an engineering degree. In his lone season on the Jayhawk football team, he was a teammate of politician Bob Dole. During World War II, Adams served in the United States Navy in the Pacific Theater of operations, attaining the rank of Lieutenant (Junior Grade). After the war, he returned to KU for additional studies and became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Shortly after his 1946 discharge, Adams was on a trip in which his plane was fogbound in Houston, Texas. He liked the area and decided to settle there. In 1947, Adams launched a wildcatting firm, ADA Oil Company, that eventually grew into Adams Resources & Energy. The company's basketball team was an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) powerhouse, finishing third nationally in 1956. Sports career in Houston Early career in the American Football League Adams soon became interested in owning an NFL team. In 1959, Adams and fellow Texas oilman Lamar Hunt tried to buy the struggling and insolvent Chicago Cardinals and move them to Texas. When that effort failed, he also tried to get an expansion team, only to be turned down by NFL owners. A few days after returning to Houston, Adams got a call from Hunt, who proposed an entirely new football league. They met several times that spring, and Hunt convinced Adams to field a team in Houston. In Hunt's view, a regional rivalry between Hunt's Dallas Texans (who relocated to Kansas City in 1963 and were rebranded as the Kansas City Chiefs) and a Houston team would be critical to the league's growth. On August 3, Adams and Hunt held a press conference in Adams's boardroom to announce formation of the new league, which was formally named the American Football League. Although less popularly associated with the formation of the AFL than Hunt, Adams was likely nearly as crucial to the league's success: both he and Hunt were the wealthiest owners, and were more financially stable than some of the other owners. Adams helped establish the league by fighting and winning the battle with the NFL for LSU's All-American Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, and also crucial to the league's early years was Adams' relationship with Harry Wismer, the original owner of the league's New York franchise, the Titans. For their first three years, the Titans played in the deteriorating old Polo Grounds, and the poorly performing team was mostly derided or ignored