Dallas Texans Football Club

"Excitement 61"

phone RIverside 8-7031

Member American Football League

There were two incarnations of the Dallas Texans. The first one was "a franchise born of failure", and it played just one season, 1952, before going under. Here's the longer story.

This matchbook, however, is from the second Dallas Texans team, born in 1960. In 1959 26-year-old Lamar Hunt had started the American Football League with six new teams as an alternative to the National Football League. He began assembling his own team, the Texans, in early 1960. By January 27 fifty-eight players had signed on to play for Hunt, including several star players from TCU, LSU and Stanford. Then on January 29 it was announced the NFL had awarded a new football franchise to Dallas owners Bedford Wynne and Clint Murchison Jr. The team was tentatively called the Dallas Rangers and signed SMU's "fabulous" Don Meredith as quarterback. That team became the Cowboys and the Texans had a hard time competing. They played their first game in September 1960 and their last game in December 1962, and in 1963 Hunt moved his team to Kansas City and they became the Chiefs. The red and gold Hunt had chosen for the Texans' team colors became the colors of the Kansas City Chiefs and today the Chiefs are still using those colors.

Does anyone remember the Titans?