Bryce Bubak

Ms. Murray

5-3-17

2B

Research Paper Final Draft

The National Football League is one of the most well known sports leagues and source of

entertainment in the United States. The league used to be two separate leagues that were both

trying to compete and beat out the other to claim the title as being the superior football league.

The two leagues were rivals until the year of 1966, when the two rival National Football League

(NFL) and American Football League (AFL) announced that they would undergo a merger. The

merger would lead to the creation of several major sport events such as the Super Bowl. The

first Super Bowl between the two leagues took place at the end of the 1966 season, the same

year they announced the idea of the merger. Even though it took until the end of the 1970

season for the leagues to unite their operations and integrate their regular season schedules, it is

still one of many major events involving sports that have impacted the way the sport is played

and watched today. The merger has changed the league in numerous ways, I am going to talk

about how the merger began, events that happened before, during, and after the merger, and the

final and lasting effects that the merger has left behind.

The merger began at the beginning of the 1966 season. The 1965 season was the year that

caused the two leagues to begin discussion of a large scale merger. In 1965, the AFL scored a

television contract with NBC. That same year, New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin lured

quarterback Joe Namath out of the University of Alabama to the AFL(History.com) with the
biggest contract in pro football history. The NFLs prediction and hope that the AFL would

field only second-rate players and washed-up former NFL players was not to be: Instead, the

two leagues began to compete over fans, players and coaches. An unspoken agreement that one

league would not sign the other leagues players was broken in 1966 when the NFLs New York

Giants signed placekicker Pete Gogolak away from the AFLs Buffalo Bills. As neither league

could afford a bidding war, owners soon began to talk of a merger. Under the merger agreement

announced on June 8, 1966, the new league would be called the NFL, and split into the

American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) All eight of

the original AFL teams would all be absorbed by the NFL, unlike in 1946 when the NFL

merged with the rival All-America Football Conference but only took in its Baltimore, Cleveland

and San Francisco franchises and dissolved four other teams.(BleacherReport.com) This merger

was soon to be known as one of the boldest moves of the modern era of sports.

Prior to the merger, the two leagues had been competing over many things for a long

time. In 1958, the National Football League championship game between the Baltimore Colts

and New York Giants drew 45 million viewers on NBC and established pro football as an

entertainment commodity to rival baseball. The NFL suddenly had a line of businessmen

waiting to purchase new franchises in new markets, but most were arrogantly turned away. This

prompted Lamar Hunt, the wealthy son of an oil tycoon, to recruit seven businessmen from cities

hungry for pro football to form a rival league. The resulting American Football League was

publicly welcomed by NFL Commissioner Bert Bell, who said that competition would stimulate

both leagues. However, the NFL did not sit idly by and wait for the AFL to gain market share.

Instead, it quickly expanded into Hunts hometown of Dallas and into Minneapolis, another of

the cities the AFL had designated for a franchise. The American Football League chose
Oakland as a replacement for Minneapolis, as well as Los Angeles, Dallas (for Hunts franchise,

which moved to Kansas City in 1962), New York, Buffalo, Boston, Denver and Houston as the

original eight AFL cities(History.com). The league piqued fan interest with an entertaining

product on the field, a high-flying aerial brand of football that contrasted with the stingy defenses

and running attacks of the older NFL(History.com). By 1962, the AFL had drawn 1 million

fans to its games.

The merger was fueled by the rivalry but ultimately was about the success and longevity

that the sport would need to continue for as long as they would like. The first two Super Bowls

proved the NFC (the former NFL) to be the better league, with Vince Lombardis Green Bay

Packers handling their AFC challenger easily.(History.com). In Super Bowl III, however, Joe

Namath and the New York Jets upset the favored Baltimore Colts and ushered in a new era of

greater parity between the two leagues. The Super Bowl, played between the AFC and NFC

champions at the end of every NFL season, is now the most watched televised sporting event in

the world with more than 140 million viewers(History.com).

The merger is one of the most important events in the National Football Leagues history,

as it is the reason for why the league is still around today. When the two leagues conjoined

football was still an up and coming sport and now it has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon

and as well as a favorite form of entertainment for millions of people. Without the events that

happened in the years prior, the two leagues would still be apart or might have even been

completely forgotten and disbanded. Either way, the National Football League merger of 1966 is

still a huge contributor to the way football is watched and played around the world.
 Works Cited

Baker, C. Douglas. Informative History of the NFL/AFL Merger. Bleacher Report,

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/528142-informative-history-of-the-nflafl-merger.

Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

NFL and AFL announce merger - Jun 08, 1966 - HISTORY.com. HISTORY.com,

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nfl-and-afl-announce-merger. Accessed 18 Apr.

2017.