After a month of intrigue and speculation, and the near-certainty that the franchise would go to Atlanta, the American Football League awarded a franchise to Oakland, replacing the abandoned Minneapolis/St Paul franchise. Most sources gave Chargers owner Barron Hilton the lion's share of the credit for persuading his fellow owners to choose Oakland. Of the eight men who pooled their resources to provide financial support for the team, five of them were land developers or contractors: Ed McGah, Art Beckett, Charles Harney, Chet Soda, and Wayne Valley. Stockbroker Don Blessing was part of the group and had achieved the most fame of the group in the sporting world as the gold medal-winning coxswain in rowing eights at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. Robert Osborne, the owner of a manufacturing firm was also an Oakland City Council member and rounding out the group was restaurateur Harvey Binns.

They had no coaches, no players, and no idea where they might play their games, but they had a team. The AFL said the signing rights to college players drafted by the Minneapolis/St Paul team would be transferred to Oakland, but other AFL teams had already signed some of them in the interim and it was anyone's guess how that mess might be cleaned up.