If You Can't Join 'Em, Beat 'Em

If You Can’t Join ‘Em, Beat ‘Em

A Remembrance of the American Football League

Published by Sal Maiorana at Smashwords

Copyright 2003 Sal Maiorana

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue - If Only They’d Given Lamar His Own Team

Chapter 1 - 1960: Yes, This is Pro Football

Chapter 2 - 1961: An Old Warrior’s Revenge

Chapter 3 - 1962: Working Overtime in Dallas

Chapter 4 - 1963: Charging Into History

Chapter 5 - 1964: A Buffalo Stampede

Chapter 6 - 1965: How Much Did You Pay Him?

Chapter 7 - 1966: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Chapter 8 - 1967: Just Win, Baby

Chapter 9 - 1968: Broadway Joe, Heidi and The Guarantee

Chapter 10 - 1969: What a Ride It Has Been

Epilogue - A New Frontier

Acknowledgements

In researching this work, I consulted a variety of books, magazines and newspapers, and all of these sources yielded invaluable information. Two books in particular stood out as dominant as the 1967 Oakland Raiders, pillars of strength that were relentless in their thoroughness: When The Grass Was Real by noted author and pro football historian Bob Carroll, and The American Football League, by Ed Gruver.

Other books referenced included Touchdown, and The $400,000 Quarterback, both written by Bob Curran; Total Football, edited by Bob Carroll, Michael Gershman, David Neft, John Thorn and David Pietrusza; The Running Backs, by Murray Olderman; Raiders – From Oakland to Los Angeles, by Joseph Hession and Steve Cassady; Crash of the Titans, by William Ryczek; Relentless – The Hard-Hitting History of Buffalo Bills Football, Volumes I and II, by Sal Maiorana.

I also culled quotes and game information from stories that appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Buffalo News, the Buffalo Courier-Express, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Newsday, The Dallas Morning News, The Baton Rouge State Times, The Houston Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Boston Herald, The Boston Globe, The Orlando Sentinel, The Denver Post, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, Pro magazine and GameDay magazine.

Prologue: If Only They’d Given Lamar His Own Team

It was insanity.

It was idiotic.

It was financial suicide being committed by men whose egos had gone mad.

They were fools, really, and in the beginning they knew it, hence their self-imposed nickname of The Foolish Club.

But as history proved, the men who risked fortunes and reputations for the sake of starting the American Football League in 1959 were anything but fools.

It was a very naïve time, said Lamar Hunt, the man who brainstormed the idea of forming the AFL for the purpose of expanding the world of professional football, but in so doing, was forced to compete head-to-head with the powerful National Football League. There was never a recognition that we were doing something that had not been done before, or that some people would consider it impossible.

Actually between the time the NFL was formed during a meeting in a Canton, Ohio automobile dealership showroom in September 1920 until the advent of the AFL, there had been four attempts by rebel businessmen to grab a slice of the NFL’s pro football monopoly.

Three – all carrying the acronym AFL - failed miserably, while the most recent foray, the All-America Football Conference, made inroads and provided hope for the men of the new AFL. The AAFC survived only four years (1946-49) and it failed in its intended goal to compete head-to-head with the NFL for America’s rooting interest. However, its disappointment was quelled by a deal it cut whereby, in agreeing to cease operations and thus end the bidding wars that had ensued for players, the AAFC saw three of its franchises (the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers) absorbed into the NFL, expanding the NFL roster from 10 to 13 teams.

So what made Hunt think his venture would be different, that it wouldn’t die a quick and invisible death like the previous AFL entities, and that it would put up a stronger fight than the AAFC and stride side-by-side with the NFL on autumn Sunday afternoons?

Timing.

We hit a market when it was ready to happen, when it was crying out for football, Hunt said. Unless we made real bad business decisions, we really should have been able to make it.

Oh, they made it all right, thanks to a band of strong-willed, deep-pocketed men who weren’t afraid to stand up to the almighty NFL and who weren’t willing to pull the plug in the early years when fans laughed at them, media ignored them, and their bankers screamed at them. They rode a wave of uncertainty, dodged the slings and arrows, and ultimately changed the course of sports history by forcing a merger with the NFL that produced the most powerful, most influential and most popular sports league in the world.

There is no question the country had room to accept a new league, said William H. Sullivan, the original owner of the Boston Patriots. This was before television became that big. The famous Colts-Giants playoff game (in 1958) had come just two years before and a lot of the country was awakening to the fact that pro football was an exciting game. We came in at the right time.

Still, most people – inside the league and out – were skeptical.

It was like starting a new automobile company from scratch and bucking Ford and GM, said Detroit native Ralph Wilson, who for $25,000 purchased a franchise for Buffalo, and 43 years later remains in Western New York as owner of the Bills. We didn't know if this league was going to go, the odds were certainly against it and everyone was laughing at me. The NFL was powerfully entrenched. In Detroit, my friends said 'You have a franchise in this honky tonk AFL?' and they laughed at me at cocktail parties. I was a joke.

What was a joke were the earlier attempts to form rival leagues.

After nearly three decades of chaos at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, a group of men – including Chicago Bears patriarch George Halas – gathered in Canton in the hopes of streamlining the pro game. They formed a league – at first called the American Professional Football Association but later changed to the National Football League in 1922 – set rules and tried to formulate schedules. Though the early years resulted in only modest organization, it was clear that by 1926 the NFL was on America’s sporting landscape to stay.

That year the first challenge to the league was laid down. C.C. Pyle, who had served as Red Grange’s manager when the great Illinois back made his pro debut with the Bears on Thanksgiving Day 1925, tried to enter the NFL as a team owner. He had orchestrated Grange’s unprecedented barnstorming tour which saw the big redhead and the Bears play 17 games in the span of two months, taking pro football to areas that had never seen the game such as Florida, Louisiana, California, Oregon and Washington. Pyle recognized the potential the NFL had and he wanted a cut, so he negotiated a five-year lease with Yankee Stadium with the intention of forming the New York Yankees football team. Pyle was confident of his team’s success both on the field and at the gate because his star attraction would be Grange who had become a free agent when his contract with Chicago expired after the last game of his tour.

However, the NFL had just moved into New York in 1925 when Tim Mara established the Giants’ franchise for the Polo Grounds, and Mara steadfastly refused Pyle admittance to Gotham on the premise that he would lose exclusivity to the market. The NFL, which desperately wanted Grange to be in its league, nonetheless had to side with Mara, so Pyle quickly announced that he would form his own league and fight the NFL head-on.

Thus was born the first American Football League, a conglomeration of nine teams that never stood a chance of surviving. The majority of the teams were undercapitalized and untalented and some stopped playing games midway through the first season because they were broke. Pyle’s Yankees, with Grange leading the way, were a decent team, but the Philadelphia Quakers actually won the league title with an 8-2 record. It was clear the league was wobbling badly and as a last-ditch effort to win over fans, the Quakers played an exhibition game against Mara’s Giants at the Polo Grounds. When the Giants – an average NFL team – trounced the Quakers, 31-0, the first AFL was officially put to rest.

It would be 10 years before a second AFL surfaced, this time under the leadership of Dr. Henry March, formerly the Giants’ personnel director and an executive in the NFL office.

In 1936 the league fielded teams in Boston, Cleveland, New York, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Rochester. Before the year ended, Rochester became Brooklyn, Syracuse became Rochester, and despite the presence of some former NFL stars such as Red Badgro, Jack McBride and Ken Strong, the league was barely breathing. This AFL managed to play a second season, but at the end of 1937, it could no longer continue as a major league. The club owners assumed minor league status for two years, then reformed in 1940, confident they could tangle with the NFL.

Again, they failed. With league president William D. Griffith imploring his teams to raid NFL rosters for talent, most players wisely stuck with their NFL clubs, leaving the AFL with very little fan appeal. This circuit also survived two years and was planning to make a go of it in 1942, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 doomed the league. With so many men called to war, the AFL – unlike the established NFL – could not deal with such deep roster depletion and it announced it would suspend operations until the war was over. When the war ended in 1945, the AFL never got off the mat.

Now it was the All-America Football Conference’s turn to step into the ring, and this entity, conceived by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward – the man who had organized the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game and football’s College All-Star Game – made an indelible mark.

The AAFC began in 1946 with teams in New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago making it a far more national league than the NFL which was still based solely in the East and Midwest. The AAFC was spurred by name recognition as Jim Crowley, one of the fabled Four Horsemen from Notre Dame, was named commissioner; Eleanor Gehrig, widow of the late New York Yankees baseball star Lou Gehrig, served as secretary-treasurer; actor Don Ameche was part-owner of the Los Angeles franchise; and Dan Topping, who owned a stake in baseball’s Yankees, established the New York franchise and gave it the same nickname.

Paul Brown was named coach of the Cleveland Browns, and he put together a dynamic team led by Otto Graham, Marion Motley, Lou Groza, Frank Gatski, Dante Lavelli, Mac Speedie and Bill Willis. Not surprisingly with that cast of characters, the Browns won all four AAFC championships.

In 1949, the NFL came to the conclusion that the leagues were hurting each other by bidding for players and sharing markets (New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) so NFL commissioner Bert Bell brokered a deal whereby Cleveland, Baltimore and San Francisco would be merged into the NFL while the other AAFC teams would be folded and their players dispersed throughout the NFL. The New York, Los Angeles and Chicago teams were hardly missed because those cities had NFL teams. The only people who were really affected by the dissolving of the AAFC were Buffalo fans because they lost their team and didn’t have another one to root for. Of course, that would change 11 years later.

Throughout the 1950s, the NFL chugged along by itself, pro football its private domain. Though baseball and college football were still more popular, the NFL gained strength and no one thought it prudent to challenge this powerhouse. No one until Hunt, the son of billionaire oil man H.L. Hunt of Dallas.

Hunt had played college football at Southern Methodist University, but he wasn’t nearly talented enough to play at the pro level. So if he couldn’t play, he figured he’d get into the business end of the sport. Upon graduation, Hunt – buoyed by a trust fund that was worth a reported $500 million – began his quest to purchase the financially-strapped Chicago Cardinals NFL franchise with the intention of moving the team to his native Dallas. It was 1959, and apparently the nightmare of the Dallas Texans’ colossal failure as an NFL team in 1952 was too fresh in the minds of the other NFL owners. Despite the fact that the Cardinals were a financial drain and an embarrassment to the league, team owner Walter Wolfner decided against selling to Hunt.

Wolfner also rejected offers from Bud Adams of Houston, Bob Howsam of Denver and Max Winter of Minneapolis. Perplexed by Wolfner’s unwillingness to sell, Hunt, Adams and Howsam met with Bell to explore the possibility of NFL expansion, but the commissioner offered a resounding no to that inquiry.

With his dream of owning an NFL franchise now sabotaged, Hunt left his meeting with Bell in Philadelphia, boarded a plane bound for Dallas, and it was on that trip that he came up with the idea to form the fourth American Football League.

It was like you see in the cartoons where a light bulb comes on over a guy’s head, Hunt said in the book The American Football League. It occurred to me that if all these people were trying to do the same thing I was, we could join together and form a new league.

Not only did Hunt have perfect timing on his side, but money was a key issue. He had lots of it, and so did the men he courted as potential franchise owners. Another benefit: They were all willing to spend it.

Hunt recognized that sports had become an integral part of the American way of life, and 1959 was a great time to be an American. The country was free from war, free from recession, and it was about to enter into a new decade with a young, vibrant president named John F. Kennedy leading the way. There was room for pro football expansion, and Hunt – so rich that he could literally buy the American dream - knew it. The trick was to find seven other millionaires who - as Bob Carroll wrote in his book When the Grass Was Real – were willing to buy cabins on the Titanic. As it turned out, it wasn’t at all that difficult.

Adams, another Texas millionaire thanks to the oil industry, was eager to come on board, as was Howsam, who was owner of the highly successful minor league baseball Denver Bears. Fourth on Hunt’s list was Winter up in Minneapolis. Winter had once owned the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers, and like Hunt he had tried to buy the Cardinals and move them to his city. Hunt knew Winter wanted a team, and sure enough, he convinced him to join the AFL.

Hunt was now halfway toward his goal of eight teams, but he needed to hit the big markets of New York and Los Angeles. He went to New York first in the hopes of convincing William Shea to invest. Shea had been involved with the AAFC Yankees, but in 1959 he had turned his attention to baseball and was trying to land a team in the Branch Rickey-proposed Continental Baseball League which the former Brooklyn Dodgers executive was trumpeting as a potential third major league. Shea shuffled Hunt in the direction of his friend, Harry Wismer, who was one of the era’s most prominent sports broadcasters. Wismer, who had made his money in the stock market, held a 26 percent share of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, but he agreed to sell his stake and put a team in New York.

Hunt then flew across the country to speak to Barron Hilton, the middle son of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton. Barron admitted he didn’t know a thing about football, but all Hunt cared about was Hilton’s vast wealth. He served as vice-president of the Hilton Hotels Corporation, he was director of Carte Blanche which was the Hilton’s credit card subsidiary, he’d made a killing in oil, and he had turned a $25,000 investment in a citrus products firm into a $6 million profit. Hunt needed less than an hour to bring Hilton into the fold.

In August of 1959, the six potential franchise owners met in Chicago after the AFL’s intentions were publicly revealed in an announcement made by Bell two weeks earlier. With the NFL facing an investigation in Congress regarding its alleged monopolizing of pro football, Bell saw the AFL as a perfect defense against those charges. He asked Hunt to divulge his plans, and Hunt obliged by telling Bell what was going on and who was involved. Hunt didn’t want Bell to inform the world because no one had actually put up any money, but Bell did anyway, then lied through his teeth by adding that he was in favor of the league and he would help nurture it. Obviously, Bell wanted nothing to do with the AFL because he felt it could only hurt his league, the congressional hearings be damned.

Yet by notifying the public of Hunt’s plan, Bell actually gave the AFL a needed boost. The news created an incredible stir, said Hunt, who was energized by his league’s out-of-the-closet status. This was the turning point for us because our plans were out in the open. There was no turning back now.

It was decided at the Chicago meeting that the league would begin playing in the fall of 1960, and that two more cities were needed to complete the roll.

In the meantime, the NFL began to squirm over the possibility of competition. Soon after Bell’s announcement, Halas, chairman of the league’s committee on expansion, met privately with Adams and was prepared to offer him an expansion franchise for Houston, but Adams – citing his commitment to Hunt and the AFL – turned it down. Two weeks after the AFL’s first meeting, the NFL announced