1950 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1950 NFL season opened on the 16th of September 1950 in Philadelphia, with 71,237 fans packed into the stadium for what the press was calling "The World Series of Pro Football." On one side stood the Cleveland Browns, champions of the now-defunct All-America Football Conference. On the other stood the Philadelphia Eagles, reigning NFL champions. The two leagues had never faced each other in meaningful competition. Cleveland won 35-10, and a book published nearly two decades later would list that game as one of "Ten Games That Mattered" in bringing nationwide prestige to the NFL.

  That single game captures something essential about 1950: a league in transformation. Three rival teams had just been absorbed from a collapsed competitor. Television was reaching into living rooms for the first time. The rules of the game itself were being rewritten. And by December, an unprecedented four-team playoff would be needed just to sort out who would play for the championship. What kind of season produces that kind of chaos, and what does it tell us about where professional football was headed?

• 2. The AAFC Collapse

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  On the 9th of December 1949, the All-America Football Conference announced it was folding. Three of its teams, the Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts, joined the NFL intact. The rest of the league's roster was dismantled piece by piece. Players from the defunct New York Yankees were split between the New York Giants and the New York Yanks. The Los Angeles Dons merged with the Rams. A portion of the Buffalo Bills was absorbed into the Browns organization.

  A special dispersal draft on the 2nd of June 1950 allocated the remaining AAFC players across the league's 13 teams. Reorganizing 13 clubs required a new divisional structure. The league briefly considered rebranding itself the "National-American Football League," but on the 3rd of March 1950 settled on keeping the name "National Football League." The two new divisions, called the American and National, each contained a team in both New York and Chicago.

  Baltimore's situation was unusual even within this unusual arrangement. Declared a "swing team," the Colts played one game against each of 10 other clubs and twice against Washington. The original plan had been to assign that role to Cleveland, whose popular Browns would have boosted gate receipts across the league. Paul Brown refused that arrangement outright.

• 3. Television Changes Everything

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  The Los Angeles Rams became the first NFL franchise to televise every single one of their games, both home and away. The Washington Redskins followed as the second team to put their full schedule on television. Other franchises arranged for selected games to be broadcast.

  This was not a quiet background development. Putting games on television meant that for the first time, fans who couldn't reach a stadium could watch professional football at home. The Rams' decision to televise home games was a gamble on reach over revenue. The ripple effects of that gamble would take years to fully register, but the 1950 season was where the experiment began in earnest.

• 4. Rule Changes and the Pro Bowl

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  Free substitution, meaning any or all players could be replaced after any play, was restored on a permanent basis in 1950. That single rule change cleared the path for player specialization: separate offensive, defensive, and special teams units became a practical reality in professional football.

  A second rule change addressed fumbles and backwards passes. If either went out of bounds before being recovered, the team that last controlled the ball kept possession.

  The league also established the Pro Bowl in this season, replacing an all-star format that had run annually from 1938 to 1942 before being cancelled because of World War II. The old format had pitted the most recent champion against the league's best players. The new Pro Bowl put two all-star teams against each other, one drawn from each division.

  Also new in 1950: the first NFL game played outside the United States. On the 12th of August, the New York Giants met the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union in an exhibition match. The Giants won handily, and the two clubs would meet again in 1951 with the same result.

• 5. A Season of Records

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  The Los Angeles Rams scored 466 points across 12 games in 1950, an average of 38.83 points per game, setting an NFL record for most points per game in a season. Three times during the year they surpassed 50 points in a single game, tying a record shared with the New York Giants.

  On the 29th of October, the Rams put 41 points on Detroit in the third quarter alone, setting a record for most points by a single team in one quarter and contributing to a combined 48 points in that quarter, another record. Final score: 70-27.

  On the 3rd of December, Tom Fears caught 18 passes for the Rams against Green Bay, setting an NFL record for receptions in a single game. That same week, Detroit's Cloyce Box gained 302 receiving yards against Baltimore, one yard short of the NFL record. George Taliaferro of the New York Yanks returned 8 kickoffs in a 51-7 loss to the Giants, a record of its own. Bill Dudley of Washington returned a punt 96 yards for a touchdown. And Cleveland won 13-7 over Philadelphia in a game in which Otto Graham did not attempt a single pass, the Browns' response to taunts that they couldn't win without throwing.

  League leaders at season's end: Bobby Layne of Detroit led with 2,323 passing yards. Marion Motley of Cleveland led in rushing with 810 yards. Tom Fears led in receiving with 1,116 yards.

• 6. The Four-Team Finish

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  Entering the final week, the standings in both divisions were unsettled. The Rams had finished at 9-3-0, but the Bears at 8-3-0 still needed a win. George Blanda kicked a 22-yard field goal and Chicago held on 6-3 to finish 9-3-0 and tie Los Angeles for the National Division title.

  In the American Division, both Cleveland and New York entered the last week at 9-2-0 and both were playing on the road. Cleveland beat Washington 45-21. The Giants held off repeated drives by Philadelphia for a 9-7 win. Both finished at 10-2-0.

  No tiebreaker procedures existed for this kind of four-way knot. The NFL championship game had to be postponed a week while two division playoff games were arranged. Cleveland hosted the Giants; Los Angeles hosted the Bears. Both were sudden-death situations with the championship on the line just beyond.

  The 1950 draft had taken place on the 20th and the 21st of January at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, where the Detroit Lions used the first overall pick to select end Leon Hart from the University of Notre Dame. By December, Hart's Lions were eliminated, but the season he played in had permanently altered the shape of the sport.