Lamar Hunt

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Lamar Hunt was the principal founder of the American Football League (AFL) and Major League Soccer (MLS), as well as MLS's predecessor, the North American Soccer League (NASL), and co-founder of World Championship Tennis. He was also the founder and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL), the Kansas City Wizards of MLS, and at the time of his death owned two other MLS teams, Columbus Crew and FC Dallas. In Kansas City, Hunt also helped establish the Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun theme parks. The oldest ongoing national soccer tournament in the United States, the U.S. Open Cup (founded 1914), now bears his name in honor of his pioneering role in that sport stateside. Hunt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972; into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1982; and into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993 for his contribution to the birth of professional Open Era tennis. The National Soccer Hall of Fame bestowed upon Hunt their Medal of Honor in 1999, an award given to only three recipients in history thus far. He was married for 42 years to his second wife Norma, and had four children, Sharron, Lamar Jr., Daniel, and Clark Hunt.

In Their Own Story

In January 2015, an affiliate of Hunt's Loretto Sports Ventures purchased the Missouri Mavericks ice hockey team. The franchise was renamed the Kansas City Mavericks in June 2017, marking a new chapter for the organization under his ownership. His involvement in minor league hockey expanded further in 2018 when another affiliate bought the Topeka RoadRunners of the North American Hockey League. Hunt renamed this team the Topeka Pilots, operating them for two seasons before moving the franchise to Kansas City in February 2020. There, it was rebranded as the Kansas City Scouts but did not play during the 2020-21 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By May 2021, Hunt sold the team to a group in Amarillo, Texas, who re-branded them as the Amarillo Wranglers. These moves demonstrated his active role in shaping the local sports landscape beyond just ownership.

Reader's Guide

Hunt was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, US, on August 2, 1932. He was 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. 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. 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 (the team moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960). In response, Hunt approached several other businessmen who had also unsuccessfully sought NFL franchises, including fellow Texan and oilman Bud Adams of Houston, about forming a new football league, and the American Football League was established in August 1959. The group of the eight founders of the AFL teams was referred to as the 'Foolish Club'. 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. The team, along with the AFL, began play in 1960. 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, who also began play in 1960. 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

Did You Know?

• Hunt coined the term 'Super Bowl' in a 1966 letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle.
• He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972, the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1982, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1993.
• The U.S. Open Cup, the oldest ongoing national soccer tournament in the United States, now bears Hunt's name.