Topic: Bud Adams

Kenneth Stanley "Bud" Adams, Jr. (born January 3, 1923) is the owner of the Tennessee Titans' National Football League franchise. He was a charter owner of the Titans' predecessor franchise, the Houston Oilers, in the former American Football League, a league which he helped establish. He is the senior owner (by time) with his team in the National Football League, a few months ahead of Buffalo Bills' owner Ralph Wilson. Adams also was one of the owners of the Houston Mavericks of the American Basketball Association and the former owner of the Nashville Kats of the Arena Football League. He was elected to the Hall of Fame of the American Football League.

Adams has many business interests in the Houston area. An enrolled Cherokee who originally made his fortune in the petroleum business, Adams is chairman and CEO of Adams Resources & Energy Inc., a wholesale supplier of oil and natural gas. He also owns several Lincoln-Mercury automobile franchises.

Adams was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1923. He was the son of K.S. "Boots" Adams and Blanch Keeler Adams and became an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation by virtue of his maternal line. Two of his great-grandmothers were Cherokee women who married European-American men: Nelson Carr and George B. Keeler, who played roles in trade and oil in early Oklahoma. Keeler drilled the first commercial oil well, near the Caney River. Adams' father succeeded the founder Frank Phillips as president of Phillips Petroleum Company in 1939. Adams' uncle William Wayne Keeler, CEO of Phillips Petroleum Company for years, was appointed chief of the Cherokee Nation by President Harry S. Truman in 1949 and served through 1971, when the Cherokee were able to hold their own elections. Keeler was democratically elected and served until 1975. Adams' ancestors include other prominent Cherokee leaders.