Hilton’s Los Angeles Chargers, Harry Wesmer’s New York Titans, Ralph Wilson, Jr’s.Buffalo Bills, Bob Howsam’s Denver Broncos, Billy Sullivan’s Boston Patriots, and Wayne Valley’s Oakland Raiders. The location of these teams in cities underserved by the NFL and most west of the Mississippi insured their success. The wealthy, young owners were hungry for these successes that changed the face of professional football.
Adams’ first move as a professional football team owner was to find his Oilers a venue in which to play. The logical choice was Rice Stadium, which seated 50,000. Beside the rent Rice was asking, Adams worried about the optics if they failed to sell all those seats. Resulting in a partially filled stadium. He settled on an old HISD facility, Jeppesen Stadium, with a capacity of 15,000. Adama financed expansion to a capacity of 36,000. Jeppesen literally stank of a sewer. Its field was rock hard when the weather was dry and was a quagmire when wet. In 1964, the Oilers moved to Rice Stadium, and in 1968, to the Astrodome.
The AFL scheduled an early draft, done by territory, to get ahead of the NFL, which was still playing. Adams hired longtime, scout with the Chicago Cardinals, John Breen, as personnel director, but in reality, he functioned as team manager. The first draft pick was Heisman Trophy winner, Billy Cannon, who returned his signing bonus check to the Los Angeles Rams to accept a magnanimous offer from Adams. Although their team was filled out in the draft, the Oilers needed and some more experienced players. To that end, Adams hired Lou Rymkus, an assistant to the innovative Sid Gillman of the Rams. Tom Landry turned Adams down for the position of defensive coordinator, instead joining the NFL expansion team at Dallas that would become the Dallas Cowboys. Bud Wilson of the University of Oklahoma, likewise turned Adams down. Rymkus and Adams failed to ever mesh, leading to Rymkus being fired in the middle of the second year.
John Breen realized he needed talent other than Billy Cannon, who could certainly sell tickets. He wanted powerful offensive players. He found George Blanda of the George Halas Bears. Bland had an impressive history, but headstrong Halas disliked him, benching him to be used only as a kicker. Blanda, with Charlie Hennigan, a star of Northwest State in Natchitoches who had been overlooked by the NFL, formed a lethal passing combination. This duo, in concert with Rymkus’ understanding of offensive line play, led the Oilers to the first AFL championship. Adams fired Rymkus for unclear reasons, in mid-season the second year. His replacement, Wally Lemm, led the Oilers to their second straight AFL title. This was the last title the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans would ever win. At the end of the 1996 season, upset because Houston would not fund a new stadium, Adams moved his team to Nashville, taking the Oiler name and records with him.
