MetLife Stadium, constructed near the now-demolished Giants Stadium. Origins and the Polo Grounds era (1959–1964) Organization and first season In 1959, young oilmen Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams sought a National Football League franchise. They found that NFL expansion required a unanimous vote of existing team owners, so there was little likelihood of convincing the NFL to expand. The two men attempted to acquire the Chicago Cardinals, intending to move the franchise to Dallas, where there was no NFL team. Cardinals co-owner Walter Wolfner, who owned the team with his wife, Violet Bidwill Wolfner, was unwilling to sell majority control. During the discussions, Walter Wolfner mentioned the names of other wealthy bidders seeking to acquire the Cardinals. On the flight home, Hunt and Adams decided to recruit the other bidders as owners of teams in a new professional football league. New York City attorney William Shea was attempting to create the Continental League, a rival league to Major League Baseball. Hunt met with him, and Shea suggested Harry Wismer, a former sportscaster who had been a minority shareholder in both the Washington Redskins and Detroit Lions, as a potential New York franchise owner for the new football league. Wismer was willing; he was feuding at the time with the Redskins' principal owner, George Preston Marshall, and realized he would never own the Washington franchise. Wismer, while wealthy, was not nearly as rich as the other potential team owners. On August 14, 1959, the league held an organizational meeting and announced its plans; eight days later it announced its name: the American Football League (AFL), the fourth league to take that name. Among the charter members was a New York franchise owned by Wismer, dubbed the "Titans of New York." On November 24, 1959, the AFL held its first draft; the Titans selected Notre Dame quarterback George Izo as their first pick. The league announced a policy, formulated by Wismer, that it would negotiate with a network for a single television contract to cover all the teams, the first league to do so. On December 7, the Titans hired Steve Sebo as general manager. Sebo had just been fired as coach at the University of Pennsylvania, despite taking the Quakers to the Ivy League championship. On December 17, the Titans announced at a press conference that "one of the biggest names in the history of football" would be soon be named