Does the NFL have a minor league?
Minor league
While there are various semi-professional football leagues, none have any affiliation with the National Football League (NFL). The NFL and its teams have had working relationships with several independent leagues in the past, including the Association of Professional Football Leagues, the Atlantic Coast Football League, and most recently, the league owned-and-operated NFL Europe. In modern times, the NFL has developed players not ready for the active roster through each team's practice squad.
Dallas Texans (NFL)
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 in old Yankee Stadium between the vaunted New York Giants versus the developing Colts leading to a later profitable nationwide television contract), the fiasco in Dallas left the NFL leery of further expansion. Unable to persuade other NFL owners to reconsider, Texas oil scion Lamar Hunt with others, founded the American Football League as a direct competitor to the older NFL. When Hunt's new Dallas Texans were announced as charter members of the new league, the NFL quickly reconsidered its position on expansion and made a second venture into Dallas in 1960, establishing what would become a more successful and later world-wide famous team, the Dallas Cowboys, briefly known in the beginning as the Dallas Rangers. A minor league baseball team of that same name was expected to disband, but didn't and the "Cowboys" name was later adopted for the NFL team in mid-March 1960. Both franchises shared the Cotton Bowl (also the home of Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Mustangs) stadium for their first three seasons. The new AFL team moved after winning the 1962 AFL Championship in double overtime and became the Kansas City Chiefs for its fourth season in 1963.