Dallas Texans (NFL)
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- For other teams named "Dallas Texans", see Dallas Texans.
The Dallas Texans played in the National Football League for one season, 1952, with a record of 1–11. Owner Giles Miller had bought the remnants of Ted Collins's Boston Yanks/New York Bulldogs/Yanks franchise, which had played from 1944 to 1948 in Boston, and from 1949 to 1951 in New York, from the league. Home games were scheduled to be played at the Cotton Bowl.
Officially, the Texans were the last NFL member team ever to fold. However, they were actually sold by the team's owners back to the league midway through the season. The team wound up playing one of its final two "home" games at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, where the franchise's only win occurred — a 27-23 win over the Chicago Bears of George Halas, who was so confident that his team would win, he started his entire second string team — in front of an estimated 3,000 fans on Thanksgiving Day. The victory helped the otherwise failing franchise avoid what would have been the first winless regular season since 1944. Both the Brooklyn Tigers and Card-Pitt — the latter being the merged (for that year) Chicago Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers — finished 0-10-0 in 1944, an unenviable feat that would later be surpassed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that lost all of its fourteen regular season games in 1976. At the Bears vs. Texans game in 1952, head coach Jim Phelan suggested because of the small turnout — where a high school game earlier outdrew the NFL contest — that instead of being introduced on the field, they should "go into the stands and shake hands with each fan." George Taliaferro, the team's leading rusher was selected to the Pro Bowl at the end of the season.
The NFL awarded the franchise, for the 1953 season to the city of Baltimore, with Carroll Rosenbloom as the team's new owner. The remaining players on the Dallas roster became the Baltimore Colts team. A previous team of the same name had joined the league as part of the merger with the All-America Football Conference, but folded after the 1950 season. In 1960, the league made a second venture into Dallas and established what would become a more successful team, the Dallas Cowboys.
Contents |
[edit] Pro Football Hall of Famers
- Art Donovan (1968 inductee)
- Gino Marchetti (1972 inductee)
[edit] Notable players
[edit] First round draft selection
- 1952 Les Richter Guard California
[edit] Season-by-season
| Year | W | L | T | Finish | Coach |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | 1 | 11 | 0 | 6th National | Jim Phelan |
[edit] External links
- The Pro Football Hall of Fame page on the Dallas Texans.
- Dallas Texans (NFL) story from about.com.
- PFRA article about the team
- Another PFRA article (this one includes game results and season stats)
