60-year anniversary: How the Cowboys’ star formed in the universe

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the stories. But the truth behind the birth of the Dallas Cowboys is plenty wild on its own.

Chapter 3: A crosstown competitor

Lamar Hunt had inherited a fortune from his father and applied for an NFL expansion franchise just two years after graduating from SMU in Dallas. He was denied. George Halas was the Chicago Bears’ owner/coach and also in charge of the NFL’s expansion committee. Expansion was not an option, Halas explained. The 12 teams that existed couldn’t fill their stadiums as it was. There were no leaguewide television deals. The NFL was growing in popularity, but had yet to take hold with mainstream America. Even after 1958’s epic Giants-Colts championship, “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” started to slowly turn the public tide on pro football, Halas insisted that the only way Hunt could break into the league would be to buy an existing club.

Hunt started his own league instead. He rounded up a handful of other businessmen (many of whom had also been turned down by the NFL) and announced the launch of the American Football League. Hunt himself planned to install a team in Dallas and resurrect the Texans name. The year was 1959.

The idea of a second league caught on quickly, especially in up-and-coming football-hungry cities like Oakland, Houston, and Denver. Fearing competition in these new markets (and particularly the untapped South), the NFL suddenly reversed its position on expansion. Halas announced that Murchison and the city of Dallas would, after all, get an NFL franchise, originally slated to begin play in 1961.

When Commissioner Bell died of a heart attack in October 1959, though, Halas and several other owners put the fledgling Dallas franchise on the fast track. They promised to support Murchison’s bid, but only if he could have his team ready for play in 1960, a full year ahead of schedule, in order to beat Hunt’s Texans and the new AFL to the punch.

The vote to greenlight a Dallas team would come at the owners’ meeting in January 1960. Admittance required a unanimous vote. The biggest snag looked to be none other than the Washington Redskins. The Redskins were the only NFL team that geographically represented the southern United States, and George Preston Marshall was loathe to surrender any part of his fanbase without a fight. That the threat of competition was coming from Murchison- just a few years after their soured business deal involving his club- may have also played a part. Either way, Murchison fully expected Marshall to be a ruinous dissenting vote in the Dallas decision.

Chapter 4: Hail to the rivalry

Unbeknownst to Marshall, though, Murchison had taken out an insurance policy of sorts to use in a negotiation with the Washington owner. It could also be called, by some interpretation, a ransom. And it’s one of the more bizarre sidenotes in Cowboys history.

Marshall had had a falling out with a fellow named Barnee Breeskin. Breeskin was a music man, the orchestra director at a Washington-area hotel… and the leader of the Redskins’ official team band. In that side job, Breeskin had composed the club’s famous fight song, “Hail to the Redskins.” Played at every game and sung fervently by the team’s fans, it had become the centerpiece of the pregame and halftime shows in Washington and an integral part of that team’s history. In fact, Marshall’s own wife had written the lyrics. After an unspecified disagreement, though, Breeskin was worried that Marshall would try to wrestle away controlling rights to the song for free. In response, Breeland secretly sold “Hail to the Redskins” to a high school friend… who just happened to be the personal lawyer of Clint Murchison Jr.

Murchison, the story goes, then met with an unsuspecting Marshall and informed him that he now owned “Hail to the Redskins.” Murchison offered to return the Redskins’ beloved fight song to Marshall for continued use in Washington, but only in exchange for his vote approving the Dallas franchise. Breeskin got a couple thousand dollars, an outraged Marshall got his fight song, and Murchison got an NFL franchise. The intense Cowboys/Redskins had begun before Dallas’s team had even been announced.

Longtime Cowboys GM Tex Schramm would say years later of the episode, “People that are successful in this league have a little larceny in their hearts.”

The owners’ vote passed. The NFL officially came to Dallas (again) with the announcement of a new franchise on January 28, 1960. It cost Murchison $600,000.

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