page_title: Dallas Texans (NFL)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dallas Texans (NFL) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: No copyright mentioned in the programme. Team is long defunct. DOn't expect any copyright issues.
context_page_description: The Dallas Texans played in the National Football League (NFL) for one season, 1952, with a record of 1–11. The team is considered one of the worst teams in NFL history, both on and off the field. The team was based first in Dallas, then Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Akron, Ohio, during its only season. After the team folded, the league awarded its holdings to the new Baltimore Colts. Eight years later, the American Football League would have a 1960 charter member team named the Dallas Texans. The 1960-62 AFL Dallas Texans had no relationship with the earlier 1952 NFL Dallas Texans team.
context_section_description: After the 1951 season, the financially troubled New York Yanks franchise was put on the market. Ted Collins, (1900–1964) had founded that franchise in 1944 as the Boston Yanks, in Boston, Massachusetts, then moved it to New York City in 1949 as the New York Bulldogs, and renamed it again briefly as the Yanks in 1950. Unable to find a buyer, Collins sold the team back to the League.
  On January 29, 1952, a Dallas-based group led by a pair of young millionaires, Giles Miller and his brother, Connell, completed the purchase of what was ostensibly a new franchise—the first-ever major league sports team based in Texas. However, it also acquired the entire Yanks old roster.  Thus, for all intents and purposes, the Millers bought the Yanks and moved them to Dallas.  Home games were scheduled to be played at the Cotton Bowl, home stadium for the SMU Mustangs of Southern Methodist University.  The Millers originally wanted to name the team as the Rangers, but later decided to call them the Texans instead.
  The Millers thought that big growing Texas, with its longstanding support of college football, would be a natural fit for the NFL to move farther south and west, and the team owners approved the move with an 11–1 vote.  Giles Miller declared, "There is room in Texas for all kinds of football."  However, the first game, against the New York Giants, set the tone for the season.  While the Texans got the first touchdown, they missed the extra point.  They never found the end zone again and lost 24–6.  In what proved to be another harbinger for the franchise, only 17,499 fans showed up at the Cotton Bowl (capacity 75,000) for the opening game.  Attendance continued to dwindle as the losses piled up and the team showed no sign of being competitive.  The nadir came with a November 9 game against the Los Angeles Rams, which attracted only 10,000 fans.
  As it turned out, this was the last game the Texans played in Texas.  Unable to meet payroll or get financial support from area businessmen (an important factor even in those days), the Millers returned the team to the League on November 14 with five games to go in the season. The NFL moved the franchise's operations temporarily to Hershey, Pennsylvania (though it kept the "Dallas Texans" name).  It also moved the Texans' last two home games out of Dallas, making them a traveling team.
  The team played one of its final two "home" games at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, where the franchise tallied its only win under the Texans moniker — over the Chicago Bears of George Halas, in front of an estimated crowd of only 3,000 fans on Thanksgiving Day. As a measure of how low the NFL still ranked on the sports scene in the 1950s, a high school football game far outdrew the professional contest. Head coach Jim Phelan jokingly suggested because of the small turnout, they should "go into the stands and shake hands with each fan."  Halas had been so certain that the Bears would overpower the lowly Texans that he started only his second-stringers.  The Texans jumped out to a 20–2 lead and hung on for a 27–23 win.  With the victory, the NFL avoided having a franchise with a winless regular season, something that had not happened since 1944.   The team's final game was a 41–6 flogging at the hands of the Detroit Lions.  That game was supposed to be played in Dallas, but was moved to Detroit after the league took over the team—forcing the Texans to make their second trip of the year to Briggs Stadium. Two weeks later, the Lions won the NFL's 1952 championship.
  George Taliaferro, the team's leading rusher, was selected to the Pro Bowl at the end of the season.
  The NFL was unable to find a buyer for the Texans, and decided to relocate the team after the 1952 season.  A few months later, the NFL granted a new franchise to a Baltimore-based  ownership group headed by Baltimorean Carroll Rosenbloom, and awarded it the remaining assets (including the players) of the failed Texans operation. Rosenbloom named his new team the Baltimore Colts, (after the previous team playing for the city in the competing All-Amer
caption: Program from first ever game played by Dallas Texans in 1952
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