Presented by COMMERCIAL TIRE.
This Day In Sports…June 8, 1966, 60 years ago today:
The National Football League, founded in 1920, and the American Football League, which began play in 1960, announce a merger. The NFL and AFL thus ended an increasingly destructive annual financial bidding war for players. Although the two leagues would continue to play separate schedules until 1970, there would be a common draft—and a title game pitting the champions of the two leagues beginning in January, 1967. That would become known as Super Bowl I.
The most significant of the bidding wars surrounded quarterback Joe Namath when he came out of Alabama after the 1964 season. Namath was drafted in the first round by both the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals and the AFL’s New York Jets. The Cardinals offered $200,000 and a new Lincoln Continental, but the Jets lured Namath away with a three-year, $427,000 offer that dropped jaws throughout pro football. He signed on January 2, 1965.
The NFL avenged that, if effect, by stealing a prominent kicker a year later. Pete Gogolak was a star for the Buffalo Bills but was signed away by the New York Giants. That flew in the face of a gentlemen’s agreement between the leagues not to poach each other’s players. The bidding for 1966 draft picks spiraled out of control, with both leagues spending a combined $7 million. The AFL owners, who had deeper pockets, forced the hand of their NFL counterparts and the merger was quickly arranged and approved.
It’s always fun to look back on the evolution of the AFL. The league’s original eight franchises in 1960 were the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Dallas Texans, Denver Broncos, Houston Oilers, Los Angeles Chargers, New York Titans and Oakland Raiders. The Chargers relocated to San Diego in 1961 after just one season in L.A. In 1963, the Texans moved and became the Kansas City Chiefs and the Jets became the Titans. (The Patriots didn’t adopt the New England name until 1971.) The AFL added two expansion franchises before the merger took effect: the Miami Dolphins in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968.
The only previous rival league that had made any kind of an impact on the NFL was the All-America Football Conference from 1946-49. But the AAFC never instituted a draft, and the strongest franchises hoarded all the best players, particularly the Cleveland Browns. Fan interest dwindled, the league folded, and only three teams were absorbed into the NFL in 1950: the Browns, San Francisco 49ers and the original Baltimore Colts (an organization that went dark after one NFL season and was revived as an expansion franchise in 1953).
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
