Ralph Wilson

Ralph Cookerly Wilson Jr. (October 17, 1918 – March 25, 2014) was an American businessman and sports executive. He was best known as the founder and owner of the Buffalo Bills, a team in the National Football League (NFL). He was one of the founding owners of the American Football League (AFL), the league with which the NFL merged in 1970, and was the last of the original AFL owners to own his team. At the time of his death he was the oldest owner in the NFL, at age 95, and the third-longest tenured owner in NFL history (over 54 years, behind the 63 years George Halas owned the Chicago Bears and almost equal to the 55 years Art Rooney owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, although Rooney's ownership and team operations were interrupted in the 1940s due to some complicated dealings). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Career Wilson grew up in Detroit, Michigan, the son of salesman Ralph Wilson Sr. and his wife Edith Cole. Choosing to go out of state to attend the University of Virginia (where he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity), Wilson returned to Michigan for graduate school at the University of Michigan Law School. He was a 1936 graduate of Detroit University School, now University Liggett School. Before Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served in the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters. After the war ended, he took over his father's insurance business and invested in Michigan area mines and factories. He eventually purchased several manufacturing outlets, construction firms, television and radio stations, and founded Ralph Wilson Industries. Wilson got wind of Lamar Hunt's plans for a new league, the American Football League, to challenge the NFL. He tried to put together a team in Miami, but was turned down. His next choice was Buffalo, where the AFL's first choice of owner, Pat McGroder, had declined to start a team. In September 1959, Wilson sent Hunt a telegram with the words, "Count me in with Buffalo.” He named his new team the Bills, after a previous team that had played in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949. On October 28, 1959, the Buffalo Bills officially became the seventh AFL team. Wilson made professional football a resounding success in a "small market", signing such stars as Cookie Gilchrist, Jack Kemp, and Tom Sestak and Hall of Famers Billy Shaw and O. J. Simpson.