AFL–NFL merger

• 1. Introduction

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  The AFL-NFL merger became official on the evening of the 8th of June, 1966. Representatives of two rival leagues stood together in New York and announced they would become one. The National Football League and the American Football League had spent years fighting over players, television money, and basic survival. Now they agreed to combine, keeping the National Football League name and its familiar logo. The merged league would eventually become the most popular sports league in the country, but that outcome was far from certain in 1966. Under the agreement, the two leagues kept separate regular season schedules for four more years, from 1966 through 1969. They would meet only in a new championship game, one that would eventually be called the Super Bowl. Not until the 1970 season would the leagues fully combine into a single league split into two conferences. What drove two rivals to that point, and what each side gave up along the way, is the story ahead.

• 2. Two Leagues Before This One

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  The All-America Football Conference began play in 1946, and it stood as the NFL's most serious rival before 1960. The AAFC never adopted an initial draft among its own clubs. That single decision handed the Cleveland Browns overwhelming advantages. The Browns became perennial champions while the rest of the league fell behind. Poor finances forced the AAFC to disband after the 1949 season. In 1950 the NFL absorbed three of its teams: the Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers, and the original Baltimore Colts. The league briefly called itself the National-American Football League that offseason. It reverted to the National Football League name by the start of the 1950 season. The Browns then stunned NFL loyalists by winning the championship in their very first season in the older league.

  After the AAFC's three teams joined in 1950, the NFL faced no American rival for the rest of the 1950s. Its only competition came from the Canadian leagues that merged into the Canadian Football League in 1958. That changed in 1959, when Lamar Hunt, son of Texas oil magnate H. L. Hunt, tried to gain ownership of the Chicago Cardinals alongside Bud Adams. Hunt wanted to move the team to Dallas, but the NFL showed no interest in expanding at the time. Rebuffed, and unable to secure even part ownership of an existing team, Hunt conceived a rival league instead. By September 1959 the NFL approached Hunt about an expansion franchise in Dallas, but he was already committed to his own league.

  Hunt's league had six franchises by August 1959 and eight in time for its first opening day in 1960. Those teams were the Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Titans of New York, Houston Oilers, Denver Broncos, Dallas Texans, Oakland Raiders, and Los Angeles Chargers. Four of those cities, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, and Dallas, already had NFL teams in the Rams, Giants, 49ers, and the new Cowboys. The other four, Boston, Buffalo, Denver, and Houston, gave professional football an audience in cities the NFL had never reached. Within a few years the Chargers moved to San Diego in 1961. The Texans relocated to Kansas City in 1963, spreading the AFL into still more new markets.

• 3. Stealing the Best Players

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  Bluffton flanker Elbert Dubenion never appeared on an NFL scouting sheet, yet he became a star after signing with the AFL. The new league mined small colleges and predominantly Black colleges that NFL scouts had largely ignored. From those schools it added New Mexico Highlands wide receiver Lionel Taylor, McNeese State defensive tackle Tom Sestak, and Northwestern State's Charlie Tolar and Charlie Hennigan. It also signed North Texas State halfback Abner Haynes. From the major football powers it landed LSU's Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, Arkansas wide receiver Lance Alworth, and Notre Dame quarterback Daryle Lamonica. Minnesota linebacker Bobby Bell, Kansas quarterback John Hadl, and Alabama quarterback Joe Namath rounded out that list.

  Grambling defensive tackle Buck Buchanan became an AFL star after the NFL passed him over entirely. So did Occidental quarterback Jack Kemp and Kentucky quarterbacks George Blanda and Babe Parilli. Nebraska defensive end Ron McDole and San Jose State wide receiver Art Powell joined that same group of overlooked talent. Texas A&M linebacker John Tracey, Texas Western wide receiver Don Maynard, and Purdue quarterback Len Dawson rounded out the list of players the NFL had misjudged.

  The AFL played a 14-game regular season one full year before the NFL followed suit. The NFL adopted the same schedule in 1961, up from its old 12-game season. The AFL put players' last names on the backs of their jerseys. It also threw a slightly narrower, longer ball called the Spalding J5V, instead of the NFL's Wilson-made ball known as The Duke. It adopted the two-point conversion already used in college football since the 1958 season. It displayed official time on the scoreboard, instead of leaving that job to on-field officials. It also sold its television rights as one package, first to ABC from 1960 through 1964 and then to NBC. It split gate and broadcast revenue between home and visiting teams.

• 4. Money, Press, and a Widening Gap

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  Sports Illustrated's lead football writer through the 1960s was Tex Maule, who had once worked under Pete Rozelle at the Los Angeles Rams. Rozelle ran the team's front office while Maule served as its public relations director. Maule was, by one account, certainly an NFL loyalist. He wrote columns dismissive of the AFL that other reporters often repeated as fact. Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm, a close friend who had hired Rozelle as the Rams' GM, held similar sway over the NFL's coverage on CBS. That influence showed in CBS hiring former NFL players as announcers and largely ignoring AFL scores.

  What the AFL lacked in press coverage, it made up for in ownership wealth. Lamar Hunt had recruited owners with deep pockets and, more importantly, the patience to absorb years of losses. The AFL began to turn a corner in the mid-1960s. The Chargers and Texans had relocated to markets without NFL competition, and the Titans of New York were sold and rebranded as the Jets. The Jets then signed Alabama quarterback Joe Namath to an unprecedented $427,000 contract. NBC signed a five-year, $36 million contract in 1965 to televise AFL games, giving the league financial footing it had never had.

  Both leagues poured money into signing top college prospects. Their rival drafts were held on the same day each late fall as the bidding intensified. NFL owners, whose wealth mostly sat in their franchises rather than outside fortunes, still consistently outdrew the AFL at the gate. That edge was sharpest in the AFL's first few seasons, and it kept NFL franchises more valuable overall. Even so, NFL owners knew they could not sustain an endless bidding war. Owners in both leagues also feared that the reserve clause in their standard player contracts would eventually fail a legal challenge. That fear proved justified later, when the World Hockey Association successfully challenged the National Hockey League's nearly identical clause in court.

• 5. When the Truce Broke

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  NFL teams had long followed a simple practice. They drafted and retained rights to any player who signed elsewhere, including in the Canadian Football League. Once the AFL began play, NFL clubs extended that same courtesy to AFL players, and the AFL reciprocated. The result was an unwritten gentlemen's agreement that both leagues would honor each other's contracts, reserve clauses included. That agreement held until May 1966, when the NFL's New York Giants signed placekicker Pete Gogolak. Gogolak had played out his option the year before with the AFL's Buffalo Bills.

  Oakland Raiders co-owner Al Davis took over as AFL Commissioner in April 1966. He answered the Gogolak signing by escalating the fight rather than absorbing it quietly. Within weeks Davis had signed NFL veterans John Brodie, Mike Ditka, and Roman Gabriel to AFL contracts. By the time the dust settled, the two leagues had spent a combined $7 million signing their 1966 draft picks alone. Neither side could keep spending at that pace for long.

• 6. Striking the Deal in Secret

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  Tex Schramm quietly reached out to AFL owners led by Lamar Hunt of Kansas City to gauge interest in a merger. The talks proceeded without the knowledge of Al Davis, the sitting AFL commissioner. What emerged was an agreement built around expansion, protection, and a shared future. The combined league would grow to 24 teams, rising to 26 by 1969 and to 28 by 1970 or soon after. The Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins were already set to begin play in 1966 ahead of the announcement. The New Orleans Saints and Cincinnati Bengals would follow in 1967 and 1968.

  Every existing franchise would stay in its home market. Neither league could place a new team inside the other's territory. The Oakland Raiders and New York Jets agreed to pay indemnities to the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants for encroaching on their markets. A common draft of college players, first held in mid-March 1967, would end the bidding war over prospects for good. Interleague preseason games would begin in 1967, even while the regular seasons stayed separate. Starting in January 1967, the champions of each league would meet in an annual AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Unlike other title games, it would be played at a predetermined site rather than a home stadium, a game that would grow into the Super Bowl.

  The AFL agreed to fold its own history and records into the older league. Its franchises would be treated as though they had belonged to the NFL since whatever season each first took the field. The AFL also agreed to abolish the office of its own Commissioner immediately. It would recognize the NFL Commissioner as football's overall chief executive. That arrangement traced back to a 1941 provision in the NFL Constitution, modeled on the authority held by the Commissioner of Baseball. It ended the AFL's run as an independent league after six years. NFL Films agreed to begin recording AFL games in 1968 under a new AFL Films division. That two-year delay was something founder Ed Sabol insisted on, so he could hire and train enough extra staff. In practice, the same NFL Films crews simply wore different jackets to AFL games.

• 7. Filling the Power Vacuum

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  AFL owners created a new office, the AFL President, to run the league's daily business. The model was how Major League Baseball's two leagues operated at the time. Owners hoped Al Davis would fill the role, but Davis refused to serve as a subordinate to Pete Rozelle. Davis resigned as AFL Commissioner on the 25th of July, 1966. Milt Woodard, who had served as assistant commissioner under both original commissioner Joe Foss and Davis, took over as AFL President in his place.

  Rozelle had not started the merger talks, but he endorsed the agreement quickly. He was named chief executive of the AFL the day after Davis stepped down, a post he held until the merger was complete. For the next four years, the press often simply called him football's commissioner. The separate office of NFL President remained what it had always been, a largely honorary title held throughout by Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell. Rozelle mostly let Woodard run AFL affairs on his own. The one notable exception came before the 1969 season. He forced Super Bowl III-winning quarterback Joe Namath to sell his stake in a New York nightclub rumored to have ties to gambling and organized crime.

  Much of the merger's language existed to secure one specific outcome: a law from the 89th United States Congress exempting the combined league from antitrust rules. Rozelle and other football executives testified before Congress's Subcommittee on Antitrust, chaired by New York Representative Emanuel Celler. They repeated three promises. No existing franchise would be moved from its city. The league would expand to 28 teams as agreed. Any stadium seating fewer than 50,000 people would need to expand or be replaced. That October, Congress passed the law that let the merger proceed.

• 8. After the Ink Dried

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  As the 1970 season approached, the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers left the NFL's old ranks. They joined the ten AFL teams to form a new American Football Conference. The remaining thirteen NFL teams, from the Atlanta Falcons to the Washington Redskins, formed the National Football Conference instead. The AFC sorted itself into divisions along mostly geographic lines without much trouble. The 13 NFC owners could not agree, since the conference's only two teams west of the Rockies, the 49ers and Rams, had to anchor whichever division they joined. Five competing plans were written up, sealed into envelopes, and drawn from a fish bowl. Rozelle's secretary, Thelma Elkjer, pulled out Plan 3, the only version that kept Minnesota in the Central division and Dallas in the East.

  All three major networks signed on to broadcast the new league. CBS took every game where an NFC team played on the road. NBC took the AFC's road games instead. ABC launched Monday Night Football, giving the NFL its first regular series of prime time national broadcasts. Since 1970, the AFC and NFC champions have met every year in the Super Bowl. The format borrowed pieces from both old leagues. Four teams qualified from each conference, just as in 1969, so a single best second place team also reached the postseason. Fans, and then the league itself, came to call that slot the wild card.

  Some observers argue the NFL won the negotiation outright, since Oakland's Al Davis and Jets owner Sonny Werblin resisted paying their indemnities. Longtime San Diego Union-Tribune writer Jerry Magee put it plainly: "Al Davis taking over as commissioner was the strongest thing the AFL ever did. He thought the AFL-NFL merger was a detriment to the AFL." Others point instead to the NFL's richer television deal. That deal rested on exclusive access to fast-growing markets like Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

  Despite AFL wins in Super Bowls III and IV, most expected the old NFL clubs to dominate once the leagues actually merged. The 1970 season mostly proved them right. Former AFL teams went 19-39 against old-line NFL opponents across 60 regular season games. Two of those games, Buffalo at Baltimore in week 9 and St. Louis at Kansas City in week 10, ended in ties. Only Oakland managed a winning record against the old guard, going 3-2 with wins over Washington, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Oakland then lost to the Colts in the AFC championship game. Of the three former NFL teams now in the AFC, only the Colts reached the playoffs at all. Every one of the first 29 Monday Night Football broadcasts featured at least one old-guard NFL team. The first primetime matchup between two former AFL teams, Oakland at Houston, did not air until the 9th of October, 1972.

  The merger opened a new era of NFL growth that no later rival ever seriously threatened, not the WFL, the USFL, the XFL, or their later revivals. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks joined the AFC and NFC respectively in 1976. Both teams then swapped conferences before their second season, becoming the first teams to change conferences since the merger. Rozelle had promised Congress that no existing franchise would relocate. Yet by the end of his term as commissioner in 1989, three of the league's teams had already moved to new markets of their own.