The Dallas Texans, the first pro football team in the Southwest, proved their season opening defeat was no fluke by losing 37-14 to the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 5, 1952.
Seventy-two years ago, the National Football League did not remotely resemble the sports spectacle of today. No Monday Night Football, no Super Bowl and no fat contracts for gridiron gladiators who risked crippling injury every Sunday.
There were 12 teams instead of the current 31 and none between Chicago and California. The idea of selling new franchises to pigskin hungry cities had yet to dawn on current owners, so the rest of the country had to wait until a team became available.
At the end of the1951 season, singer Kate Smith’s manager begged the league office to take the money losing New York Yankees off his hands. Commissioner Bert Bell was happy to oblige because he had a buyer in football crazy Texas.
A group of businessmen headed by Giles Martin, 31-year-old heir to a textiles fortune, paid $300,000 for the privilege of moving the club to Dallas. Since no self-respecting resident of the Lone Star State would root for a team called the Yankees, the name was changed to the Texans.
Unlike the expansion teams to come, the Dallas Texans were not a bunch of over-the-hill veterans and green-as-grass rookies. Talent may have been in short supply, but Buddy Young was a nifty little runner and two linemen, Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan, were destined for the Hall of Fame.
Thirty-three players survived a scorching training camp in Kerrville and a flurry of cuts and trades. Six Southwest Conference alumni were on the opening-day roster: fullback Dick McKissack (SMU), ends Bruce Alford (TCU) and Stanley Williams (Baylor), guard Weldon Humble (Rice) and UT tackles Ken Jackson and Jim Lansford.
The 17,500 curious spectators, who showed up at the Cotton Bowl on the last Sunday of September, had lots of elbow room in the stadium built for $75,000. Gov. Allan Shivers hailed “this new era in sports in Texas,” and a beauty queen released helium-filled balloons that soared skyward with a gold football entitling the finder to an undisclosed prize.
Tom Landry fumbled the opening kickoff on the New York Giants’ 22-yard line to set up the hosts’ sole score. Crowd favorite Kyle Rote, Doak Walker’s running mate at SMU, received the biggest cheer of the day with an exciting 52-yard touchdown dash, and the visitors coasted to a 24-6 triumph.
Matty Bell, athletic director at Southern Methodist, generously blamed the disappointing turnout for the pro debut on football fatigue. The SMU-Georgia Tech game attracted 40,000 to the Cotton Bowl on Friday night, and the Texas Aggies packed the place the next afternoon for their contest with Oklahoma A&M.
Excuses were harder to come by the following Sunday, when the Texans’ tussle with the 49ers drew 2,500 fewer fans. Y.A. Tittle, Marshall native and Louisiana State signal-caller, picked apart the Dallas defense as San Francisco rolled to a 23-point victory.
A change of scene failed to alter the outcome a week later in Chicago. The Texans managed to muster 20 points at Wrigley Field, but the Bears were 18 points better.
Returning to the wide-open spaces of the Cotton Bowl, the Texans actually led Green Bay 14-7 at halftime much to the surprise of the sparse crowd of 14,000. But the Rice Institute pass-and-catch combination of Tobin Rote and Bill Howton powered the Packers past the hapless home team 24-14.
The Texans suffered their fifth and sixth defeats on a road trip to the West Coast. The 49’ers ran wild in a 48-21 rout, and the Los Angeles Rams shellacked them 42-20.
Giles and his partners had bought the franchise in the naive belief they would at least break even that initial season. Finding themselves a quarter of a million dollars in the red by early November, they asked the Citizens Association for a $250,000 loan to tide them over, but the unelected city fathers turned them down flat.
Ten thousand hardy souls braved the cold and rain to see what most expected to be the Texans’ last game in Dallas. The Rams won the muddy melee by three TDs.
Three days later, Giles Miller dumped the team in Bert Bell’s lap. The commissioner gave Coach Jimmy Phelan marching orders for Hershey, Penn., which the strays called home for the rest of the strange season.
The orphans were adopted by Baltimore and “became heroes for life,” as colorful Art Donovan put it. Renamed the Colts, they developed into the NFL’s best winning back-to-back championships in 1958 and 1959.
Dallas residents did not miss the original Texans, though in private they probably envied Baltimore’s luck. The NFL gave the city a second chance in 1960 by awarding an expansion franchise to oilman Clint Murchison. Lamar Hunt, founder of the rival American Football League, countered with the second coming of the Texans, and for the next three seasons Big D had its choice of two professional football teams.
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