Titans owner Bud Adams, who helped found the American Football League and whose battles for players helped lead to the merger with the NFL, has died. The son of a prominent oil executive, Adams built his own energy fortune and founded the Houston Oilers. He moved the team to Tennessee in 1997 when he couldn't get the new stadium he wanted in Houston. The franchise, renamed the Titans, in 2000 reached the Super Bowl that Adams had spent more than three decades pursuing. Coach Mike Munchak said Adams was willing to spend money to help his team win, remembering how he ordered the Titans to chase free agent Peyton Manning in March 2012. The Titans also spent more than $100 million this offseason on players, and Munchak said their challenge now will be winning the Super Bowl in his memory - the one item missing from Adams' legacy. "That'll be our challenge going forward," Munchak said. Funeral plans have yet to be announced. Munchak said the Titans will decide later how to remember their founder. Adams' 409 wins were the most of any current NFL owner. He notched his 400th career win in the 2011 season finale when his Titans defeated the team that replaced his Oilers in Houston, the Texans. "I consider Bud one of the founders of the game of professional football because of his role in helping to create the American Football League," Dallas owner Jerry Jones said in a statement. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called Adams a pioneer and innovator. Adams joined Dallas oilman Lamar Hunt on Aug. 3, 1959, when they announced the AFL would begin competing with the NFL at a news conference in Adams' office. Adams founded one of the new league's charter franchises. The NFL retaliated by placing the Cowboys in Dallas and tried to get into Houston, but Adams held the lease to the one available stadium. He won a major battle with the NFL in June 1960, shortly before the AFL's debut, when a judge ruled Louisiana State Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon - who signed with the Oilers underneath the goalposts after the Sugar Bowl that year - was their property despite having later signed with the NFL's Los Angeles Rams. The Oilers won the first two AFL titles and reached the championship game four times during the 1960s. His business interests included farming and ranching in Texas and California, cattle feeding, real estate and automobile sales.