Lamar Hunt

Hunt was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, the son of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and younger brother of tycoons Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt. Lamar was raised in Dallas, Texas. He attended Culver Military Academy and graduated from The Hill School in Pennsylvania in 1951 and Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1956, with a B.S. degree in geology. Hunt was a college football player who rode the bench but was still an avid sports enthusiast during his time in college and throughout his entire childhood. While attending SMU in 1952, Hunt joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In 1972, he was selected as Kappa Sigma's Man of the Year.[1]

On the strength of his great inherited oil wealth, Hunt applied for a National Football League expansion franchise but was turned down. In 1959, professional American football was a distant second to Major League Baseball in popularity, and the thinking among NFL executives was that the league must be careful not to "oversaturate" the market by expanding too quickly.[2] Hunt also attempted to purchase the NFL's Chicago Cardinals franchise in 1959 with the intention to move them to Dallas, but was again turned down.[3]

In response, Hunt approached several other businessmen who had also unsuccessfully sought NFL franchises, including fellow Texan and oilman K. S. "Bud" Adams of Houston, about forming a new football league, and the American Football League was established in August 1959.[4] The group of the eight founders of the AFL teams was referred to as the "Foolish Club".[5] Hunt's goal was to bring professional football to Texas and to acquire an NFL team for the Hunt family. Hunt became an owner of the Dallas Texans and hired future hall-of-Famer Hank Stram as the team's first head coach.

As a response to the newly formed league and the presence of an AFL franchise in Dallas, the NFL quickly placed a new franchise of their own in Dallas, the Dallas Cowboys. As a result, the Dallas Texans, despite being one of the more successful AFL teams in the league's early days, had little luck at the gate, as they had to compete with the Cowboys for fans.

By the end of the 1962 season, Hunt concluded that Dallas was not big enough to support two teams and began to consider moving the team. Kansas City became one of the contenders, as Hunt wanted a city to which he could easily commute from Dallas.[6] To convince Hunt to move the team to Kansas City, mayor H. Roe Bartle promised Hunt home attendance of 25,000 people per game. Hunt finally agreed to move the team to Kansas City, and in 1963 the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs.

In the Chiefs' first two seasons attendance did not match the levels Mayor Bartle had promised, but in 1966 average home attendance at Chiefs games increased and reached 37,000. By 1969 Chiefs' average home attendance had reached 51,000. In 1966 the Chiefs won their first AFL Championship (after having previously won it as the Dallas Texans) and reached the first-ever Super Bowl, which the Chiefs lost to the Green Bay Packers. The Chiefs remained successful through the 1960s, and in 1970 the Chiefs won the AFL Championship and Super Bowl IV (the last Super Bowl played when the AFL was a separate league prior to it being absorbed into the NFL as the American Football Conference) over the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings.

Hunt insisted that he be listed in the team media guide as the founder of the Chiefs rather than the owner. He publicly listed his telephone number in the phone book until his death.[7]

In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge, with a championship game between the two leagues to be played after that season. In a July 25, 1966, letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt wrote, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon." Hunt would later say the name was likely in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy. Although the leagues' owners decided on the name "AFL-NFL Championship Game", the media immediately picked up on Hunt's "Super Bowl" name, which would become official beginning with the third annual game, which was won by the AFL's New York Jets over the NFL's Baltimore Colts.[8]

In 1967 Hunt helped promote professional soccer in the United States. Hunt's interest in soccer began in 1962 when he accompanied his future wife, Norma, to a Shamrock Rovers game in Dublin, Ireland.[9] In 1966, he viewed the FIFA World Cup in England, and then attended nine of the next 11 World Cup tournaments.

In 1967, Hunt founded the Dallas Tornado as members of the United Soccer Association. In 1968 the league merged with the National Professional Soccer League to form the North American Soccer League. Hunt was an active advocate for the sport and the league and the Dallas Tornado won the NASL championship in 1971 and were runners-up 1973.

The NFL owners were not happy with Hunt's ownership in and promotion of pro soccer. The NFL attempted to force legal requirements that would disallow team ownership in more than one sport for owners of NFL franchises. This strategy backfired on the NFL, and the NASL won an anti-trust case against the NFL. A primary benefactor of this outcome was Lamar Hunt.[10]

In 1981, after 15 seasons and losses in the millions, Hunt and his Dallas Tornado partner Bill McNutt decided to merge their team with the Tampa Bay Rowdies franchise, while retaining a minority stake in the Florida club. Two years later, along with Rowdies principal George Strawbrige, they sold the Rowdies to local investors. The move effectively ended Hunt's ties to the NASL a year before the league itself finally collapsed.[11][12]

Hunt c. 1990

Hunt returned to soccer as one of the original founding investors of Major League Soccer, which debuted in 1996. He originally owned two teams: the Columbus Crew and the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City). In 1999, Hunt financed the construction of the venue now known as Mapfre Stadium, the second, and first since 1913, of several large soccer-specific stadiums in the USA. In 2003, Hunt purchased a third team, the Dallas Burn (now FC Dallas), after announcing that he would partially finance the construction of their own soccer-specific stadium. On August 31, 2006, Hunt sold the Wizards to a six-man ownership group led by Cerner Corporation co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig.

Hunt was one of the founding investors of the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association. He remained a minority owner until his death.

In 1968, Hunt co-founded the World Championship Tennis circuit, which gave birth to the Open Era of tennis. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993.[13]

Hunt and John H. McConnell formed Columbus Hockey Limited, L.L.C. (CHL) to obtain a National Hockey League franchise for Columbus, Ohio. Following disagreements over the financing for an arena, McConnell accepted an offer to lease a new arena from Nationwide Insurance Enterprise. McConnell froze out CHL and Hunt and was awarded the NHL Columbus Blue Jackets franchise. See McConnell v. Hunt Sports Enterprises, 132 Ohio App.3d 657, 725 N.E.2d 1193 (1999), a lawsuit that Lamar Hunt lost and granted McConnell sole ownership of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Hunt was the founder of two theme parks in Kansas City: Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun, which opened in 1973 and 1982 respectively. The two parks were an outgrowth and adjoined a vast industrial park he developed in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Clay County, Missouri.

Immediately south of the Hunt-founded parks is the Hunt-developed SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot (5.06 million m²), 1,100-acre (450 ha) manmade limestone cave which is claimed to be the World's Largest Underground Business Complex (TM). Hunt's extensive business dealings in Clay County contributed to the Chiefs having their NFL Training Camp at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri until 1991.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt attempted to corner the silver market. They began buying silver in the early 1970s. By the end of 1979, their ownership of one-third of the silver market caused the price to rise from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to $50 an ounce in January 1980. In the last nine months of 1979, the brothers profited by an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion. However, on March 27, 1980, subsequently referred to within the precious-metals industry as Silver Thursday, the price collapsed. In September 1988, the Hunt brothers filed for bankruptcy under the United States Bankruptcy Code Chapter 11.

• In 1972, Hunt became the first person associated with the American Football League inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• In 1984, Hunt was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.
• For his efforts in building the sport of soccer in the United States in the modern era, Hunt was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1992 and was in 1999 awarded its Medal of Honor in 1999, so far given out only 3 times in Hall's history.
• On February 20, 2008, Hunt was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians in the Missouri state Capitol.
• On August 1, 2014, Hunt was inducted into Sporting Kansas City's "Sporting Legends" hall of fame.

• In 1999, the United States Soccer Federation changed the name of its oldest competition, the U.S. Open Cup (established 1914), to the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
• On March 11, 2007, the inaugural Lamar Hunt Pioneer Cup match was held at Pizza Hut Park between Hunt's MLS teams, the Columbus Crew and FC Dallas.
• Since the 2007 return of the Border Showdown football game to Kansas City, its winner has received a trophy named for Hunt.
• The trophy presented to each year's AFC Champions is named the Lamar Hunt Trophy.

• On July 30, 2010, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Hunt's children dedicated a bronze statue in his memory at Arrowhead Stadium.
• On August 5, 2010, Hunt was recognized by F.C. Dallas with a statue in his memory at Pizza Hut Park (now "Toyota Stadium")
• On August 28, 2010, Hunt was recognized by the Columbus Crew with a statue in his memory at Columbus Crew Stadium. The nearly 10-foot (3.0 m)-high statue is the same design as those at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where the Hunts own the Kansas City Chiefs franchise, and at FC Dallas's home, Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas. The 4-foot base is different on each, with inscriptions suited to the location.

• From the Kansas City Chiefs' December 17, 2006, game against the San Diego Chargers through the end of the 2006-2007 NFL season, the Chiefs wore an emblem with the initials "LH" on the back of their helmets.
• In 2007, the Chiefs wore a patch featuring the American Football League logo that also had Hunt's initials on it. The following season, the patch was made a permanent part of the Chiefs uniform.
• For the 2007 season, Major League Soccer players wore a small patch on their arm with the initials LH as a memorial to Hunt and his contribution to soccer in the United States. Hunt Sports Group teams the Columbus Crew and FC Dallas continue to wear these patches in his honor, with FC Dallas also wearing the LH emblem on the back of their jerseys. Also, many Crew and Dallas fan accessories such as scarves and banners now feature the LH emblem.
• After the Columbus Crew won the MLS Cup championship in 2008, the "LH" emblem was inscribed on the inside of the team's championship rings.

• Hunt Middle School in Frisco, Texas, part of the Frisco Independent School District, was named after Hunt and his wife.
• The stadium at St. Mark's School of Texas was named after Hunt.
• The Hunt Upper School at the Hill School in Pottstown,PA is named after Hunt and his brother.

• For his service to Dallas, Texas, Hunt was honored during halftime of the 2005 NFL season's game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Kansas City Chiefs.