Love him or hate him, Kenneth Stanley “Bud” Adams Jr. found a way to stay relevant, usually by staying in the center of conflict.

While Adams, an energy tycoon and owner of the Tennessee Titans, achieved success through his sharp business acumen, his fame comes from his willingness to meet confrontation head on. Even earlier this season, Adams popped into national sports news by making an obscene gesture toward Buffalo Bills fans.

During his career as a pro football owner, the feisty Adams was thrown out of George Halas’ office, battled the NFL to sign players for the AFL, struggled with the city of Houston for a better deal for his Oilers and eventually moved the team to Tennessee.

The last item on that list, along with going through Oilers coaches like they were tissue paper, made him a villain in the eyes of many Texas sports fans.

But that didn’t keep him out of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

John McClain — a former Tribune-Herald reporter who has covered the Houston Oilers, Texans and the NFL for the Houston Chronicle for more than 30 years — serves on the selection committee for both the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He said there’s a simple litmus test for determining Adams’ Hall of Fame worthiness in this state.

“We like to say, ‘Can you write the history of the NFL without this person?’ ” McClain said. “Could you write the history of Texas sports without Bud Adams? No, you couldn’t.”

And so Adams joins nine others in the 2009 class of inductees to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

McClain pointed out that this class will include Max Williams, who brought pro basketball to Texas in the form of the ABA’s Dallas Chaparrals in 1967, and Adams, who McClain credits for bringing pro football to Texas.

Ahead of the competition

Indeed, the record shows that Adams was well ahead of his Texas counterparts when three pro football teams came to Texas in 1960. While Clint Murchison’s Dallas Cowboys went 0-11-1 in the NFL and Hunt’s Dallas Texans went 8-6 in the AFL, the Oilers went 10-4 and defeated the Los Angeles Chargers for the AFL championship.

Adams, who didn’t respond to a request to be interviewed, came to Texas as a matter of chance, but stayed to become one of the state’s power brokers in both the energy and pro sports business.

The Titans’ official Web site biography of Adams includes the story of a 1946 flight that was fogged in in Houston. Stuck in Texas, Adams discovered he liked the area and went on to found ADA Oil Company, the forerunner of Adams Resources & Energy, Inc., with home offices in Houston.

Adams’ first attempt at owning a pro football team came when he offered to buy the Chicago Cardinals in the late 1950s. Though his bid failed, it led to a partnership with Lamar Hunt.

Adams served in the military along with Bunker Hunt, Lamar’s older brother. Bunker set up a meeting between the two in which Adams picked up Lamar Hunt at Houston Hobby Airport and took him to dinner. After hours of chatting, Hunt finally popped the question when Adams took him back to the airport.

“Hunt said, ‘I heard you tried to buy the Cardinals,’ ” McClain said, retelling the story as told to him by Adams. “Hunt said, ‘I did too. What do you think about starting a new league?’

“Bud said, ‘I’m in.’ ”

Titans owner Bud Adams watches the team practice during training camp last summer. Adams moved the Houston Oilers to Tennessee in 1997. (Mark Humphrey photo / Associated Press, file)

Thus began the AFL, which would competed with the NFL for players and fans throughout the 1960s until the two eventually merged to form the modern NFL. This fall, the NFL celebrated the 50th anniversary of the inception of the AFL as teams from both the AFC and NFC wore throwback uniforms from the era when the two leagues went head to head.

Though Hunt is more commonly associated with the AFL, Adams held the press conference introducing the league in his office. Adams also won a few of the key player battles with the NFL.

Before the AFL played its first game, Adams scored a major coup by signing LSU’s 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon for the Oilers. In four seasons with the Oilers, Cannon helped the team reach three AFL championship games and win a pair of league titles.

That was the first of three winning eras for the Oilers. Bum Phillips guided the team in the second as it made three straight playoff appearances and won 32 games from 1978-80. Warren Moon then quarterbacked the Oilers to seven consecutive playoff berths from 1987-93.

But there were plenty of down years, too, which led Adams to go through 14 coaches between 1960 and 1994 when he hired current Titans coach Jeff Fisher.

And Adams’ relationship with his Oilers’ digs soured too. Conflicts over the Astrodome’s suitability for football and the Oilers’ rent at the stadium ultimately led to a split. In 1987, after Houston put forth $67 million paid for by hotel and property taxes, Adams said he would keep the team in Houston for at least the next decade.

But he began making plans to move the team before that period was up, and in 1997, the Houston Oilers became the Tennessee Oilers, then the Titans in 1999.

“During all that period, the Astros were their landlord,” McClain said. “If the Astros wanted to put events in the other buildings on Sundays, they could. The Oilers were at the mercy of the Astros. So a lot of things happened that Bud got blamed for that weren’t his fault.”

For all the Houston Oilers fans’ hearts he broke, Adams, who brought a Super Bowl to Texas when Houston hosted the game in 1973, still has a place in the city’s legacy. McClain said Adams played a key role in bringing the expansion Texans to town in 2002.

And more than 60 years after a fateful foggy night, Adams still calls Houston home.

“Bud was always vilified because he changed coaches a lot and then, of course, he moved the team,” McClain said. “But Bud’s still here. He lives here, he has car dealerships here. Once we got the Texans, people kind of accepted him.”

cconine@wacotrib.com

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