What if Lamar Hunt was allowed to buy the Cards in 1959?

[Denbrnc]

Here is a very pivotal question in Pro Football history?

What if Lamar Hunt would have been allowed to buy a big enough stake in the Chicago Cardinals to move them to Dallas 41 years ago? How different would Pro Football be today?

Would anyone else have started a new league?

Would the NFL have expanded much in the 60's?

What are your thoughts?

[football junkie]

Great, great question. I, however, have no idea how to answer it, except with more questions.

I can guess that the AFL would have existed without Lamar Hunt in Kansas City. I think Al Davis in Oakland would have assured that.

The rest of your question just makes me think of more possibilities and questions and I'm not foolish enough to think I have the answers.

One thing that's for sure, the NFL would still have a franchise in Los Angeles -- likely the Rams. Move the Rams back to L.A. and that changes virtually everything that's happened in the NFL in the last 15 years. But that wouldn't even make a difference if the eventually you asked about had been realized.

[Denbrnc]

Without Lamar even starting the AFL, I don't know what Al Davis would do. He probably would have stayed at USC(I think that is where he was coaching at the time). Maybe someone else would have formed a league a few years later, unless the NFL would have finally gave in to all of the uproar about cities wanting teams and expanded in the early to mid 60's.

[CCN]

The WFL may well have started earlier. Except the guy behind it (don't remember his name. Gary somethng) could have had some very strong partners . . .

[KHenry14]

I'm sure there would have been another league, but things would have been much different. And IMO the circumstances that brought Al Davis to the AFL probably don't exist, so we could have very well been spared him and everything he brought, both good and bad.

[Denbrnc]

Think about this: What if Lamar Hunt gets the Cards, and Bert Bell doesn't die when he did?

For one, we would have the Cardinals in Dallas, maybe renamed the Dallas Texans or something.

Secondly, there may have been expansion by 1960 or thereabouts. I read in an old NFL preview issue I have that Bert Bell promised a team to Billy Sullivan for Boston before he died. And, they may have added another team since 13 would have been uneven. Maybe they would have put it in Houston and given it to Bud Adams to give the Texans(or whatever they would be called) a rival. That expansion may have held back a new league for a while, although the NFL would have had to expand more to continue to do that in the coming years because cities like Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Miami would be hungry for football.