On January 29, 1952, a Dallas-based group led by a pair of young millionaires, brothers Giles and Connell Miller, completed the purchase of what was ostensibly a new franchise: the first-ever major league sports team based in Texas.

The Millers believed that the growing state of Texas, with its longstanding support of college and high school football, would be a natural fit for the NFL to move farther south and west.

The situation was exacerbated by the woeful ticket sales and an inability to get any financial support from local businesses – an important factor even in this decade – to cover these debts, or even operating expenses.

Unlike present economic arrangements in which the NFL's multi-billion-dollar television contracts essentially underwrite the league's franchises, teams in this era had no hope of remaining solvent without local support.

NFL games were not carried on national TV at all until 1953,[7] and then only on the now-long-defunct DuMont Television Network, for a pittance compared to the contracts of today.

The team played one of its remaining two relocated home games at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, where the franchise tallied its only win under the Texans moniker, an upset over the Chicago Bears of George Halas, in front of a meager crowd of only 2,208 fans on Thanksgiving Day.

As a measure of how low the NFL ranked on the sports scene in the early 1950s, the Akron high school Championship Game played at the Rubber Bowl that morning attracted 14,284 fans, far outdrawing the afternoon's professional contest.

Unable to find a buyer for the team, but not wanting to outright contract the franchise (which would have unbalanced the schedule), the NFL quickly began to solicit bids from other cities.

[13] Rosenbloom named his new franchise the Baltimore Colts (after the unrelated previous team from the competing All-America Football Conference, which merged with the NFL in 1950).

As a result, the Texans are officially recognized as the last NFL team to permanently cease operations and not be included in the lineage of any current franchise.

Although the NFL rapidly grew more prosperous during the latter part of the 1950s (especially after the success of "The Greatest Game Ever Played", the 1958 Championship Game at Yankee Stadium between the vaunted New York Giants and the developing Colts, leading to a later profitable nationwide television contract), the 1952 debacle in Dallas left the NFL leery of further expansion.

Threatened by the new league and its impact upon attendances, player contract rates, and the television market, the NFL quickly reconsidered its position on expansion.

Both franchises shared the Cotton Bowl stadium (also the home of Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Mustangs)for their first three seasons.

After Richter, a star at the University of California, made it clear he did not want to play for Dallas, he was traded to the Los Angeles Rams, sending him closer to home.