Transcript of Chris Berman's introduction speech for Ralph Wilson
Published: August 08, 2009, 11:01 pm
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Thank you very much. Mr. Wilson, Bruce, I think we have a Buffalo home game. I think we do. 1959, 50 years ago, the NFL was coming off its first big moment, the 58 championship game. The greatest game ever played. The league was on its way. Yet eight gentlemen decided there was room for more pro football in different places. A different sort of pro football. The American Football League.
These eight were dubbed "The Foolish Club." One of these gentlemen set his sights on a small jewel. Buffalo, New York. It was at the time the nation's 14th largest metropolitan area. It's people hard working, they were loyal, they'd be really good fans.
And so began the Buffalo Bills in the American Football League thanks to one man, Ralph Wilson, Jr. The AFL began, and boy it was fun. Throw it more often than we run it. Use the whole field. Two-point conversions. It was great.
Soon, the Bills would be the league's best. They thrilled the throng in the old Rock Pile, better known as War Memorial Stadium. With back-to-back AFL titles in 1964 and 1965, their quarterback would become a major American statesman, Jack Kemp. Hall of Famer Billy Shaw stood guard. The running back was a Cookie. The wide receiver had golden wheels. Their defensive line had a dancing bear, a tough Tom, and a big Jim. Linebacker Mike Stratton leveled the biggest hit in the history of the AFL. George Saimes was a gem at safety. Paul Maguire, he was a classic in many ways as a punter.
Western New York was ecstatic. But it's the Bills were winning, there were bigger issues as in could the AFL survive? Some teams were almost out of money. If the league could not stay viable with eight clubs, it might go out of business. Ralph Wilson Jr. lent the Oakland Raiders, his competitors, $400,000 so they could play football.
The first five-year TV deal with ABC was running out. Ralph traveled to the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, hardly a hot bed for football. Why? To meet with the NBC folks. He got a wire from a fellow owner, Billy Sullivan of the Patriots, with great news. We've gotten an offer from NBC for $600,000 a club. Mr. Wilson quickly wired back. Don't accept it, we can get more. And he got more. A five-year contract worth $900,000 a team per season, a monstrous sum in those days.
The AFL was here to stay. And it had the money to bid on players and the NFL knew it. They instituted secret talks to set in motion the biggest move in pro football history, the merger, starting the ball rolling on the AFL side. With over a dozen meetings with the then owner of the Baltimore Colts Carol Rosenbloom was Ralph Wilson, Jr.
Two AFL leaders were already enshrined here in Canton, the late Lamar Hunt and Al Davis. They certainly had two different styles, and they drove the merger from the AFL side. But they would have been the first to tell you that the quiet force that never looked for headlines, the man that just wanted to get it done was Ralph Wilson Jr., because as the established NFL quickly found out, if he gave you his word, that's all you needed. This became reality in 1970. Just 10 years after the AFL began playing in the '70s, pro football exploded.
The game and the great league you see today are all as a result of the merger. The '70s saw no work stoppages. One of the key members of the owners'labor committee in those days was Ralph Wilson Jr.
All the Bills had some teams back then. You just saw them a little bit. The juice ran through holes opened up by fellow Hall of Famer Joe DeLamielleure and Reggie McKenzie. Quarterback Joe Ferguson went from youngster to veteran. He and Joe Cribbs and company had Buffalo back in the postseason in the early '80s. But this was nothing like the late '80s, and the early 90's when the Bills made it to four straight Super Bowls.
Nobody had done it before. Nobody has done it since, especially getting off each time after losing the year before with such steely determination to make it back to the Super Bowl. Oh, what a group they had. Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy. The best president and GM in the business, Bill Polian. Followed by Hall of Fame person, John Butler, and the rest of their staffs. And the players. Jim Kelly is behind me tonight. So is Thurman Thomas. So is James Lofton. In about an hour, so will Bruce Smith. Andre Reed will be here soon. Kent Hull, Steve Tasker, Cornelius Bennett, Darryl Talley, Shane Conlan, we could go on and on and on. And the fans breaking attendance records, even with the NFL's second smallest market. The parking lot at Orchard Park was full of campers on Friday before all the Sunday games.
And standing in the background of all of this, the one constant through it all, Ralph Wilson Jr. He is not an owner that you see pacing the sidelines, exerting his team or exerting the fans. All right, I guess he had to come down on the field once. He had to. They renamed the stadium after him, and someone had to give him the keys to the place. Now it's 2009. Buffalo is far from the 14th largest metropolis in America. These are certainly tough times in a lot of places, certainly in Western New York. Yet 50 years later, the Bills still belonged to Buffalo because your owner has given you his word.
As he has given his word so many times in both the AFL and the NFL, do you know that every time a franchise move has come up for a vote, Ralph Wilson Jr. has voted against it. Every time. Every time. Because you see the team, it's city and its fans, they have a deal.
Here we are in Canton, Ohio, 20 seasons after the Bills played in their first Super Bowl, 40 seasons after the merger. 45 seasons after the Bills won their first championship, and 50 seasons after the AFL started play on what seemed like a wing and a prayer. Ready at last to honor a gentleman 90 years young. If it is true that no one … help me out here Buffalo; okay? That no one circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills!
If that's true, you know this is true. No one has circled the wagons like the only owner the Buffalo Bills have ever had. A founding father of the AFL, a man who served his country in the Navy in World War II. The man I am honored and humbled to present to you for enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Mr. Ralph Wilson Jr.
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