Lamar Hunt
Born: August 02, 1932
Died: December 13, 2006
Hometown: El Dorado, Arkansas, United States
Citizenship: United States
Inducted: 1993
Contributions
Co-Founder World Championship Tennis 1967
Other
Founder American Football League
Inductee Pro Football Hall of Fame
Inductee Soccer Hall of Fame
Coined the NFL Championships phrase “Super Bowl”
Born in El Dorado, Arkansas in 1932, Lamar Hunt became one of the great innovators in American sports. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame as a Contributor to the sport in 1993. Hunt was a co-founder and organizer of World Championship Tennis in 1967, a new circuit for professional players introducing a worldwide season of tournaments, logo apparel, corporate sponsorship, and significant player prize money. World Championship Tennis existed for 23 years, giving way to the start of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), transforming tennis and challenging the sport to attain higher goals and standards.
Uniquely, Hunt is the only individual to have been inducted into three major Halls of Fame: Pro Football Hall of Fame (1972); Soccer Hall of Fame (1982); and International Tennis Hall of Fame (1993).
Hunt helped develop and build the American Football League (AFL) in 1959, and is credited with coining the term “Super Bowl.” He was currently owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, formerly the Dallas Texans who moved to Kansas City in 1963 and renamed. The AFL and National Football League (NFL) merged in 1966 producing the modern era of professional football. The trophy presented annually to the American Football Conference Champions is named in Hunt’s honor – the Lamar Hunt Trophy.
Hunt was also an original investor in the North American Soccer League (NASL) with the Columbus Crew and Kansas City Wizards, moving into ownership of the Dallas Tornado in 1967. A sports model franchise for 14 years, Hunt saw the league grow from five clubs to 24 in ten years. The NASL folded in 1985, but when Major League Soccer (MLS) formed in 1996, Hunt once again became a major player in an effort for the United States to take its place on soccer’s world stage.
As a child Hunt was nicknamed “Game” because of his passion for inventing new games and scoring systems. This passion continued as Hunt is credited with introducing the two-point post-touchdown conversion to the NFL.
Lamar Hunt died December 13, 2006 in Dallas, Texas at the age of 74 after a long battle with cancer.
Excerpts from Bud Collins’ Encyclopedia –
Although he played football– “I sat on the bench” –at Southern Methodist, Hunt, scion of a prominent Dallas oil industry family, made his mark in American and international sport with his organizational and promotional strengths.
It was as a partner in the establishment World Championship Tennis (WCT)–and later its guiding light–that he was a strong global influence in transforming and professionalizing the tournament game. In 1967, a New Orleans friend, Dave Dixon, enlisted Hunt’s aid in forming the WCT. Headquartered in Dallas, WCT hastened the dawn of open tennis with the signing of the elite of the amateurs. WCT developed a circuit and season of its own, leading the way to increased paydays for the pros that forced the rest of the tennis world to catch up. Unfortunately (and ungratefully), the Association of Tennis Professionals, in reorganizing the men’s tour in 1990, froze WCT out, and Hunt’s organization ceased operations after 23 years of raising standards within the professional game.
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