1966 NFL season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1966 NFL season was the 47th regular season of the National Football League, and it ended with a game that would reshape American sports. On the 15th of January 1967, the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs met at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The game had a cumbersome official title: the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Nobody called it that for long. What questions does that moment raise? How did two separate professional football leagues end up playing each other at all? Why did a city with no team suddenly gain one? And how did a receiver in Detroit, a Thanksgiving gamble in Dallas, and a disputed field goal in Green Bay all feed into the same watershed season?

• 2. Two Leagues, One Deal

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  On the 8th of June 1966, the NFL and the American Football League signed a merger agreement that ended what the source describes as a competitive war between the two leagues. The deal was precise in its terms. The combined league would grow to 24 teams, then to 26 by 1969, and to 28 by 1970 or soon after. No existing franchise would be relocated out of its metropolitan area. The two leagues would keep separate schedules through 1969 while playing an annual championship game between their respective title holders starting in January 1967. Full integration into one league with two conferences, an American Football Conference and a National Football Conference, was set for 1970.

  The AFL had been pushing the rivalry hard enough that it forced the NFL's hand on expansion. Atlanta was the city both leagues wanted. The AFL voted unanimously on the 7th of June 1965 to add two new franchises, and an AFL franchise was awarded to Atlanta the very next day. The NFL, not willing to cede the market, awarded an expansion franchise to Atlanta on the 30th of June 1965. Commissioner Pete Rozelle granted ownership to Rankin Smith, Sr., giving the new club the first pick in the 1966 NFL draft and the final pick in each of the first five rounds. The AFL had originally targeted Atlanta and Philadelphia, but its two expansion teams ultimately became the Miami Dolphins in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968.

• 3. Atlanta Arrives

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  On the 15th of February 1966, the 1966 NFL expansion draft was held, and the new Atlanta Falcons selected 42 players from the other NFL teams. The 1966 NFL draft itself had been held earlier, on the 27th of November 1965, at the Summit Hotel in New York City. With the very first pick, Atlanta selected linebacker Tommy Nobis out of the University of Texas.

  Having 15 teams in the league created a structural problem no previous season had faced. With an odd number of franchises, one team had to sit idle every week. Each club played fourteen games stretched over fifteen weeks, with the bye week rotating through the schedule. Norb Hecker became the Falcons' first head coach when the team began play at Atlanta Stadium. The second expansion franchise, the New Orleans Saints, was already on the calendar: they would join as the league's sixteenth team in 1967, resolving the odd-number problem and ending the mandatory bye weeks.

• 4. Records and Milestones

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  Pat Studstill of the Detroit Lions set a record during the 1966 season for the most consecutive games with more than 125 receiving yards, stringing together five such games. That record was not tied until Calvin Johnson, several decades later. Studstill also became just the third player in NFL history to complete a 99-yard pass play.

  The highest-scoring game in NFL history also took place in 1966. In a week 12 matchup, the Washington Redskins defeated the New York Giants by a final score of 72-41. No game before it had produced as many combined points.

• 5. Dallas and the Turkey Day Gamble

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  The NFL wanted a second team to host an annual Thanksgiving Day game alongside the Detroit Lions. Every franchise in the league turned down the offer. Every franchise, that is, except the Dallas Cowboys. General Manager Tex Schramm saw the rejection by others as an opening. He recognized that hosting Thanksgiving games could raise the Cowboys' profile and create a tradition the franchise could own.

  The Cowboys had been founded just six years before 1966. It is widely rumored that the club sought a guarantee of regular Thanksgiving hosting as a condition of accepting even their first game, since games on days other than Sunday were uncommon and attendance was uncertain. From 1966 onward, Detroit and Dallas anchored the holiday doubleheader, with two exceptions: St. Louis hosted in place of Dallas in 1975 and 1977. Primetime games on Thanksgiving night did not arrive until 2006.

• 6. The Eastern Race

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  The St. Louis Cardinals won their first five games of 1966 and held the Eastern Division lead through much of the season. The Dallas Cowboys were also unbeaten early but trailed by a half-game in the standings because a bye in week one meant they had played one fewer game. The two leaders met in week 6 and played to a 10-10 tie, leaving both undefeated. Both then lost the following week: St. Louis fell at Washington 26-20, and Dallas dropped a 30-21 decision in Cleveland.

  The race tightened again heading into December. In week 13, on the 4th of December, the teams met in Dallas with records of 7-2-1 apiece. The Cardinals led 10-7 after the first quarter, but Dallas won 31-17 and took the conference lead. In week 14, Dallas hosted Washington and lost 34-31 on a field goal with eight seconds left. That same week, St. Louis faced the expansion Atlanta Falcons, a team with a 2-10-0 record. Atlanta won, notching their third victory of the season and ending St. Louis's realistic chance at the championship game. The Cardinals, who lost again the following week, never came that close to the Super Bowl again before relocating to Phoenix in 1988.

• 7. The Goal Post Rule and Its Origin

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  One of the season's rule changes carries the name of a Green Bay placekicker. The new standard for goal post dimensions is widely known as the "Don Chandler Rule," after the Packers' kicker, though the connection is officially denied. During the 1965 Western Divisional playoff game at Lambeau Field, Chandler kicked a field goal that tied the contest with under two minutes remaining. The kick sailed high above the upright, and many spectators believed it had missed. Field judge Jim Tunney ruled it good. Chandler then hit the game-winning field goal in overtime, and Green Bay went on to defeat Cleveland in the NFL Championship Game, beginning what would become three consecutive league titles.

  In response, the NFL standardized goal posts for 1966: uprights 20 feet above the crossbar, posts 3-4 inches in diameter, painted bright yellow, with two non-curved supports offset from the goal line. Two officials, the back judge and the field judge, were stationed under each upright to rule on field goals and extra points. The Tom Landry-coached Dallas Cowboys won the Coach of the Year award that season, while Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr took the Most Valuable Player honor.

• 8. The First Super Bowl

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  Green Bay clinched the Western Division in week 13 and beat the Dallas Cowboys 34-27 in the NFL Championship Game at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on the 1st of January 1967. The Kansas City Chiefs won the AFL title that same day, defeating Buffalo 31-7 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. Two weeks later, on the 15th of January 1967, Green Bay and Kansas City met at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Packers won 35-10.

  That game carried the official title AFL-NFL World Championship Game. It was only later renamed the Super Bowl, and all four games played between the two leagues before the 1970 merger were retroactively given that name. The 1966 season is now recognized as the first of the Super Bowl era, a designation that turned a single mid-January afternoon in Los Angeles into the origin point of the most-watched annual sporting event in the United States.