The Titans announced his death.
The A.F.L. began with two very rich Texans. Lamar Hunt the Dallas based son of the oil tycoon H. L. Hunt conceived of a league that would compete with the established National Football League. He enlisted Mr. Adams the owner of the Ada Oil Company of Houston and son of Phillips Petroleum s chairman to join him. They announced plans for the A.F.L. at a news conference in Mr. Adams s board room then teamed with six other owners in what became known as the Foolish Club the collective name embodying the formidable task of taking on the N.F.L.
The new league which began play in 1960 endured rocky financial times at first but it thrived and merged with the N.F.L. in 1970. Mr. Adams s death leaves Ralph Wilson the founder of the Buffalo Bills as the last N.F.L. owner whose football roots go back to the A.F.L. s creation.
Mr. Adams who like Mr. Hunt had been rebuffed in efforts to buy the N.F.L. s Chicago Cardinals before forming the A.F.L. obtained his Houston franchise for the league s inaugural fee of $25 000. Forbes magazine estimated the Titans value at $1.055 billion in August the 19th highest among the N.F.L. s 32 teams.
The Oilers won the first two A.F.L. championships in 1960 and 1961 then lost to Mr. Hunt s Dallas Texans (the predecessor of the N.F.L. s Kansas City Chiefs) in the 1962 championship game.
By the late 1980s Mr. Adams was complaining that the Oilers home the Astrodome was outmoded and he considered moving the team to Jacksonville Fla. The Astrodome s seating was expanded with financing from a public bond issue but Mr. Adams remained unhappy. After failing to obtain public financing for a downtown stadium he moved the Oilers to Tennessee in 1997.
After one year at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis and another at Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville the team moved into a new publicly financed stadium in Nashville now called LP Field. (The naming rights belong to Louisiana Pacific a maker of building materials based in Nashville.)
In their first season at the new stadium when their name was changed from the Oilers to the Titans they defeated the visiting Buffalo Bills in a wild card playoff game scoring a final seconds touchdown on a kickoff return spiced by a lateral a play that became known as the Music City Miracle. They went to Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000 losing to the St. Louis Rams 26 19 after getting to the Rams 1 yard line as time ran out.
Mr. Adams a private man was uncomfortable with public relations gestures and he could display a rough edge. In April 1966 after Al Davis was introduced as the new A.F.L. commissioner at a Houston hotel Mr. Adams got into a fight with Jack Gallagher a sports columnist for The Houston Post who had criticized Oilers management.
I called him a couple of names then he said something back to me Mr. Adams was quoted as saying by Jeff Miller in Going Long (2003) an oral history of the A.F.L. I had enough by then so I just went over and cold cocked him.
Soon the two men were rolling on the floor. Bud was a big strong guy Mr. Wilson the Bills owner recalled. He was pummeling him. I was on top of Bud and Al Davis was on top of me. We finally broke it up.
Kenneth Stanley Adams Jr. was born on Jan. 3 1923 in Bartlesville Okla. where his father ran Phillips Petroleum. He played in the backfield for the University of Kansas before serving as a Navy officer in World War II then settled in Houston in 1946 and founded Ada Oil.
Mr. Adams s early Houston Oilers wearing the logo of an oil derrick on their helmets and led by the former Chicago Bears quarterback George Blanda and the Heisman Trophy winning halfback Billy Cannon were the A.F.L. s premier team.
Mr. Adams ran the Oilers and his other businesses from an office in which he displayed a collection of Western and American Indian art. He belonged to the Cherokee Nation as a descendant through his mother Blanche.
Mr. Adams changed coaches frequently in Houston he fired Bum Phillips after the 1980 season although Mr. Phillips (who died last week) had coached three consecutive playoff teams but found stability in 1994 in hiring Jeff Fisher who stayed on for 17 seasons.
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