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"In 1959, the NFL had just a dozen teams, with only two located west of the MIssissippi River. For 40 years, it had enjoyed total dominance over the gridiron, tackling rival franchises and knocking them out of the game. But a revolution was coming to American football, and it all began with a man named Lamar Hunt, the Texas millionaire who desperately wanted a league of his own"--Inside cover flap.
The All-American Football Conference was the only challenger to the NFL (except for the American Football League of the 1960s) to survive more than two seasons in competition with the established league. It ultimately failed to achieve its goal of a peaceful coexistence with the NFL and folded in 1949. Its Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, which were absorbed by the NFL in 1950, are still in business. This book takes a brief look at all of the NFL's challengers (and would-be challengers) from 1926 to 1945. It looks particularly at the All-American Conference, which overcame obstacles that proved too difficult for others and opened the 1946 season with teams on the East Coast, in the Midwest, on the West Coast, and in the deep South, making it a truly "All-American" enterprise. Each season and off-season is examined in detail.
Unable to buy into an existing team and rebuffed by National Football League owners who had no desire to expand, 27-year-old Lamar Hunt, the son of Texas billionaire H.L. Hunt, formed the American Football League in 1959. He placed his team in Dallas, called them the Texans, and invited other young entrepreneurs to join him. The seven men who did called themselves members of the "Foolish Club," but on September 9, 1960, the AFL made its regular season debut and went on to change the face of football forever. Unlike the NFL, the American Football League featured wide open offenses and innovative coaching strategies, capturing a new generation of fans dedicated to the league and its players. The AFL aggressively pursued college stars--Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon in its inaugural season and Joe Namath in 1965. The eight teams signed a collective television agreement that split the money equally among the franchises, thus providing far more stability and balance than earlier start-up leagues. Based on interviews with owners, coaches, players, scouts, broadcasters and writers from the era, this is a colorful account of the AFL and its place in sports history.
Wearing borrowed uniforms, practicing on obscure college campuses, and led by a former Marine Corps W.W. II fighter ace as commissioner, the American Football League (AFL) debuted in the Fall of 1960 to challenge the monopoly of the well-established National Football League. Within ten years it had won two Super Bowls and had forced a merger with its rival, splitting the NFL into the National and American Football Conferences. This colorful history of the AFL and its unforgettable cast of characters, from Billy Cannon to Joe Namath to its "Foolish Club" of team owners, arrives on the 50th anniversary of the AFL's first season to recount the startling success of an upstart league that prevailed against long odds.
Mark Bernstein shows that much of the culture that surrounds American football, both good and bad, has its roots in the Ivy League. With their long winning streaks, distinctive traditions, and impressive victories, Ivy teams started a national obsession with football in the first decades of the twentieth century that remains alive today. In so doing they have helped develop our ideals about the role of athletics in college life.
Explores the often overlooked role of the NFL in the American civil rights movement Watching a football game on a Sunday evening, most sports fans do not realize the profound impact the National Football League had on the civil rights movement. Similarly, in a sport where seven out of ten players are Black, few are fully aware of the history and contributions of their athletic forebears. Among the touchdowns and tackles lies a rich history of African American life and the struggle to achieve equal rights. Outside the Lines traces how football laid a foundation for social change long before the judicial system formally recognized the inequalities of racial separation. Integrating teams to include white and Black athletes alike fifty years before the reversal of Plessy v Ferguson, the National Football League served as a microcosmic fishbowl of the highs and lows—the trials and triumphs—of racial integration. In this chronicle of the important stories of Black NFL athletes in the early twentieth century, Charles K. Ross has given us an important insight into the role of sports in the fight for racial justice.
This book lays down a marker as to the state of economists’ understanding of the National Football League (NFL) by assembling sophisticated, critical surveys of by leading sports economists on major topics associated with the league. The book is divided into four parts. The first three chapters in Part I provide an overview of the business of the NFL from an economist’s perspective. Part II is a collection of surveys of the economics of the NFL’s most important revenue streams, including media, attendance, and merchandising. The NFL’s labor economics is the focus of Part III, with chapters on player and coach labor markets, the draft, and contract structure. Part IV includes essays on competitive balance, gambling, economic impacts of the Super Bowl, behavioral economic issues associated with the league, and antitrust issues. This book will appeal to sports economists, sports management professionals, and policy-makers, and would be useful as a supplementary text for sports economics and management courses as well as a reference text.
Pride and Poise: The Oakland Raiders of The American Football League takes a definitive look into the formation and turbulent early history of the Oakland Raiders. Beginning with the hurried scramble to bring professional football to a city that couldn't provide a home for the team only to suffer through three losing seasons a combined 9-33 record with 19 consecutive losses. After plodding through three head coaches and an alarming player turn around before finding a young dynamo who transformed their club from a doormat rumored to move to another city willing to pour more funds into a prolific loser before having ever played in their home city to an immediate, nearly unstoppable winner. Relive the exploits of the Oakland Raiders in a week in, week out chronicle of their first ten seasons. Meet six unique head coaches and the legends who helped to make the transitions caused by age, injuries associated with football seamless and the whirlwind transformation of a young dynamo from coach to commissioner and ultimately to ownership as he built one of the most respected and feared organization in professional sports. Packed with statistics, transactions and forgotten lore, Pride and Poise: The Oakland Raiders of the American Football League is the most complete, accurate and fair account ever produced of the early Raiders, revisiting every game, win, lose or tie as they make the great journey from near oblivion to professional football's elite and its most dominating franchise.
It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, to the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, this is an essential book for any fan of America’s favorite sport.
Rockin' the Rockpile is a complete and comprehensive history of the Buffalo Bills AFL era -- from the first meetings of the "Foolish Club" to the eventual merger with the senior NFL -- and it brings to life the stories of a bygone time that fans regard as Buffalo's golden age of sport. Rockin' the Rockpile resonates with the words of the men who lived it. More than 60 former players, coaches, and administrative staff -- including Ralph Wilson -- shared their thoughts and memories for this book. As this book was intended as a collective memoir of the Buffalo Bills' AFL era, those interviews constitute the foundation upon which this book was written. It offers the average fan a glimpse into the locker room, film room, whirlpool, coach's office, press box, as well as the huddle, to see and hear just what the players and coaches were thinking or saying during a significant game or play. The Buffalo Bills of the 1960s represent a special time in the collective conscience of Buffalonians, a time when their team was twice champion of the renegade American Football League, and when Jack Kemp, Billy Shaw, Cookie Gilchrist, Mike Stratton, Tom Sestak, Elbert Dubenion, Ron McDole, and O.J. Simpson, captured the imagination of an entire community. They were the antithesis of the high-scoring, pass-happy AFL. When high-powered offenses were the main attraction, the Bills competed, and won, with a ball-control offense and a stingy defense. For three consecutive years, Buffalo's defensive unit was the best in the league, and was one of the best throughout the AFL's history. Western New Yorkers loved this team and its successful approach -- the Buffalo Bills mirrored the community they represented.