1968 Season AFL All-Star Game

The 1968 Season
American Football League
ALL-STAR GAME

AFL

West 38

East 25

January 19, 1969
Gator Bowl, Jacksonville

The 1969 AFL All-Star Game was played in the aftermath of the most marvelous event in the history of the young league. The previous week, the New York Jets had defeated the NFL’s Baltimore Colts for the world championship. The East squad was loaded with Jets players. A record crowd of 43,800 saw the game at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. The coaches were Hank Stram of Kansas City for the West and Wally Lemm of Houston for the East.
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In the first quarter, Joe Namath of the Jets and John Hadl of the Chargers led their teams. The scoring was confined to a field goal per team as New York’s Jim Turner connected from 27 yards out for the East and Jan Stenerud of Kansas City hit a record 51 yarder for the West. The East did all the second quarter scoring as Jim Kiick of Miami carried the ball in from the two and Turner connected on three more field goals from 16, 19 and 13 yards. The halftime score was 19-3. Hadl completed only 4 of 19 passes for 23 yards in the half and had three intercepted. Namath, meanwhile, completed 7 of 18 for 98 yards and had one intercepted.
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In the second half, Bob Griese of Miami assumed the quarterbacking duties for the East, Len Dawson of Kansas City for the West.

Dawson had not originally been chosen for the team (although he had led the league in average yards gained during the season) but Coach Stram exercised his option and chose Dawson as a backup. Dawson hit Bob Trumpy of the Bengals on a 6 yard touchdown route to bring the West to within nine at 19-10. Turner booted his fifth field goal of the game from 18 yards in the third quarter and that was matched by Stenerud, who hit from 30. The score at the end the third quarter was 22-13. Turner gave the East some cushion at 25-13 when his kick from 21 yards out was good early in the fourth quarter. It was Turner’s sixth field goal on the afternoon. But, then the floodgates opened. In 6:15, the West scored 25 points. It started when Denver’s Floyd Little took a pass from Dawson and scampered 81 yards down the sideline to the East one yard line. Oakland’s Hewitt Dixon carried it in from there. The score was 25-20. Jim Lynch of the Chiefs then recovered an onside kick at the East 43, Dawson hit Warren Wells of Oakland for 37 yards and Cincinnati’s Paul Robinson (AFL rookie of the year) carried over on a one yard run a few plays later. The West had the lead for the first time. Lynch then intercepted a Griese pass and ran 37 yards to the West one where Robinson again carried it in. Stenerud added a 32 yard field goal, his third on the afternoon, in the closing minutes and the final was 38-25.
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Dawson was selected as the offensive player of the game. He was 4 of 9 for 158 yards in the second half. Houston’s George Webster was selected as defensive player of the game.

Dawson and Webster were the MVP's.

AFL All-Star Squads (to be added)
1968	West Squad	East Squad

SUMMARIES OF EACH AFL ALL-STAR GAME

        The American Football League did not play an All-Star game after its first season in 1960, but did stage All-Star games for the 1961 through 1969 seasons. All-Star teams from the Eastern and Western divisions played each other after every season except 1965. That season, the league champion Buffalo Bills played against a team made up of all-stars from the other teams.
        Because the games were played at the end of the season, they occurred in the next calendar year. Thus, the 1961 AFL All-Star game (with players selected as all-stars for the 1961 season) was played on January 7, 1962; the 1962 game was played in January 1963, etc.
         The links below will take you to summaries of each game, originally created by Mark Bolding. Most of the content of this and the other AFL All-Star Games was retrieved from the 'Internet Archive Wayback Machine' at archive.org/web/web.php, which claims copyright for the work.
         *Other than the final score and the image of the game program, his summary of the 1964 season all-star game incorrectly gave the report of the previous year's game.
         Bolding's original site classified the games by the calendar year they were played in. Since they were played at the end of AFL seasons and the All-Stars involved were so chosen for their play in those seasons, I classify them by the AFL season which they represented. Thus the AFL All-Star Game that featured stars of the 1961 season was played in January 1962, etc.

1961 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 7, 1962	'Wayback' link
1962 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 13, 1963	'Wayback' link
1963 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 19, 1964	'Wayback' link
1964 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 16, 1965	*'Wayback' link
1965 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 15, 1966	'Wayback' link
1966 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 21, 1967	'Wayback' link
1967 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 21, 1968	'Wayback' link
1968 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 19, 1969	'Wayback' link
1969 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 17, 1970	'Wayback' link

Perhaps the greatest highlight of AFL All-Star Game history came not on the field of play, but in the actions of black players, supported by their white teammates and owners, when the best players in the AFL boycotted the City of New Orleans because of the disrespect black players were given when they arrived there for the scheduled 1964 season AFL All-Star Game, scheduled for January 1965.
The game was moved to Houston in a seminal action in the early civil rights movement in America. It is still recognized as such, as recently as a March, 2007 article by Evan Weiner on MSNBC. Another description of the incident is at my AFL Clippings page.

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