Most people are probably aware that Minnesota was originally supposed to be in the American Football League in 1960. Less well known is that Seattle and Atlanta also nearly became founding members of the AFL. In 1959 when Lamar Hunt (Dallas Texans) came up with the idea of trying to form a rival league to the NFL he had separate meetings with four business people in an effort to have them join his American Football League (AFL). Bud Adams (Houston Oilers) was the first to agree. Bob Howsam (Denver Broncos) followed. Hunt: "Willard Rhodes from Seattle was definitely willing to do it if they could find a place to play but was turned down by Husky Stadium, by the University of Washington. So they could not proceed forward." A group in Minneapolis led by Max Winter also agreed to join and were part of the AFL when they league had its first player draft in January 1960. Up to this point, the NFL had let it be known that the 12-team league had no plans to expand. But once they saw that the AFL had eight teams including Los Angeles and New York and were set to begin play in 1960 they decided to try throwing a wrench into the AFL plans. First, they added a team in Dallas, home of Hunt's AFL team, in an effort to hurt the Texans' home attendance. Attendance for both the Texans and Cowboys suffered with two professional teams in the market and it led to Hunt moving his team to Kansas City after the 1962 season. The NFL also managed to convince Winter/Minneapolis to ditch the AFL and join the established NFL. The Vikings would begin play in 1961. Needing to replace the vacated Minneapolis franchise, the seven remaining owners voted 6-1 to give the team to Atlanta. The sole 'no' vote was from Barron Hilton, owner of the Los Angeles Chargers. Hilton: "I said to the other owners: 'All of you have a rivarly except me. I'm sitting out here on the West Coast.' They said, 'All right. If you can put a team together, that would be all right with us.' I flew up to our airport property in San Francisco. I think I brought Frank Leahy with me. I recall we had a meeting in Oakland in one of the hotels. We convinced a group up there to take on the franchise. Chet Soda was the name of the original individual." The Oakland Raiders ended up being the AFL's eighth team and were given the pool of players that were drafted by the Minneapolis team. Ironically, the last ever game to feature an AFL team was Super Bowl IV when Lamar Hunt's Chiefs defeated Max Winter's NFL Vikings. Minnesota would go on to lose three more Super Bowls, the last of which was against... the Raiders.