The NFL Draft is in town for the first time, but it's not the first time a pro football draft has been held in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Before the glitz and the glam and the fashion, and long before the Draft was held at AT&T Stadium, which packs 100,000 people, there was a draft held in a ballroom in downtown Dallas.
In 1959, Dallas native Lamar Hunt co-founded the American Football League.
The AFL had eight teams, including Hunt's own Dallas Texans, who later became the Kansas City Chiefs.
The NFL already existed, so the two leagues became rivals. They competed for attention and the top college talent.
"Before the merger, it was really the wild wild west," admits Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, one of Lamar's sons.
Two leagues. Two different drafts. Forget the war room, it was a war to sign draft picks.
So, Lamar borrowed Hunt Oil Company landmen to "negotiate."
"They would literally go to the college bowl games and try to sign the player walking off the field to prevent the NFL team that had drafted him from doing the same thing," said Clark Hunt.
One of those players was Cowboys Hall of Famer Bob Lilly.
"Scouts were thick," Lilly recalled. "They all had a wad of money and they were all trying to get us a pre-contract."
"They would peel off hundreds, then they would get down to 20's and one of them even got down to 1's."
"That kind of stuff was going on all the time," according to Hunt. "Today, a lot of that might be illegal."
Coming out of TCU, Lilly became the Cowboys first ever draft pick in the 1961 NFL Draft.
Though they were unable to sign him, Lamar Hunt and the Dallas Texans also picked Lilly in the 1961 AFL Draft, which was held at The Stater Hotel in Dallas.
The Statler hosted the AFL draft for three years before the Texans moved to Kansas City.
"It wasn't quite the production it is today," said Evan Danziger, general manager of The Statler.
No red carpet. No cell phones. Many draft picks didn't know where they were going until the next day.
"It was the newspaper or car radio, that was about it," said Lilly. "Of course, I didn't have a car, so I had no radio either."
Clark Hunt estimates the draft was held in a ballroom with all eight teams represented at different tables.
"It was not a televised event. ESPN wasn't even around to cover it."
The NFL and AFL officially merged in 1970. One big league created more national interest.
"It's hard to believe how big it has become," said Hunt.
Once ESPN started airing the draft in 1980, it changed forever. "It's almost a bigger spectacle than the game itself," Hunt said.