Football: The Pros

FOOTBALL: THE PROS

Popularity

By the beginning of the decade professional football was surpassing baseball in popularity. The Baltimore Colts' stunning overtime victory over the New York Giants to win the National Football League (NFL) championship in 1958 had thrilled a nationwide television audience and helped attract a new generation of fans to professional football. The NFL championship game had as large a television viewing audience as the World Series. By the end of the decade professional football was the national pastime. NFL attendance had climbed above 90 percent of stadium capacity—figures that were the envy of the baseball owners, Sunday afternoons—traditionally reserved as time spent with family—were taken over by the sport, as fathers sat in their living rooms glued to their television sets. Even the football widows—the wives of armchair fans—came to recognize the names and the language of football. A new breed of superstar emerged from the media hype that surrounded the sport; slick, brash, and attractive players like Joe Namath had charisma, sex appeal, and, as endorsers of products, great selling power.

Television

During the 1960s television money poured into professional football at an increasing rate, as Pete Rozelle, who became NFL commissioner in I960, successfully marketed the sport. Having convinced team owners that it would be best to negotiate a television contract as a group, Rozelle in 1961 pressed for and won legislation that exempted the NFL from federal antitrust regulations. The league continued to grow as well; cities such as Dallas and Minneapolis-Saint Paul became homes to successful NFL franchises. Beginning in 1960, however, the NFL faced competition. The American Football League (AFL) emerged as a legitimate contender for the hearts and wallets of football fans. The new league also managed to sign major college talent from under the NFL's nose. In 1966 the NFL—having once believed that the upstart AFL would meet a quick end in financial ruin—entered into a merger with their competitors. The merger guaranteed further financial stability for both leagues, as the CBS and NBC television networks paid out nearly $10 million for the right to televise the AFL-NFL championship game, later referred to as the Super Bowl.

The AFL

The American Football League was the brainchild of two wealthy Texans. Oil millionaires Bud Adams and Lamar Hunt had become tired of having their applications for an NFL franchise regularly rejected, so they decided to start their own professional football league. Other would-be owners similarly rebuffed by the NFL, such as Ralph Wilson of Buffalo, soon joined the Texans in their drive to enlist backers and land major venues for a new league. Within a few months AFL franchises sprang up in Houston, Dallas, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Denver, and Buffalo.

The Challenge

NFL officials publicly expressed little worry about their new competition. Their league had beaten back newcomers in the past; in the late 1940s the All-American Conference had been formed in an attempt to cash in on a postwar resurgence of interest in professional football, but the enterprise was short-lived, and its few successful teams were absorbed by the National Football League. The NFL moved quickly to steal some of the markets for which the AFL was vying. NFL franchises were awarded to Dallas and Minneapolis, causing the AFL to withdraw its proposed team from Minnesota and offer the franchise to Oakland. It soon became clear that the AFL challenge to the NFL's monopoly was a serious one. Guaranteeing the immediate future of the new league, AFL officials, under the leadership of league president Hunt, successfully negotiated a five-year television contract with ABC.

The Chiefs Bring Credibility

Many of the players on AFL rosters had come to the new league from the NFL. Called "NFL rejects" by many sportswriters critical of the new league, they were often men who were past their prime and no longer able to survive the rigors of an NFL training camp. Many others who were signed by AFL teams during the early days of the league had been sandlot journeymen, former Canadian Football League players, or young and raw talent unable to play their way onto an NFL team roster. Nevertheless, talented players and coaches did find their way to the new league. Fired by the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, Sid Gilliam moved across town to take over the Los Angeles (later San Diego) Chargers. Gilliam was a brilliant coach and talented administrator who soon turned the Chargers into the class organization of the AFL. Hunt hired the head coach of his team, the Dallas Texans (later the Kansas City Chiefs), from the college ranks. University of Miami coach Hank Stram was reputed to be one of football's most innovative coaches, and in imparting his imaginative brand of offense and defense to his Texans, Stram created the AFL's all-time winningest team.

Blanda and Cannon

Perhaps the two most dramatic signings during the early days of the AFL involved Bud Adams's Houston Oilers. The Texas millionaire coaxed veteran pro George Blanda to quarterback the new team. Adams had also written a large check to land Heisman Trophy-winner Billy Cannon of Louisiana State University. Both players became major stars in the new league, as the Oilers under their leadership went on to win the first two AFL championships. The signings proved more significant, however, in what they demonstrated to the owners in the old league and to football fans. Proven stars such as Blanda helped legitimize the new league. The signing of Cannon proved that the AFL was willing to spend money on the top college stars and battle the NFL to sign them. The Oilers fought and won a bitter court battle with the Rams over rights to Cannon. A nasty recruiting war between the two leagues had begun.

Homeless and Hungry

Largely because of Cannon and Blanda, Houstonites crowded Jeppesen Stadium (the Oilers later played at Rice University and in the Astrodome) to watch the team play. Most of the other teams in the new league, however, were not as fortunate. Typical of the experience of many teams, the Boston Patriots had difficulty finding a permanent home field. It seemed a bad omen when, for the opening game of the league's inaugural season, the Patriots settled on old and decrepit Braves Field, former home of perennial losers the Boston Braves and the Boston Yanks, a pro football team that had failed for lack of fan support.

"People Showed Up Disguised As Empty Seats."

The league's two major-market teams, the Los Angeles Chargers and the New York Titans, had miserably low attendance. The Chargers—an otherwise fine ball club that lost the crosstown public-relations battle with the NFL's Rams—soon moved to San Diego and larger, more appreciative fan support. The Titans, on the other hand, were a team whose football abilities ranged from mediocre to embarrassingly poor. It soon became clear that the organization, owned by New York radio personality Harry Wisemer, could not hope to control an equal share of the market with the New York Giants, one of the NFL's most successful teams. In their first season, played at the Polo Grounds, the Titans drew only 114,000 fans to their home games, and Wisemer took to inflating the attendance figures given to the press. As one reporter wryly commented upon hearing Wisemer's figures for a particular game, "People showed up disguised as empty seats."

Scoring for Fans

The AFL tried to attract television contracts and lure fans into the stadiums by offering a spicy alternative to the NFL's running-dominated offensive schemes that resulted in "three yards and a cloud of dust." Many of the AFL teams featured passing-oriented offenses, often making for thrilling plays and high-scoring games. The new league offered other innovations. A team could attempt to pass or run for two points after a touchdown—instead of just kicking for the extra point. Also, a player's name was stenciled on the back of his jersey so he could be easily recognized by fans and broad-casters.

Star Search

To stave off the disaster and ultimate ruin the Titans would cause the entire league if they were to fail in the nation's media center, the AFL stepped in and assumed the operation of the team. (Wisemer, who had been running the organization from his penthouse, was unable to make the payroll.) In 1962 a five-man syndicate led by David A. ("Sonny") Werblin purchased the Titans. IWerblin immediately went to work sprucing up the organization. In search of a new image, Werblin changed the team name from the Titans to the Jets and hired Weeb Ewbank as head coach. Werblin had a visionary's under-standing of the new direction professional football was taking and of the increasing commercialization of the sport during the 1960s. "Football is show business," he asserted. "The game needs stars. Stars sell tickets." In 1965 Werblin backed up his assertions with his check-book and signed University of Alabama sensation Joe Namath for the astronomical sum of $427,000.

Namath

No football player was more successful at managing his celebrity than Joe Namath, a former college star on Coach Paul ("Bear") Bryant's University of Alabama team. Namath was a playboy and did not seem to take his fame too seriously. He was part owner of a successful New York City bar called Bachelors Three; he partied without apology and played flamboyantly on the field. He proved his toughness on the field, however, as the target of linemen resentful of his frivolous image. By the end of the 1960s he took the field with a noticeable limp, having endured knee surgery in 1965, 1966, and 1968, so he made an easy target for head-hunting line-backers. In 1968 in a game against the Oakland Raiders Namath endured two crunching hits by Ben Davidson and then Ike Lassiter, who brought both his fists into Namath's chin as he tackled him. Namath's cheek was broken, but he was back on the field the next week with an altered face mask to provide him extra protection.

THE VIOLENT WORLD OF SAM HUFF

The value of defense in football was demonstrated by two television events in the early 1960s. On 30 October 1960 one in four televisions in America was tuned in to the "Violent World of Sam Huff," an episode of The Twentieth Century, a CBS news series hosted by Walter Cronkite. Huff was the best of the vicious pro-football middle linebackers, and Cronkite's hour-long documentary showed just how rough that job was. Huff wore a microphone in his helmet during practice and a game as the television cameras recorded his actions with narration by Cronkite. "Anytime that you play football on the field there is no place for nice guys. I mean you have to be tough," Huff explained. "When we're out on the field, we have to shake them up. It's either …an expression … kill or be killed." Huff made as dramatic an impact on viewers as the one he routinely made on opposing halfbacks.

Source:

Dan Daly and Bob O'Donnell, The Pro Football Chronicle (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1990).

BIG DADDY

Eugene ("Big Daddy") Lipscomb, defensive tackle for the Baltimore Colts, was the most feared lineman in professional football. He was 6 feet 6 inches tall and played at 303 pounds. When asked how he went about his job, he replied that he just reached out and grabbed a handful of the opposing players and discarded them one-by-one until he found the man with the ball. Lipscomb was a legend off the field too. He consumed straight V.O. blended whiskey by the water glass full, and he had a drug habit to match his size. "I'm a B and B man—booze and broads," Lipscomb bragged.

Lipscomb was a material man: "I didn't mind losing the second wife as much as the '56 Mercury to her. I loved that car. It was the first decent car I ever owned." He replaced the Mercury with a yellow Cadillac convertible, and on the night of 9 May 1963 he picked up two women in it, bought a six-pack of malt liquor, and drove to the apartment of his drug dealer, where he paid twelve dollars for four grams of heroin. That night he died of an overdose. He had four needle marks on his arm, ten milligrams of morphine in his bile, and a blood-alcohol level of .09. "New York, New York. So big they had to say it twice," Lipscomb liked to say.

Source:

Dan Daly and Bob O'Donnell, The Pro Football Chronicle (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1990).

Super Bowl

The first championship game between the AFL and the NFL took place on 15 January 1967. It was, as most analysts predicted, a rout, in which the Green Bay Packers humiliated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. On 14 January 1968 the Packers repeated the performance in the game dubbed Super Bowl II, this time bullying the Raiders 33-14. When the New York Jets and the brash Namath won the right to face the NFL champion Baltimore Colts in 1968, Namath's fans feared for his safety in the face of the ferocious Colts defense, and Namath did not soothe them with his reckless bragging. When the Colts were named seventeen-point favorites to beat the Jets, Namath promised not only to beat the spread but he guaranteed a victory, and then he took to the field to deliver. By the end of the day on 12 January 1969 the Jets had beaten the respected Baltimore Colts, led by quarterback Johnny Unitas; the AFL had proven its ability to compete among the best teams in professional football; and Joe Namath had sealed his reputation as one of the outstanding players of all time.