Chiefs Chief Checks Out

He not only helped make the Super Bowl happen, but gave it a name. Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and namesake of the really hideous trophy the winner of the American Football Conference receives, has died of complications from prostate cancer at the age of 74. The NFL laughed and called him names, refusing to allow him to buy a team to play any football games, so with Bud Adams, he founded the American Football League, owning the Dallas Texans. Seeking to quash the new league, the NFL expanded to Dallas with the Cowboys and offered Hunt a piece of the team, but he refused to abandon the 7 owners who had followed his lead. The NFL won the battle as the Texans, were the 1962 AFL champs but couldn’t compete with the Dallas Cowboys and Hunt moved the team to Kansas City, but Hunt won the war as he helped force the AFL-NFL merger. Hunt had already helped the NFL save itself, coming up with the ideas of revenue sharing and shared TV contracts that the NFL stole. Course this was also the man who traded his archrival Raiders a quarterback because they had lost two quarterbacks to injury. Fittingly, Hunt’s Chiefs were the AFL’s first Super Bowl team, then the second AFL team to win, in Super Bowl IV, and he was the first man from the AFL to make the Football Hall of Fame. One of the few legitimate sons of billionaire H.L. Hunt, Lamar lacked the old man’s acumen in every arena but sports. Attempting to corner the silver market was cute, if 100 years too late. He and Cliff Barnes were the only men to lose money on oil in the 1980s. But if there was a ball involved, he was money. In addition to his successful football franchise, he owned the minor league baseball Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, but was denied in his efforts to bring a major league team to town, was an original investor in the Chicago Bulls and was the last remaining original owner, was an original investor in the North American Soccer League and owned the 1971 NASL Champion Dallas Tornado, started the first organized tennis tour, World Championship Tennis, and was an original investor in Major League Soccer, owning the Dallas, Kansas City and Columbus franchises. In all, Hunt was inducted into 8 halls of fame.

I was the only Pooligan to go Hunting and scored a solo hit to pull into a first place tie with Cathy with 1 hit and 20 points, as we are officially in the middle of a flurry with 3 hits in as many days.

Ferry Cross the Styx
A pathetic tragedy I will relate concerning poor Fred Marsden’s fate. Marsden, drummer of Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died at the age of 66 of cancer. Gerry and the Pacemakers, which included Marsden’s brother Gerry on lead vocal, were the second band signed out of Liverpool by Brian Epstein, but were the first to have a No. 1 single with How Do You Do It? in 1963, followed that year by another chart-topper, I Like It. Other hits included You'll Never Walk Alone,Ferry Cross the Mersey, and Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying, co-written by Fred. The Pacemakers dis-banded in 1967 and Fred established the Pacemaker driving school.