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The American Football League Hall of Fame archives
contain thousands of items about the AFL. Newspaper articles
about the American Football League . . . stories, columns and letters to the
editor about the American Football League. Photos and collector cards
of American Football League players. Game programs, ticket stubs, game
reports and box scores of American Football League games. , It would be virtually impossible to put all that information on a website, but this page will periodically post selected historic items about the American Football League, as they were written by the sportswriters and fans in the 1960s, as well as more recent articles. In some cases the dates are approximate. |
| NOTE: In the interest of conserving space on this site, at the bottom of the page, I have links to articles on the AFL that are already available at other sites. |
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| Fantasy Football: Craze's
roots go back to Oakland [and the American
Football League] |
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In the early years of the American Football League, the Raiders took a two-week swing through the East, during which they played the Buffalo Bills, New York Titans (who became the Jets in 1963) and the Boston (now New England) Patriots. To save money, they stayed in the East for that period, instead of flying back to Oakland after each game. So one night in '62 Raiders limited partner Bill Winkenbach, Oakland Tribune beat writer Scotty Stirling and Raiders public relations man Bill Tunnell sat in a New York hotel room and planned the scheme that would form the basis for Fantasy Football .  "It was really Wink who came up with the idea," said Stirling, now head of college scouting for the Sacramento Kings. "He was an amazing guy, very smart, who had made a lot of really good business investments. He loved playing with different ideas." Winkenbach, who died several years ago, also came up with the whimsical name for the game: Greater Oakland Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPL). "We basically put the thing together there and brought it home the next day," Stirling said. As soon as they returned, Winkenbach enlisted the aid of Tribune sports editor George Ross, who is retired and living in the Sierra Nevada area in the small Plumas County town of Graeagle. "Wink had played around with a fantasy baseball concept in the '50s and we had talked about it, so I was familiar with the idea," Ross said. "I could see right away that it would be easy to set up and something everybody would enjoy." At the beginning, the only players were members of the Tribune staff and people connected with the Raiders. "One of the reasons I liked it was that it forced the reporters who were involved to follow the whole league, not just the Raiders," Ross said, "so they wrote better stories." The rules were similar to today's games -- drafting players whose statistical success determines the payoffs -- but the money involved was not. A participant earned just 25 cents for a passing touchdown, for instance, and the only "big money" payoffs were $2.50 for kickoffs returned for touchdowns and a whopping $5 for a touchdown by a defensive lineman. There were eight club owners for the first year, including Winkenbach, Ross, Stirling and Tunnell. The commissioner was a local high school teacher, Tom Crawford. Bill Downing, one of the original owners, was the second commissioner. Teams had to choose four receivers, four halfbacks, two fullbacks, two quarterbacks, two kick returners, two placekickers, two defensive backs or linebackers and two defensive linemen. The first player chosen was Houston quarterback George Blanda, for a logical reason: Blanda threw at least 40 passes a game and a fair percentage of them went for touchdowns. Blanda still holds club records for the Oilers/Titans with 68 passes in a 1964 game against Buffalo and 36 touchdown passes in the 1961 season. Research for the drafts was very primitive, with little of the information that is available today. The basic information was supplied by the Street and Smith yearbooks, but that information was all from the previous season. Even when a midseason draft was added in the '70s, information was sketchy. "I remember one year one club drafted a tight end, J.V. Cain, who was playing for the Cardinals -- but he had died some weeks before," said Andy Mousalimas, longtime owner of the Kings X sports bar in Oakland and a club owner that first year. (Cain had a fatal heart attack in training camp on July 22, 1979). The first few drafts were held in Winkenbach's rumpus room, after which the team owners would go to dinner at an Oakland restaurant. "We had fun with it," Stirling said. "Wink had a wood lathe in his basement and he carved a figure of a football with a dunce cap on it. The loser each year would get that and he had to display it prominently in his house. If one of us visited him and he didn't have it out, he could be fined." Mousalimas opened the Kings X in November 1968, and the next year the draft was held in his bar. He also started sports trivia contests to bring in more business. "I think that's what really started the spread of the game," Stirling said. "A lot of guys came over from San Francisco to play our game and the trivia contests, and pretty soon, San Francisco bars had their own leagues." The game, under different names, soon spread across the country. "I heard later that the guys in New York who started the Rotisserie League claimed they were the first," Stirling said, "but they weren't. We were." "Scotty and I used to talk about maybe taking this idea to a game company and trying to sell it," Ross said, "but we never did. I don't know how much money we would have made, but before we could do anything, it seemed everybody was playing it." Even in Oakland, there were multiple leagues. Upset when Mousalimas suggested some rules changes, Winkenbach split with him, and Mousalimas started his own Kings X League. Tribune employees also started their own league. Now, of course, the game is huge nationwide. All football publications include sections on Fantasy Football, there are entire magazines devoted to it and even some TV stations show stats for Fantasy League players. Mousalimas was invited to a Fantasy Football convention in Las Vegas two years ago by Emil Kladec, a publisher of one of the magazines. "He had reserved 500 rooms at the MGM Grand," Mousalimas said. "I said to him, 'Are you crazy?' He said, 'There are 2-3 million playing this game. Do you think I can't get 500 of them to come here?' Of course, he filled them all. "
E-mail Glenn Dickey at
gdickey@sfchronicle.com.
Copyright 2004, San Francisco Chronicle
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Jan. 16, 2005, 12:53AM Fighting against racial slights In January 1965, 21 blacks made history by forcing AFL All-Star Game out of New Orleans |
| By DAVID BARRON Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle |
After a year in which Houston hosted two of the biggest events in sports — the Super Bowl and the baseball All-Star Game — and landed the 2006 NBA All-Star Game, today the city marks the 40th anniversary of a lesser-known event that remains unique in the history of sports in America. Only 15,446 fans filtered into Jeppesen Stadium for the American Football League's East-West All-Star Game on Jan. 16, 1965. The West All-Stars won in a rout 38-14, and it's not uncommon for participants to say they don't remember a thing about the events of the day. And yet the game — more accurately, the events that led it to Houston in the first place — was a revolution akin to Muhammad Ali's refusal to enter the draft or Harry Edwards' efforts to organize a boycott of the 1968 Olympics by black American athletes. When 21 black football players refused to play the All-Star Game as scheduled in New Orleans because of race-related slights, threats and insults they suffered in that city, they staged a signal event in the volatile mixture of sports and society that continues today. "Someone had to take a stand and stop players from being treated as second-class citizens," said Ernie Ladd — then a 6-9, 300-pound defensive tackle, now a businessman in Rayville, La. "It's a great story. Spike Lee should do a movie about it. "We didn't do it for publicity. We did it because of what was right and what was wrong." The walkout of 1965 came in a time of great change and upheaval across the South in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ironically, it took place in a city that had made great progress in undoing past wrongs. Like many Southern states, Louisiana adopted the policy of "massive resistance" in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling in 1954, said Charles Martin, a history professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who studied the history of New Orleans' segregation laws while a graduate student at Tulane University. In late 1955, the Sugar Bowl had enraged segregationists by inviting Pittsburgh, which had one black player on its roster, to play Georgia Tech on New Year's Day. Within six months, the state Legislature passed a law that prohibited interracial sports events in Louisiana. "The Sugar Bowl was in favor of (relaxing segregation rules) because they saw sports as part of tourism," Martin said. "But there was resentment in other parts of the state because they saw it as violating laws regarding desegregation and public accommodations. The Sugar Bowl people tried to get an exemption for their game, but the Legislature wouldn't do it." That law was struck down by the Supreme Court in May 1959. Five years later, a year before the AFL controversy, the Supreme Court overturned another state law that mandated segregated seating at all public events in Louisiana. In December 1964, almost one month to the day before the AFL players arrived in New Orleans, the Supreme Court also ruled, in the Heart of Atlanta Hotel case, that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevented discrimination in public accommodations. The Sugar Bowl had successfully hosted an integrated Syracuse team against LSU a couple of weeks before the AFL game, and Martin said the city's business establishment favored change as it sought to attract convention traffic to the city and built its bid to get an NFL franchise. "You had the business elite wanting to abandon the Old South ideas of discrimination and segregation and massive resistance," Martin said. "It was the old-style Southern politicians that didn't want to change. The business types were pragmatic. They might prefer the old ways, but it was no longer pragmatic to do so." Unwelcome guests It was against that backdrop that the AFL All-Stars began to filter into the city a week before the scheduled Jan. 17, 1965, game. Sid Blanks, a rookie running back for the Oilers who had been the captain of an otherwise all-white team at Texas A&I in the early 1960s, said the problems started at the airport. "I couldn't get any transportation to the hotel," Blanks said. "I finally got a skycap to tell me, 'You need to get the right cab because you're colored.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'They won't pick you up.' I asked why not, and he said, 'It's a little different here. If you're colored, you can't ride in just any cab.' " In an interview with NFL Films for a documentary on the history of blacks in pro football, San Diego Chargers defensive end Earl Faison said the insults and racial slurs increased even when players were able to track down a "colored" taxi to get them to their hotel. "I was checking in to the hotel and heard voices in the background asking, 'Is that Ernie Ladd?' " Faison said. "And another guy said, 'No, Ernie Ladd is a bigger n----- than that. That Ladd is a big n-----.' " When the players decided to visit Bourbon Street that night, Faison said insult nearly turned to injury — and worse. "We walked past four or five different clubs (and were refused entry)," Faison said. "One guy shouted, 'You so and so, get off the street. John F. Kennedy is not playing here tonight.' " At one club, Faison said, "A guy pulls out a gun and says, 'You are not coming in here. You n------ are not coming in here.' " Ladd said he does not remember having a gun pulled on him. But he does remember the insults and the snubs and the anger. "Walt Sweeney, one of our teammates with the Chargers, stopped a cab for us to go back to the hotel," Ladd said. "The cab driver wouldn't let us get inside. Sweeney wanted to bust the guy's head, but I said, no, we would walk back to the hotel. "When we got back, Earl and I had a discussion, and I told Earl that I wasn't going to play in New Orleans under those conditions. Earl agreed and got in touch with (Jets offensive lineman) Sherman Plunkett, who got us in touch with the other guys on the East squad." The next morning, Broncos defensive back Austin "Goose" Gonsoulin, a native of Port Arthur, met fellow Texan Clem Daniels, a running back from the Oakland Raiders, in the hotel lobby and suggested the two have breakfast. "We walked into the restaurant, and Clem hung up his coat, and this little old lady came over and threw his coat on the ground," Gonsoulin said. "I said, 'Clem, don't worry about it. Just go get it and put it back on the hanger.' Then this woman came over and threw it back down again. "We finished breakfast, and we agreed it was too bad that New Orleans hadn't come around to the times yet. Then we left, and I got on the bus to go to practice. Then I looked around, and there were no black players on the bus. We got to practice, but we stayed for only 15 or 20 minutes. We agreed it wasn't right to stay." The 21 black players — more than a third of the players on the two 29-member squads — gathered at a hotel meeting room and voted 13-8 not to play. They ignored pleas from promoter Dave Dixon, who was leading New Orleans' bid to land a pro football franchise, and NAACP chapter president Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, the first black graduate of LSU's law school and later the first black mayor of New Orleans. "We had a similar experience at an exhibition game a year earlier in Atlanta, and we had people there who lied to us and said things would be made right. We were not going to be taken in again," Ladd said. They appointed Buffalo Bills tight end Ernie Warlick as their spokesman, and Warlick quickly drafted a brief statement. "The American Football League is progressing in great strides, and the Negro players feel they are playing a vital role in the league's progression. They are being treated fairly in all cities in the league," Warlick wrote. "However, because of adverse conditions and discriminatory practices experienced by Negro players while here in New Orleans, the players feel they cannot perform 100 percent as expected in the All-Star Game and be treated differently." Warlick might not have been as vocal as Ladd or running back Cookie Gilchrist, his Bills teammate, but the slights and insults cut just as deeply. "I had served four years in the military. Then I played five years in the Canadian Football League," he said. "I was outside my country, but I had no problem going anywhere in Canada. Then I came back to my country and couldn't do things because of the color of my skin. So we decided to make a stand." The next day, Monday, Jan. 11, AFL commissioner Joe Foss announced that the game would be moved to Houston. "Dixon assured me that New Orleans was ready in all aspects for a game between racially mixed teams. Evidently, it isn't," Foss said. "They contacted as many businessmen as possible and got them to agree to treat the Negro players well. But they just couldn't get to everyone. Negro players run into problems in nearly every city. But I guess what went on in New Orleans was more than they could be expected to take. I can't say that I blame them." As the players left for Houston, Warlick remembers that it was considerably easier to get a cab back to the airport than it had been a couple of days earlier traveling in the other direction. "The same taxis that wouldn't give us a ride were now taking us in," he said. "So if we didn't do anything else, maybe that was one area where we brought about some change." Moving to Houston The players reconvened Tuesday and Wednesday in Houston, where Warlick remembers the AFL contingent as being the first racially mixed group allowed to stay at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel. But Ladd said Houston wasn't always hospitable to black athletes. A few years earlier, he said he experienced his most embarrassing moment in football at the hands of Lloyd Wells, who was then a prominent sportswriter for the Houston Defender newspaper. "Houston treated (blacks) pretty poorly for a time. They made the black spectators sit in the end zone my first year in the league (1960)," Ladd said. "Lloyd Wells tried to get the players to strike, and I made a mistake by not listening to him. "I'll never forget him saying, 'Ernie Ladd, you're gutless like a worm. Stand up and show some guts.' By then it was too late to do anything, but I'll never forget him saying, 'Look at you, you big old gutless Ernie Ladd. You can run, but you can't hide.' " By January 1965, those days had ended, particularly by comparison to the incident that Chronicle sports columnist Wells Twombly facetiously called "the second great battle of New Orleans." The nature of what had gone before, however, tends to overshadow the fact that the 1965 AFL All-Stars might have been the greatest aggregation of athletes to set foot in this city. Nine of the 58 players are members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. An astonishing 43 are among the 100-plus AFL players listed in one fan's cyberspace version of the AFL Hall of Fame. The game, not surprisingly, was something of an anticlimax. The West won in a walk, and Twombly wrote of the action, "A sloppier football game you haven't seen since the last Houston Oiler intra-squad scrimmage." San Diego running back Keith Lincoln was the Most Valuable Player on offense with an 80-yard touchdown run and a 73-yard TD reception from the Chiefs' Len Dawson on the first offensive play of the game. Broncos defensive back Willie Brown, who later as a member of the Raiders would contribute one of the iconic images of pro football with NFL Films' slow-motion footage of his interception TD return in Super Bowl XI, was the defensive MVP. Chargers quarterback John Hadl threw three scoring passes for the West. Blanks, the Oilers' rookie running back, set an All-Star record for kickoff returns and had a five-yard TD run for the East's only offensive touchdown. The West players received $700 each as All-Star winners. The East players had to settle for $500 each. 'Stand up and fight'Dixon said NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle called him a few days after the walkout, told him the league still wanted a franchise in New Orleans and sent league employee Buddy Young, one of pro football's first black stars in the late 1940s and early '50s, to town on an inspection tour. Young suggested a public display, such as having dinner with Dixon in one of New Orleans' finest restaurants, would go a long way toward offsetting the bad publicity. And so Dixon called in a favor with Roy Alciatore, owner of the venerable Antoine's. "Restaurants had been sort of integrated by that time," Dixon said. "If whites and blacks wanted to have dinner together, they would do so in the private rooms. So I called Roy and said, 'Roy, here's my situation. I want to sit in the middle of the restaurant, and I'd like to have John Ketry (one of Antoine's longest-tenured staffers) as my waiter. He said, 'Let's do it.' " Young and Dixon dined together at Antoine's, and in 1967, the Saints came marching in to New Orleans as an NFL expansion franchise. For AFL alumni, meanwhile, the All-Star walkout remains a source of great pride. Several AFL loyalists maintain that players in the staid, established NFL would never have stood up against the abuse, and they believe the esprit de corps the incident created among AFL players helped lead to the merger with the NFL a year later. "The AFL owners like Lamar Hunt (Chiefs) and Bud Adams (Oilers) and Sonny Werblin (Jets) and Barron Hilton (Chargers) were the greatest men I've known over the years," Ladd said. "Our owners understood us, they took a stand, and they helped make pro football. "The NFL had great players, but they weren't real men. Whatever the owners told them, they did. The AFL gave birth to men who would stand up and fight. There were no yellow-bellied cowards in the AFL." Gonsoulin said the incident helped recruit players to the AFL in the final stages of the bidding war between the leagues. "They knew they would be treated right in the AFL," he said. "It had to happen sooner or later. Somebody had to stand up, and I'm glad it was the AFL." "I got hate mail and was invited to go back to Africa," said Warlick, who was a television sportscaster in Buffalo and later worked as a regional sales manager before retiring two years ago. "But when I think back, it was one of the thrills of my life. "We were a unified group. Every time we get together as a group, we talk about how unified we were. We hung together and got along. "It's a great thrill that I've carried with me ever since." Gonsoulin, who lives in Silsbee, said he was in Ohio two years ago for a banquet honoring Hunt when he ran into Daniels, his one-time breakfast companion in New Orleans. "We were waiting for dinner, and he said, 'Let's just you and I go out,' " Gonsoulin said. "So we went to dinner and struck up a conversation, and I asked if he remembered what had happened that time in New Orleans. He said, 'Sure, but I didn't know if you remembered it.' I said, 'It's in my mind forever. That was a real turning point when they did those things to you.' "And so we sat around the rest of the evening, talking about old times. We had a good time together. And nobody bugged us." david.barron@chron.com |
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THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTS SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2006 |
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THE
BUFFALO
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Bitterness cut by cancer, Gilchrist seeks old friends
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| This is
from a man who was once a giant of the sport, a back who played at
252 pounds, had a 31-inch waist, minimal body fat and who ran 40
yards, the classic measurement in football, in 4.6 seconds,
comparable to Brian Urlacher, the Chicago Bears star of today.
Gilchrist was the Bills’ first star, the man who captured the imagination of Western New York’s sporting public when he signed as a surprise free agent in the summer of 1962 after the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League mistakenly violated a no-trade clause in his contract by attempting to deal him to Montreal. Days after he signed with Buffalo he appeared in a preseason AFL game against the Jets in New Haven, Conn. “On the opening kickoff he knocked down the player assigned to block him,” remembered retired Bills trainer Eddie Abramoski, “broke the wedge like a bowling ball and tackled the kick returner on the 15-yard line.” For Bills’ fans it was love at first impact. Two years later, surrounded by teammates such as quarterback Jack Kemp, Hall of Fame guard Billy Shaw, center Al Bemiller, tackle Stew Barber and tight end Ernie Warlick, he powered the Bills to Buffalo’s first major-league championship with a 20-7 victory over the favored San Diego Chargers in old War Memorial Stadium. Today he speaks of other teammates. “Dr. Dale Hazlett is my oncologist,” he said. “She saved my life. She and the medical team at Allegheny- Kiski Valley Hospital, Dr. Hauer, Dr. Lizzaro and Dr. Brent, are the reason I’m still alive.” Gilchrist had been living in Philadelphia for years, but when he became ill a lifelong friend moved him to her house in the Western Pennsylvania area where they both grew up, which is how he came to be treated at Allegheny-Kiski Valley. Cookie had brooded for years about coming along at the wrong time in football history. He never made more than $30,000 a season during his career. In today’s market he would have been worth millions a year, a fact that left him embittered. Like other players from his era — such as impoverished ex-Bills tackle Donnie Green, for whom his former linemates on the “Electric Company” recently held a fund-raiser — he has to get along on a pittance of an NFL pension. In Gilchrist’s case some bitterness was understandable. One of the greatest high school players ever to come out of talent-rich Western Pennsylvania, Cookie was headed to Michigan State when Paul Brown, then major domo of the Browns, signed him to a contract even though the NFL had a rule against signing players out of high school. Brown stashed him on a team in the minor-league Ontario Rugby Football Union, with the idea of bringing him to the Browns when he was NFL eligible. Instead Cookie quickly tore up the ORFU and signed in the Canadian league, where he stayed until the Bills won a battle with the Los Angeles Rams to sign him. Coming into the league this way, he lacked the leverage enjoyed by the high draft choices, who benefited from a bidding war between the AFL and NFL. He signed for less than the going rate and his pay never caught up. His illness has worn away some of the old bitterness. “Now I’m just happy to be alive,” he said. Gilchrist would like to hear from his old friends and fans. He can be reached at 2870 Meadow St., Natrona Heights, PA 15065-1818. |
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Former sports editor Larry Felser's columns appear in the Sunday editions of the Buffalo News |
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(You can read Cookie's response to Felser by clicking HERE.) |
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THE
BUFFALO
NEWS |
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Coniglio calls the
AFL the “genesis of modern professional
football."
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Angelo F. Coniglio can’t help himself.
He admits he’s a zealot and a sucker for lost causes. Coniglio has
been crusading for the American Football League since the day it
went under. Even back then, he knew it would be a long and often
frustrating battle. Back in the 1970s, soon after the AFL-NFL merger, Coniglio wrote an impassioned defense of the AFL in Pro Football Weekly. In that piece, Coniglio predicted that by 2009, which would have been the 50th season of the newly defunct league, “no one will remember the AFL except fans with long memories and scrapbooks.” The memories are fading. The scrapbooks are collecting dust in the fans’ attics. But today, at age 70, Coniglio remains the most devoted fan of the AFL. He believes the AFL and its players helped revolutionize pro football and should have a celebrated place in the history of the sport. “I feel the AFL never got the credit it should have, said Coniglio, a Buffalo native and longtime Amherst resident. “I have a 1964 AFL card set that has 10 [NFL] Hall of Famers. You still hear people say the AFL wasn’t any good until there was a common draft. I don’t believe that.” Five years ago, after retiring as a civil engineer, Coniglio created an AFL Web site (RemembertheAFL. com). It’s a terrific site, the expression of one fan’s love for a league and a sport. If you’re one of those people who gets goose bumps when you think about Mike Stratton’s hit on Keith Lincoln, you’ll go nuts over it. Coniglio has been a fan of the Bills since their AAFC days. But the AFL is his passion. When the Jets won the Super Bowl, he felt as if his team had won. On his site, Coniglio calls the AFL the “genesis of modern professional football.” He says the league was ahead of its time on the two-point conversion, player names on uniforms, shared gate and TV receipts, wide-open offense and the liberal use of African- American players. Now, with 2009 approaching, Coniglio hopes to give the AFL a 50-year testimonial. If you click on his site, you’ll see a logo with a big letter “A” and the numbers 50 and 2009 in gold underneath. There’s a link to “Celebrate the AFL”, which reprints his letter to Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt in November 2005. Coniglio asked Hunt to help plan an AFL celebration in 2009, which would have been the league’s 50th season. Naturally, Coniglio had a few suggestions for Hunt, the man credited with forming the AFL. Coniglio said the NFL should design a commemorative AFL logo, based on the patch the Chiefs wore in Super Bowl IV. He proposed an “AFL Sunday” during the 2009 NFL season, with former AFL teams playing each other in throwback uniforms. Coniglio made plans for his own AFL Reunion — in Buffalo. He sent out word on his Web site and heard back from about 30 former players and at least that many fans. Former Chiefs star Abner Haynes loves the idea. Bob McCullough, a former Broncos tight end, sent Coniglio an $80 check as a show of good faith. “I think it’s an excellent idea,” said Ernie Warlick, who played for the Bills in the AFL days. “Ang is a one-man crusade. I know him well and how much this means to him. From the standpoint of the players, it would be great to see the guys you played against. I just don’t know if we’d get the overall support that’s necessary.” Coniglio has pushed hard, but one-man crusades don’t get very far. The idea never quite took off. Hunt never got back to him. The legendary Chiefs owner died a year later. “I didn’t realize how sick he was at the time,” Coniglio said. Coniglio also wrote to Bills owner Ralph Wilson. Marv Levy replied and said it was a good idea, but that was the end of it. Coniglio got together with executives from the Pro Football Hall of Fame at a Bills Quarterback Club meeting. They asked if he’d mind the NFL being involved. Coniglio agreed that an AFL tribute would succeed only with the NFL’s cooperation. But he never heard back from the Hall of Fame. Coniglio let the idea go for awhile. He returned McCullough’s $80 and devoted his time to a data base of everyone who played in the AFL. “The reunion would take a lot of planning and work,” he said. “I don’t want to do it unless it’s a success. I didn’t want to get people’s hopes up.” Then he got a letter from Pete Moris, associate PR director for the Chiefs, who said Kansas City was putting an AFL tribute in its media guide in Hunt’s honor. He asked if Coniglio could contribute. Coniglio agreed. “He said many AFL teams are talking about having their own recognition in 2009,” Coniglio said. “He said maybe we could get something going. That’s my goal. I don’t claim ownership. I’d love to see the AFL get its due.” It won’t be easy. The NFL will probably do something in 2009. But a reunion is a different matter. The pensions of old-timers is a bitter issue right now, and it’s hard to see the league getting behind an event that would gather many of those ex-players together. Of course, no one can stop Coniglio if he decides to hold a little reunion of his own. Like the old AFL, it might turn out to be bigger than the NFL ever bargained for. |
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Jerry Sullivan's commentaries appear regularly on the Sports pages of the Buffalo News |
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Remembering
the AFL |
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Angelo Coniglio is
a publicity hound. Angelo Coniglio is living in the past.
Angelo Coniglio is a hothead. "I am passionate and I'm sarcastic, too," the 70-year-old resident of Buffalo and die-hard Bills fan tells me. "But all that I do is not for my own glorification, but to get the AFL the respect that I feel it deserves." The 'AFL' Coniglio is referring to is not the Arena Football League, but the old American Football League that existed from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the National Football League. |
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| But even though
Coniglio says the NFL was "embarrassed and outflanked" by
the AFL, the younger upstart league lost its name, its
identity and its history once the merger was completed. And, to borrow from a movie title, that's 'What's Eating' Angelo Coniglio. "I do get frosted when NFL Films calls the Jets' Super Bowl win one of "The NFL's Greatest Games," Coniglio continues, "or when the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a display on the AFL boycott of New Orleans over that city's mistreatment of the black 1965 AFL All-Stars, and essentially gives the NFL credit for that seminal civil-rights action. The main reason I'm so passionate is that I believe in justice and fairness, and the AFL was not fairly treated by the NFL-dominated sports media during the 1960s. That mistreatment has spilled over to this day." For those who don't know, the history of the AFL and its attempt to join the established NFL is a fascinating one. It is a story of money, politics and power. In the late 1950s, led by the late billionaire Lamar Hunt, then 27, an upstart eight-team league was formed when the NFL refused to expand or offer franchises to the founding members of the AFL. Self-described as "The Foolish Club," these businessmen joined Hunt and set up teams in Oakland, Kansas City, San Diego, New York, Houston, Buffalo, Boston, Miami, Cincinnati and Denver. Compared to the NFL's plodding "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense, the AFL's offense was wide-open and exciting, and featured Joe Namath, the Chargers' acrobatic wide-receiver Lance Alworth and running backs O.J. Simpson and Cookie Gilchrist of Buffalo. Coniglio contends that the NFL took advantage (read: stole) many of football's innovations without giving proper credit to the younger league. To support his point, he lists the many rules that the NFL incorporated from the AFL after the merger following Super Bowl IV. "Fans should know," Coniglio reminds me, "that with the official scoreboard clock, names on jerseys, revenue and gate sharing that helps small market teams compete, the two-point conversion and the emergence of black athletes, today's pro football is really the American Football League. They just call it the NFL." |
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| So,
why wasn't everybody happy when the merger occurred? "The owners got what they wanted," Coniglio maintains. "They ignored the pleas of fans to keep the leagues separate, or at least to retain the name and logo of the AFL. The players lost out because there was no more competition for talent. "History is written by the winners," he continues. "The NFL downplays the existence of the AFL." Coniglio has gone so far as to build a website devoted to the history of the old league. Called Remember the AFL, it is a respository of articles, links, cards, letters and memorabilia. Basically anything that has to do with the history of the AFL. Without advertising, smooth pull-down menus or flash introductions, it is a jewel. Conliglio's site is also important in that it provides a bulletin board in an online meeting place for former AFL players and fans to correspond with each other. Recently, when Coniglio found out that former AFL and Bills star running back Cookie Gilchrist was seriously ill, he posted the news on the website and sent out an e-mail to his extensive mailing list (which includes 300 former AFL players or relatives) with contact information to send Gilchrist get-well wishes. Many did and Gilchrist, once he recovered, wrote back to Coniglio thanking him and his fans for showing their concern. But this effort by Coniglio, who is a retired civil engineer and former university professor, isn't a yearning for his youth nor a way to fill up his golden years. This mission to keep the memory of the old league alive dates back 39 years to 1970 when he made a prediction that would make Nostradamus proud. While working for Pro Football Weekly, he wrote: "The year 2009 will be praised in song and story, not as the 50th anniversary of the AFL, but as the 90th of the NFL. And no one will remember the AFL existed, except for a few fans with scrapbooks and long memories." That this prophesy is about to come true is not something Coniglio wishes to see. Which is why he he has begun his current campaign two years in advance to give the NFL enough time to plan, organize and produce the throwback memorabilia and events for a proper celebration. To that end, he recently sent out another e-mail to the 1000 members on his mailing list urging a letter-writing campaign to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Among some of his suggestions, he says, are a commemorative AFL patch to be worn by all AFL teams for the entire 2009 season, original AFL logos to appear on the fields of the former AFL teams, and an "AFL Sunday" where each former AFL teams plays another former AFL team, both wearing AFL uniforms. So far, he hasn't heard back from Goodell nor Mitchell and Ness, the clothing company which he asked to produce a throwback collection. "In response to my letter to Goodell urging a 'Celebration of the AFL' in 2009, with AFL throwback uniforms, an AFL players' reunion, etc.," Coniglio says, "I got a form letter back." "It said, 'Thanks for your interest in the NFL.'" |
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Barry Wittenstein is an editorial producer for SNY.tv. |
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The Dallas
Morning News |
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Ex-linebacker tougher than ever as he
faces cancer
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Kevin Sherrington is a Sports Columnist
for The Dallas Morning News ~
ksherrington@dallasnews.com |
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This article from The Buffalo
News reviews two new
books about the
American Football
League, one by Larry
Felser and one by Dave Steidel. It's followed by three
News excerpts from Felser's book, about the AFL-NFL
merger. |
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THE
BUFFALO
NEWS |
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How the ‘Foolish Club’ fooled them allTwo books depict history of the AFLNEWS SPORTS
REPORTER
If you’re under 50, you probably don’t remember the American Football League. Here’s a chance to catch up. We’re talking about the real AFL — Harry Wismer and the New York Titans, Buster Ramsey’s Bills, Butch Songin and the Boston Patriots, the Los Angeles Chargers, the Dallas Texans, those crazy Denver Broncos socks, Youell Field in Oakland. Two books published in time for the 2008 season offer reminiscence about the league that existed from 1960 to ’69 before the AFL-National Football League merger was consummated in 1970. Both books have a Western New York connection. The first, “The Birth of the New NFL — How the 1966 AFL/NFL Merger Transformed Pro Football” comes from a familiar voice — longtime Buffalo News sports editor, columnist and Bills beat reporter Larry Felser. The other is an offering from a fan, Dave Steidel, a high school counselor and coach in Pennsylvania who fell in love with the upstart league as a youngster and never let go. An inspiration for Steidel’s work, “Remember the AFL,” is Ange Coniglio of Amherst [www.remembertheafl.com], who has devoted much of his life and passion to preserving the memory of the old league and defending its place in the pro football universe. Felser and Steidel approach the subject differently. Felser’s book is chock-full of anecdotes and tales of experiences from a reporter who was on the scene from the AFL’s opening in 1960 until the merger. He knows firsthand most of the principals in the story. For this reporter, it’s hearing again many stories shared by Felser over Saturday night road trip dinners while covering the Bills from 1981-90. Delightful tales of personalities such as Wismer, Sid Gillman, Commissioner Joe Foss, Lou Saban, Al Davis and countless others. There’s even some interesting perspective on the great Vince Lombardi, an AFL nemesis in leading the Green Bay Packers to victories over Kansas City and Oakland in the first two Super Bowl games. Felser weaves these stories masterfully in a narrative that not only tells the story of the AFL’s founding in 1959, but also traces it back to the first pro football amalgamation in 1950 when the NFL swallowed up the remains of the old All-American Football Conference, leaving Buffalo out. The NFL’s attitude was just as smug then as it was before Joe Namath and the Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. In 1950, the haughty NFL believed that its champion Philadelphia Eagles would hold sway over the four-time AAFC champion Cleveland Browns. They were wrong. The Browns won in a rout, a portent of what was to come in the ’60s. The eight original AFL owners, the so-called “Foolish Club,” took a flyer on the future of pro football. Felser describes how the league survived — barely at times — in the early years, and the role that Bills owner Ralph Wilson played as a behind-the-scenes figure in events that led up to the 1966 merger. That agreement between the leagues resulted in the first AFL-NFL championship game (later to be known as the Super Bowl) and the first common draft in 1967. There were more skirmishes before the two leagues became one realigned entity in 1970 with Baltimore, Cleveland and Pittsburgh moving over from the NFL to form two balanced conferences, the AFC and NFC. Wilson was a key negotiator in the AFL’s landing a national television contract with NBC, which threw the league an important lifeline. Also his secret negotiations with Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom helped lead to the full-blown merger talks. Steidel’s output is more of a source book. He writes a wrap-up for each AFL team in each season of the league’s operation. The wrap-ups are accompanied by individual statistics and generously sprinkled with photos and other illustrations. Steidel’s interest in the AFL began by accident. As a youngster he purchased some bubble gum cards that he expected would depict NFL heroes such as Norm Van Brocklin, Jim Brown, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung and others. Instead, he found himself being introduced to the stars of the new league — Abner Haynes, Paul Lowe, Ernie Ladd, Jack Kemp and Gino Cappelletti. Steidel was hooked. Many of the illustrations are reproductions of cards from the collections of Steidel and others, [including Coniglio's wife, Angie Bongiovanni]. There are also artist renderings of original team logos and depictions of each season’s uniform design of the AFL teams. The original uniforms (1960 and ’61) of the Bills, for example, were copies of the Detroit Lions’ Hawaiian Blue and Silver motif and not the familiar red, white and blue. “Remember the AFL” also includes many pages of trivia contests and rankings of AFL players and stadiums. Buffalo’s War Memorial Stadium tops Steidel’s list of the AFL’s worst facilities. “The Rockpile” was no gem, but it seems there were other facilities in the league that were just as primitive though they may have been lacking in fans as passionate as the Buffalo crowds. Felser is a professional reporter and writer, while Steidel is admittedly an amateur. [ . . . ] If you just want to jog your own memories from those AFL years or want to visit a more innocent era in the history of the game, either book should hold your interest and feed your football appetite. |
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THE
BUFFALO
NEWS |
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“THE BIRTH OF THE NEW NFL”Signed, sealed, deliveredGogolak, Kemp contracts changed pro football historyThe groundwork for the modern National Football League was laid in 1966, when owners from the NFL and the upstart American Football League agreed to a merger. Former Buffalo News Sports Editor Larry Felser revisits that pivotal time in his new book, “The Birth of the New NFL: How the 1966 NFL/AFL Merger Transformed Pro Football” (Lyons Press, $14.95). The News is running three excerpts from the book. Today’s first installment focuses on how the AFL shed its reputation as a Mickey Mouse League and won acceptance from the NFL. It wasn’t called the “First Super Bowl,” and “virtual football” was far off in cyberspace — an unknown concept in 1964 — but it was the first game played between the NFL and AFL; the mythical first game, that is. It took place in the pages of Sports Illustrated as the product of sportswriter Tex Maule’s imagination. The AFL had been in business for five seasons, and it had signed its landmark television contract with NBC. But in the perception of many owners, general managers, and coaches in the NFL, along with their allies in the media, it was still a “Mickey Mouse League.” Both league championship games in 1964 had been unexpectedly one-sided. The Baltimore Colts possessed the NFL’s No. 1 offense and defense that season and were heavy favorites to beat the Cleveland Browns. Instead, the Browns’ defense throttled Johnny Unitas, Baltimore’s great quarterback, while Cleveland quarterback Frank Ryan threw three touchdown passes and wide receiver Gary Collins averaged 26 yards on his five catches in a 27-0 victory. The AFL title game was similar. The Buffalo Bills were a heavy underdog, but their defense smothered the San Diego Chargers’ high-scoring attack and the Bills’ run-oriented, conservative offense slowly pounded the Chargers into submission, 20-7. The public may not have shared the NFL old guard’s feelings that their young rival was a Mickey Mouse league, but there was no clamor for an interleague playoff to settle the matter. In the minds of most football fans outside the franchise territories of the AFL, there was nothing to settle: The NFL remained clearly superior. When Maule sat down to create a faux super bowl after the 1964 season, the outcome was preordained: The Browns won, 47-7. |
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Gogolak pact opened floodgates |
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| In April 1966,
Al
Davis, the new commissioner of the AFL, didn’t need any
literary license. Wellington Mara, owner of the New York Giants,
had given him a great gift to create a compelling story; it came
under the heading of nonfiction. Mara signed
Pete Gogolak, Buffalo’s kicker, who was technically a free
agent. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had approved Gogolak’s
contract with the Giants. The AFL’s new warlord was happily
stunned that his enemies had given him a license to go to war.
As soon as the signing became public, Davis told his staff at
AFL headquarters, “The NFL will never know what hit it.”
To a certain extent, the NFL people had been deluding themselves for years. At first, when the challenging league made do with NFL retread quarterbacks on most of its teams, there was understandable scoffing among the established league’s players. The Boston Patriots’ quarterback was Butch Songin, who had kicked around the Canadian Football League for years. Al Dorow and Cotton Davidson took the same route to quarterback the New York Titans and Dallas Texans, respectively. Tommy O’Connell, once the Cleveland Browns’ starter, came out of retirement after serving as head coach for a year at Drake University to lead Buffalo. Frank Tripucka, who had led a gypsy life in the pros, was the Denver Broncos’ starter. Babe Parilli, the Oakland Raiders’ starter, had been a great college quarterback for Bear Bryant at Kentucky, but he had been a disappointment in the NFL. Jack Kemp of San Diego was getting a second chance. Kemp, who played college football at little Occidental, had such a strong passing arm that three NFL teams had him developing on their taxi squads at different times. Kemp, 25, was the only young starting quarterback in the league. Songin was 36 years old, Houston’s George Blanda 33, Tripucka 32, and Dorow and O’Connell were 30, giving the AFL the look of a “jock Jurassic Park.” It stayed that way for several years due to a quarterback drought in the college draft. In the six years that the NFL and AFL fought it out for prize rookies, there were just seven quarterbacks drafted and signed who became consistent NFL starters — Joe Namath of the Jets, Don Meredith of the Cowboys, Fran Tarkenton of the Minnesota Vikings, Norm Snead of Philadelphia, John Hadl of San Diego, Billy Kilmer of the San Francisco 49ers and Roman Gabriel of the Los Angeles Rams. With their quarterback supply line from the colleges failing them, the AFL teams improvised wherever they could in order to stay competitive. One of the most famous improvisations came in 1962 from the Buffalo Bills. Lou Saban was in his first season as the Buffalo coach, and he was not satisfied with the quarterbacking of Warren Rabb, who had been so successful in college leading Louisiana State’s “Chinese Bandits.” Saban wanted better for his improving team. In the Bill’s time of need, it happened that Kemp, who had led the Chargers to the AFL’s Western Division championship in 1960 and 1961, was on the injured list with a broken capsule on the middle knuckle of his passing hand due to hitting an opponent’s helmet. The forecast was that Kemp would be off the field for many weeks. The AFL then had a little-known technical rule mandating that if an injured player were officially placed on his team’s injured list 24 hours or closer to a weekend game, then that player would be exposed to a waiver claim until 24 hours after the game. Sid Gillman badly needed the extra roster slot for San Diego’s upcoming game, so he took the risk of placing Kemp on waivers over the weekend. Gillman reasoned that the rule was so arcane and furthermore had never been used before, and that no one would be alert enough to claim Kemp. He was wrong. The Bills did not understand the rule until they were secretly made aware of it by Jack Horrigan, the league’s public relations director who previously covered the team as a Buffalo Evening News sportswriter. Equipped with such solid information, Saban put in the claim and the Bills had their quarterback for the next eight seasons. Kemp’s departure pointed up a flaw in San Diego’s high-powered offense: Young John Hadl wasn’t ready to be the starting quarterback yet. Gillman, the best-informed coach in the league, knew that Tobin Rote would be available for the next season. Rote had helped the Detroit Lions capture NFL title in 1957. In 1960 he jumped to the Canadian Football League, signing with the Toronto Argonauts for three years. His contract expired at the end of the Canadian season in November 1962. Gillman signed him immediately. In 1963 he led the Chargers to their first AFL championship. NEXT: Al Davis moves from coaching to commissioner |
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THE
BUFFALO
NEWS |
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“THE BIRTH OF THE NEW NFL”BROOKLYN ALA young Al Davis moves from coaching ranks to commissioner’s officeThe
groundwork for the
modern National
Football League was laid
in 1966, when owners
from the NFL and the
upstart American
Football League
agreed to a merger.
Former Buffalo News
Sports Editor Larry
Felser revisits that
pivotal time in
his new book, “The Birth
of the New NFL:
How the 1966 NFL/AFL
Merger Transformed Pro
Football” (Lyons
Press, $14.95).
The News is
running three excerpts
from the book.
Today’s second
installment focuses on
Al Davis, the
former coach who served
as AFL commissioner
and ultimately owner
of the Oakland
Raiders. By the time he reached 30, the “most popular boy” was working in professional football as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Chargers of the new American Football League and already becoming extremely unpopular with Chargers opponents. By the time he was 33, he was head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and the unpopularity had turned to loathing in both the National and American leagues. By the time he was 36, he was the second commissioner of the AFL, and loathing had collected a partner, fear, among the NFL owners who had to contend with Davis’ agenda of piracy. |
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‘Chargers’ named for credit card business |
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When the Chargers were founded
as an original franchise in the AFL, they
were based in Los Angeles.
Sid Gillman, who had spent five years as
coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, had
been fired just as the new league was
formed. Barron Hilton, the hotel scion and
original owner of the Chargers, had been
impressed by Gillman’s work with the Rams,
especially his sophisticated passing
offense. Sensing that an entertaining
offense would be a help in attracting
customers to a start-up operation, Hilton
hired Gillman. Hilton was in charge of the hotel chain’s blossoming credit card business — hence the name “the Chargers” — and Gillman ran the entire football operation. His selection of his first coaching staff was a masterpiece. First hired were two members of his former Ram staff, Jack Faulkner and Joe Madro. Then came Davis and Chuck Noll. Coaching staffs in those days were minuscule compared to the ones of the 21st century, and five men was the limit. It was enough, and three of them — Noll, Davis and Gillman himself — ended up in the Hall of Fame. Faulkner breathed the first fresh air into the moribund Denver franchise as head coach and general manager. Noll coached the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl victories. Davis created “Raider Nation,” a dynasty and its raffish followers, which stayed near or at the top of pro football for more than four decades and into the new millennium. Slick recruiting was second nature to Al from the time he worked at the Citadel. Paul Maguire, now an ESPN sportscaster, told the story of when he came out of Youngstown, Ohio, as a coveted tight end and punter. “Al told me if I came to the Citadel I wouldn’t have to take military and he’d get me a car,” said Maguire. “When I got there, I found out that everybody takes military at the Citadel. When I asked Al about the car, he said, ‘I’ll introduce you to this used-car dealer I know in Charleston. He’ll give you a good price.’ ” Maguire stayed at the school, and in his senior year he caught 11 touchdown passes. When he graduated, he signed with the Chargers to a contract proffered by a coach named Al Davis. By the end of the 1962 season, it appeared the Raiders would either relocate, probably to New Orleans, or close down operations. Instead Wayne Valley, the managing partner, convinced his board of directors to give it another year, mainly because the team had received a $400,000 infusion of cash from Ralph Wilson, owner of the Bills, in exchange for 25 percent of the team. Wilson later said, “I knew it was against the constitution, but the league would have folded. I did it for the sake of the league.” The Raiders then got an infusion of professionalism by hiring Davis as head coach and general manager. He had been recommended by Gillman. One of the first moves Davis made was to trade for Art Powell of the New York Titans, a big, fast, enormously talented receiver who had previously worn out his welcome in one year as a Philadelphia Eagle. It took him three years in New York to become a dispensable asset. The trade with the Titans came about because Davis was unafraid to take big risks. Powell caught 16 touchdown passes in his first year as a Raider. Davis made other risky moves, and they were what made the 1-13 Raiders of 1962 into the 10-4 Raiders in his first season as a head coach. In 1966 the AFL owners elected Davis their new commissioner. He quickly broadened his staff. He already had a strong public relations man in Jack Horrigan, the former Buffalo Evening News sportswriter whom he knew well and with whom he felt comfortable. Horrigan was a thick-skinned, wisecracking Irish Catholic with a reputation for great integrity and loyalty. From the beginning of the AFL, the practice was to schedule each team for three consecutive games on their opposite coast. When the Chargers came east to play Buffalo, New York and Boston, it was their custom to stay and train in either Niagara Falls, N. Y., or cross the bridge to Canada and set up camp in Niagara Falls, Ont. They would travel to New York and Boston by short hops in chartered props. Horrigan would visit the Charger coaches in their temporary headquarters in the Hotel Niagara on the American side of the Falls. “Their language would peel the wallpaper,” he said. “One day I saw a secretary in the hotel office quit her job because she couldn’t stand the obscenities wafting down from the coaches’ office as they argued.” Those visits were where Horrigan and Davis bonded. I had my own opportunity to bond with Davis in April of 1966. Beverly and I were departing on our honeymoon and staying in a Miami Beach hotel room when the phone rang. We were startled. The call was unexpected and unwanted. The Miami stay was a one-day layover while we awaited our flight to the Bahamas for the rest of our honeymoon. No one was supposed to know where we were. I answered the phone and heard the voice of Al Davis, who had found me somehow. He wanted to hire me for his staff. I thought it over for 24 hours in consultation with my bride then declined Davis’s invitation. I was too happy in the newspaper business. The most pressing administrative problem Davis encountered when he began the job was smoothing the way for Joe Robbie and Danny Thomas with the new franchise in Miami. It was during his conversation with Bills owner Ralph Wilson that more interesting news broke. “About six weeks after I was named commissioner,” Davis said, “I was visiting Ralph Wilson in his Detroit insurance office, since Ralph was serving as president of the league. We were talking about Miami. Suddenly one of his top people, Lou Curl, walked into the office with some big news — the New York Giants had just signed Pete Gogolak. Ralph was indignant, since Gogolak was his player, very important to the Bills. “I told him, Ralph, don’t be indignant,” Davis said. “The NFL just handed us the merger.” Next: Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr and the Green Bay
Packers. |
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THE
BUFFALO
NEWS |
“THE BIRTH OF THE NEW NFL”Larry Felser book excerpt: Stepping out of the shadowsQB Bart Starr earned his share of limelight with Vince LombardiThe
1966 season would be
spectacular for the
Green Bay Packers
and quarterback Bart
Starr.
The groundwork for the modern National Football League was laid in 1966, when owners from the NFL and the upstart American Football League agreed to a merger. Former Buffalo News Sports Editor Larry Felser revisits that pivotal time in his new book, “The Birth of the New NFL: How the 1966 NFL/AFL Merger Transformed Pro Football” (Lyons Press, $14.95).
In the last of three excerpts from the book, Felser describes how Bart Starr completed Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. Since November of 1959, when the Pack began a four-game winning streak, which ended Vince Lombardi’s first year as head coach and resulted in the team’s first winning season in 12 years, the coach’s light had outshone that of everyone else in the organization. Lombardi’s only competition, if you could call it that, came from the Golden Boy, Paul Hornung, who had won the Heisman Trophy while playing with a rare losing team at Notre Dame. Hornung was a vanishing species in football, the triple threat. He was a smart and dogged runner, if not a swift one. A college quarterback, he could pass as well as serve as a reliable receiver. He was an NFL leader in scoring, as he also served as Green Bay’s kicker. Hornung was a personable, witty star with a reputation as a playboy. He had enough stature, even with Lombardi, that he could get away with quite a lot. As an after-dinner speaker, Hornung often kidded his coach by claiming that when Vince climbed into bed with his wife, Marie, one frigid Green Bay night, Marie cried out, “God! Your feet are cold!” To which the coach was supposed to have replied, “Marie, when we’re in bed, you may call me Vince.” Ordinarily Lombardi was not enthused about sharing the spotlight with anyone. In the midst of the Packers’ spectacular defensive streak, the team’s public relations director, Chuck Lane, wrote a press release praising what he termed “Phil Bengtson’s defense.” Since Lombardi was also the general manager, it was Lane’s custom to forward the press release to the boss for approval. Instead of approving the press release, Lombardi angrily stormed down the hall into Lane’s office. He made it emphatically clear to Lane that it wasn’t Bengtson’s defense, that it was his, Lombardi’s, and that Bengtson was the assistant carrying out the head coach’s commands. Lombardi enjoyed Hornung, but that did not alter his businesslike approach to reevaluating him at age 30. Hornung’s numbers had slipped in the previous two seasons. Don Chandler had been brought in as the field-goal kicker after Hornung had been successful on just 12 of 38 attempts in 1964. Once celebrated as a big-game player, the only notable play Hornung had contributed in his last few years was a 13-yard touchdown run which was vital to the Western Conference championship sudden-death playoff victory over the Colts. That wasn’t enough to cloud Lombardi’s judgment. Lombardi drafted Donnie Anderson and Jim Grabowski to replace Hornung and the superb fullback Jim Taylor. After the 1966 season, Hornung would become a New Orleans Saint via the expansion allotment. That led to the public emergence of Bart Starr as a star of the highest magnitude. He had been one of the best quarterbacks in football for several years, a fact sometimes overlooked by the fans and even the media since Hornung and especially Lombardi overshadowed him. Lombardi’s coaching philosophy seemed simple enough: aggressive defense, ball-control offense, discipline, and, above all, don’t make any mistakes. All coaches preach about not making mistakes, but it’s hard to follow through. Making mistakes is human, everyone does it. The idea is to keep mistakes to a bare minimum. By choosing players who lent themselves to discipline, who tolerated his constant nagging, abuse, and insults, who believed in what he preached, Lombardi achieved a team that kept mistakes to his desired bare minimum. Whether he would admit it or not, he could not have achieved it without Starr as his quarterback. High school All-America teams are fairly common in these times, with the most prominent being those selected by Parade Magazine and USA Today. In 1952 the only one of any note was that selected by an organization called The Wigwam Wise Men of America, appearing in the Sporting News, which was still mainly the bible of baseball. The quarterback on that team was a youngster from Montgomery, Ala., named Bart Starr. It was the only prominent national publicity Starr would receive for the next five years. He received a scholarship from the University of Alabama and had some mild success in his first two seasons, but as a junior he suffered a back injury that virtually put an end to his college career. By his senior year in 1956, a new offense had been installed, and the coaches felt he did not fit it. In those days the NFL draft lasted 30 rounds, mostly because the owners weren’t keen on having a lot of undrafted free agents at large who, at least theoretically, might pit one team against another for pricier contracts. Starr, on the basis of his early promise, was drafted in the 17th round, the 200th player selected. In a happy irony the Packers used their second-round selection to draft Forest Gregg of Southern Methodist and their fifth to draft Indiana’s Bob Skoronski. When the Lombardi era would reach fruition, Gregg would protect Starr from his right tackle position and Skoronski from left tackle. Starr had been a Packer for three years before Lombardi arrived in Green Bay. It was not love at first sight, at least from the coach’s perspective. Lombardi inherited four quarterbacks when he was hired to coach Green Bay in 1959 — Starr, Lamar McHan, Babe Parilli, and Joe Francis. He wasn’t particularly impressed with any of them. McHan started the first nine games, but when the Packers lost five straight in the middle of the season, Starr was promoted. After losing Starr’s first start, the Pack won four straight, including the last three on the road. In the final game Starr completed all 20 of his passes in a victory over the 49ers in San Francisco. The Packers averaged 25 points a game in those closing victories. If Starr convinced Lombardi that he was the man for the job, it was a short-lived convincing. The coach again opened the quarterback assignment to McHan and Starr in training camp. Starr was given the start on Opening Day in 1960 in Chicago, but when the Pack lost to the Bears, Lombardi demoted Starr and promoted McHan once again. It was the wrong decision. Green Bay won four straight, but McHan was disturbingly erratic, compiling a dismal quarterback rating of 36.3. Despite a 19-16 victory over Pittsburgh on October 30, according to Michael O’Brien in “Vince,” his biography of Lombardi, the coach told Starr, “You’re now my quarterback, and there will be no more changes.” Lombardi kept his
word. Green Bay lost
three of Starr’s
next four starts,
but he remained in
the job. The Packers
won their last three
games and the
Western Conference
championship. In the
NFL championship
game against the
Eagles in
Philadelphia’s
Franklin Field,
Starr put the
Packers ahead,
13-10, in the fourth
quarter. The Eagles
rallied to win the
title, but it was
the last postseason
game Lombardi and
Starr would lose. |
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How the AFL changed the NFL |
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| CincinNati Bengals | |
| Denver Broncos | |
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THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2009 |
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Nick Canepa: (619)
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