My feeling is that if the AFL hadn't been the rival, a different league would have been organized by 1961. There were three TV networks and only one could get the NFL. Guys like Bud Adams and Bob Howsam and Max Winter had been itching to get into pro football, and that era was big on people wanting to become pro sports owners. There was baseball's Continental League (which led to the Mets and several other MLB expansion teams), the American Basketball League (bankrupt after a year and a half) and a couple of other pro football league dreamers like Jack Corbett and Travis Tidwell.7DnBrnc53 wrote:Let's say that Lamar Hunt gets enough stake in the Cardinals in 1959 to move them to Dallas (and maybe rename them the Texans).
How long do you think it would take for the league to expand?
And, how long do you think that it would take for a new league to form if the NFL doesn't expand fairly soon?
However, I think that it took a Lamar Hunt to organize and maintain a fully successful competitor, rather than one that would fold after its best teams went to the NFL.