TUPATALK: 2023 includes the 100th birthday of two pro football legends
Two of pro football’s iconic figures of the American Football League — one of them a local product — would have turned 100 this year.
The perceptive pair include Bud Adams — born in Bartlesville as son of K.S. “Boots” Adams of Phillips Petroleum Company fame — and future Super Bowl winning coach Hank Stram both were born on Jan. 3, 1923.
Adams would proceed to make his mark in the oil industry, primarily in Texas.
In 1959, Adams failed in a bid to buy part of an NFL franchise.
That disappointment led Hunt to partner with Lamar Hunt — also frustrated in his efforts to be part of the NFL — and other individuals to form the AFL as a rival league to the NFL.
Adams founded the Houston Oilers while Hunt started up the Dallas Texans. Those franchises eventually would move and become, respectively, the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs.
The NFL fought back by allowing new franchises in Minnesota and Dallas (Cowboys) to keep them away from the AFL, even though Dallas would be home to both AFL and NFL teams.
The AFL went through some rocky times financially, but managed to develop followings in most their communities, and nationally, in order to survive.
In the 1966, the NFL and AFL merged to create today’s two-conference NFL format. (Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore all switched from the NFL to the new American Football Conference, in order to level out the teams.)
I interviewed Adams in the early 2000’s, during his visit to Bartlesville, ad want to re-examine my notes for an historical article.
Stram was one of the great coaches and images of the AFL, especially after he guided Kansas City to the Super Bowl IV title in 1970, the last season before the merger took place.
This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: TUPATALK: 2023 includes the 100th birthday of two pro grid legends
