CHARTER AFL OWNER &
MICHIGANDER RALPH WILSON DIES AT 95
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| Founder of successful construction and insurance firms, he was inducted into the Pro Football HOF in 2009. |
on March 25, 2014 - 3:05 PM
, updated March 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: Another giant in the sporting and business worlds who is from Michigan has passed, Grosse Pointer and charter AFL owner Ralph Wilson.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Another giant in the sporting and business worlds who is from Michigan has passed, Grosse Pointer and charter AFL owner Ralph Wilson.
Ralph Cookerly Wilson Jr., founder of the Buffalo Bills and the most influential sports figure Western New York ever has known, has died at age 95.
His death was announced by Bills President Russ Brandon today.
“No one loved the game of football more than Ralph Wilson,” said Brandon.
Wilson did not put Buffalo on the map, but he did as much as anyone to keep it there during his lifetime.
A Michigan native and long-time resident of Grosse Pointe Shores, Wilson formerly owned a minority owner in the Detroit Lions. He brought major-league sports to Buffalo in 1959, when he joined a group that became known as “The Foolish Club,” made up of eight businessmen led by Texas oilman Lamar Hunt, who founded the American Football League.
The initial cost to Wilson was $25,000, and it was considered a risky venture to challenge the established National Football League.
The investment became a stroke of genius, as pro football blossomed into America’s favorite sport. Wilson’s team is valued today at roughly $870 million, based on estimates by Forbes Magazine. The Bills arguably are the single most-identifiable and unifying institution in Western New York.
“The strength of the Bills franchise is the passion of the fans,” Wilson said after signing a 15-year lease deal in 1997. “Buffalo is a community of down-to-earth, hard-working families who, in large numbers, are also avid sports fans. You know how the people here feel about you because they are very straightforward. That is a quality I admire.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is what NMU alum and former Bills LB Mark Maddox had to say about Mr. Wilson
I remember him coming into the offices of Hansen Maddox enterprises and giving me the nickname of Mr. Telephone lol.
He'll be missed greatly by many. I pray that his family finds strength during these troubling times. May he rest in peace.
His death was announced by Bills President Russ Brandon today.
“No one loved the game of football more than Ralph Wilson,” said Brandon.
Wilson did not put Buffalo on the map, but he did as much as anyone to keep it there during his lifetime.
A Michigan native and long-time resident of Grosse Pointe Shores, Wilson formerly owned a minority owner in the Detroit Lions. He brought major-league sports to Buffalo in 1959, when he joined a group that became known as “The Foolish Club,” made up of eight businessmen led by Texas oilman Lamar Hunt, who founded the American Football League.
 |
| The Foolish Club with AFL Commish Joe Foss |
The initial cost to Wilson was $25,000, and it was considered a risky venture to challenge the established National Football League.
The investment became a stroke of genius, as pro football blossomed into America’s favorite sport. Wilson’s team is valued today at roughly $870 million, based on estimates by Forbes Magazine. The Bills arguably are the single most-identifiable and unifying institution in Western New York.
“The strength of the Bills franchise is the passion of the fans,” Wilson said after signing a 15-year lease deal in 1997. “Buffalo is a community of down-to-earth, hard-working families who, in large numbers, are also avid sports fans. You know how the people here feel about you because they are very straightforward. That is a quality I admire.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is what NMU alum and former Bills LB Mark Maddox had to say about Mr. Wilson
It's a sad day for those who knew Ralph Wilson Jr. A great man who took the time to know everyone in the organization from Will the security guard, office staff to kids from small schools in North Dakota, Anderson, IN and Marquette, MI.
I remember him coming into the offices of Hansen Maddox enterprises and giving me the nickname of Mr. Telephone lol.
He'll be missed greatly by many. I pray that his family finds strength during these troubling times. May he rest in peace.
NY TIMES OBIT
Ralph Wilson, who founded the Buffalo Bills as an original member of the American Football League in 1960 and saw them go to four Super Bowls as the only owner in the team’s history, died on Tuesday at his home in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich. He was 95.
The Bills’ president, Russ Brandon, announced the death at the annual National Football League owners’ meeting in Orlando, Fla. Mr. Wilson had expressed the wish that when he died, the commissioner would announce it first to his fellow owners.
When word came of his death while the owners were meeting, Commissioner Roger Goodell cleared the room of team executives so that only the owners remained. He then told them Mr. Wilson had died.
In obtaining an A.F.L. franchise for $25,000 in 1960, Mr. Wilson joined seven other founding A.F.L. team owners in a daunting challenge to the long-established N.F.L. They were nicknamed the Foolish Club. He was the last survivor of that club remaining in the N.F.L. Of the original eight, only Barron Hilton, the founder of the Los Angeles Chargers (now the San Diego Chargers), survives.
The A.F.L. had a rocky financial start, but it ultimately thrived, and Mr. Wilson played a leading role in talks that led to its merger with the N.F.L. in 1970. His Bills won two A.F.L. championships and played in four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s, but lost each time, to the Giants, the Washington Redskins and twice to the Dallas Cowboys.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009.
When Mr. Wilson, a Michigan businessman, applied for an A.F.L. franchise, he wanted to put a team in Miami but could not reach a deal for use of the Orange Bowl. He settled on Buffalo, and revived the name of the team that played there in the All-America Conference of the 1940s.
“I thought it was a big gamble to go into a new league and certainly a very big risk — like starting an automobile shop in our garage and bucking Ford and GM,” Mr. Wilson told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2009.
His friends in Detroit were skeptical. “I was ridiculed, all around the area,” he said.
The team originally played at War Memorial Stadium. Built in the 1930s, it was known as the Rockpile. The Bills moved to a new stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb, in 1973; it has been known as Ralph Wilson Stadium since 1998.
A small-market franchise, the Bills were valued in August 2013 at $870 million by Forbes magazine, 30th among the N.F.L.’s 32 teams. In December 2012, the team reached a $130 million deal with New York State to renovate the stadium and keep the Bills in Orchard Park for at least seven years.
The Bills had been playing one regular-season game a year in Toronto in recent seasons, a move that led to speculation over their future in Buffalo, but they recently announced they were suspending that arrangement.
Mr. Wilson had said that his family would not run the Bills after his death and that the team would be sold. Mr. Brandon said in a statement that ownership matters would be addressed “in the near future.”
Ralph Cookerly Wilson Jr. was born on Oct. 17, 1918, in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in the Detroit area, where his father owned an insurance company. He became a Detroit Lions fan.
He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, attended the University of Michigan Law School and served in the Navy during World War II.
Mr. Wilson expanded the family business into Ralph C. Wilson Industries with interests in insurance, television stations, highway construction, oil and gas drilling and automotive parts, and he owned a small stake in the Lions before he got his A.F.L. franchise.
He made his presence felt behind the scenes during the league’s early years, lending $400,000 to the Oakland Raiders in 1962 to keep them afloat. His Bills, led by Jack Kemp at quarterback and coached by Lou Saban, won A.F.L. championships in 1964 and ’65.
Mr. Wilson was an A.F.L. representative in preliminary talks toward a merger with the N.F.L. in 1965, then served on the leagues’ joint committee that arranged the first Super Bowl, between the A.F.L.’s Kansas City Chiefs and the N.F.L.’s Green Bay Packers, in January 1967.
The Bills made the playoffs only once in their first decade in the N.F.L., although they had one of football’s greatest running backs in O. J. Simpson. Mr. Wilson laid the groundwork for a reversal of their fortunes when he named Bill Polian as general manager and Marv Levy as coach in the mid-1980s. They built his four Super Bowl teams featuring quarterback Jim Kelly, running back Thurman Thomas and defensive end Bruce Smith, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, together with Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson had an unassuming manner. “No one wants to see the white-collar owner who’s the corporate type,” Mr. Kelly was quoted by The New York Times as saying. “He comes out and catches passes. He treats us just like one of his kids.”
Mr. Wilson sought to reprise the Bills’ success of the 1990s when he brought back Mr. Levy, this time as general manager, in 2006. But Mr. Levy, who had coached the Bills through the 1997 season, remained as general manager for only two seasons, and the Bills generally floundered in Mr. Wilson’s final years.
His survivors include his wife, Mary, and his daughters Christy and Edith, known as Dee Dee.
In August 2012, when Mr. Wilson attended the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he opened a center he financed to preserve millions of its documents and photographs. On New Year’s Day 2013, he gave up his title as team president to Mr. Brandon.
Mr. Wilson talked about the passing of the generations in a city that has lost much of its industrial base but remains fervent about the Bills, Buffalo’s only major pro sports team except for the National Hockey League’s Sabres.
“It’s the most passionate city in the country for pro football,” he told Jeff Miller for “Going Long,” a 2003 oral history of the A.F.L. “The old families went to the game at the Rockpile and took their little boys. Now those boys are grown up, and they have kids, and they come to the games. It’s sort of the fabric of the community.”
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