“THE BIRTH OF THE NEW NFL”
Signed, sealed, delivered
Gogolak, Kemp contracts changed pro football history
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). 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.
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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