Meet the miraculous, disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans
Really good interesting long article on the team no ne wanted who broke all kinds of rules and ended up the core of the Baltimore Colts team in the 50's.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25339283/how-1952-dallas-texans-became-nfl-laughingstock-pulled-thanksgiving-miracle-chicago-bears
The 1952 Dallas Texans would deal with rattlesnakes, abuse of grasshoppers (the drink) and a murder trial. They would bankrupt the youngest millionaire in America, produce five of the most important players in NFL history, establish a new NFL standard for carousing and create an unsavory lineage to the heralded Baltimore Colts. But on Thanksgiving Day in 1952, the Dallas Texans would produce the craziest thing of all: a football miracle.
But not the rattlesnakes. The team's equipment manager, Willie Garcia, had a prosthetic leg, and when the ball bounced into the tall, rattler-infested prairie grass surrounding the Texans' practice field, it was agreed that Garcia would retrieve it. Garcia, Phelan decided, only had a 50 percent chance of getting bitten, you see. Before each practice, Garcia would dump whatever equipment he had in a big pile in the middle of the Texans locker room and the players would fight over socks and shoulder pads.
The Texans made one final appeal to the all-powerful Dallas Citizens Council, a kind of only-in-Texas de facto board made up of white Dallas oligarchs who handpicked the town's mayor and privately controlled the entire region. Miller requested $250,000 to finish the season, a pittance to the wealthy, powerful men in that room. The DCC declined to help and their announced "hands-off" policy regarding the Texans was a clear message. "No question, if the DCC lined up behind the franchise it would have succeeded," says Phillips. "They let it fail, maybe because they were afraid it might set a precedent. If the businesses in Dallas aren't integrated, if the neighborhoods aren't integrated, if the schools aren't integrated, if SMU isn't integrated and all of a sudden you have this integrated NFL team, that could achieve a lot of visibility, that would put a crack in the edifice of Jim Crow. And they didn't want to open that bottle and let that genie escape."
Halas seemed to sense the historic nature of the debacle long before anyone else. As the Bears were making their way off the field, the incensed coach ran up from behind and began to kick his players in the backside. Hours later, Halas was still not in the holiday spirit. As the Bears headed back home to Chicago on their charter flight, a still-enraged Halas went up and down the aisle of the plane slapping the special Thanksgiving dinner plates out of his players' laps. Dallas celebrated their Thanksgiving Miracle in true Texans' style.
The EPILOGUE includes the details of the murder mentioned above.
GEORGE TALIAFERRO, the Texans' lone Pro Bowl selection in 1952, played another season-and-a-half in Baltimore and then retired in 1955 after being traded to the Eagles. His wife, Viola, became a district court judge in Indiana and a special adviser to attorney general Janet Reno.
BUDDY YOUNG played three more season in Baltimore and in 1956 was the first Colt to have his number retired. In 1964 he became the first African-American executive to be hired by a sports league. Two decades later, while working as the NFL's director of player relations, Young died in a car accident.
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