American sports
Legacy
Of all the leagues that have attempted to challenge the dominance of the National Football League, the AFL was the only one to be truly successful. In contrast to such entities as the All-America Football Conference, baseball's Federal League, the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey Association, the American Football League is the only league in North American pro sports ever to have merged with a major league and have all its teams continue to exist.
No AFL teams folded and only two teams changed cities during the league's 10-year existence. Further, the league that merged with it, the NFL, adopted many of the innovative on- and off-field elements introduced by the AFL, including names on player jerseys, official scoreboard clocks and gate and revenue sharing. The AFL's challenge to the NFL also made possible four World Championship games, now known as the Super Bowl.
Hunt's vision brought a new professional football league not only to California and New York, but to parts of the nation that did not have the game: New England, Colorado and Texas. It would later be brought to Missouri and Florida. The AFL also adopted the first-ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the league office negotiated an ABC-TV contract, the proceeds of which were divided equally among member clubs.
The AFL's free agents came from several sources. Some were players who could not find success playing in the NFL. But the success of men like the Oilers' George Blanda, the Chargers/Bills' Jack Kemp, the Texans' Len Dawson, the Titans' Don Maynard, the Raiders/Patriots/Jets' Babe Parilli, the Pats' Bob Dee and many others, made that sobriquet questionable. Another source of free agents was the Canadian Football League.
Many players not drafted or signed out of college by the NFL in the late 1950s went North to try their luck with the CFL, and later returned to the states to play in the AFL. In the league's first year, these included the Pats' Gino Cappelletti, the Bills' Cookie Gilchrist and the Chargers' Sam Deluca and Dave Kocourek. Finally, there were the true "free agents", the walk-ons, the "wanna-be's", who tried out in droves for the chance to play professional football.
The American Football League took advantage of the burgeoning popularity of football by locating teams in major cities that lacked NFL franchises, and by using the growing power of televised football games (bolstered with the help of major network contracts, first with ABC and later with NBC). It featured many outstanding games, such as the classic 1962 double-overtime American Football League championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time it was the longest professional football championship games ever played.
The AFL appealed to fans by offering a flashier alternative to the more conservative NFL. Team uniforms were bright and colorful. Long passes ("bombs") were commonplace in AFL offenses, led by such talented quarterbacks as John Hadl, Daryle Lamonica and Len Dawson.
Another attractive feature of the American Football League was its competitive balance. In the original eight-team league, in a fourteen game schedule, each team played every other team twice. Every team had the same "strength of schedule", so the division champions were clearly the best teams in each division. Further, the league championships were evenly divided: five were won by Western Division teams, five by the Eastern Division; and of the original eight teams, all but two (Denver and Boston/New England) won at least one AFL title, and only one did not make the playoffs at some time during the league's ten-year existence.
Some would argue the AFL clearly matched or outshone the elder league in some specific cases. Examples abound: Lance Alworth of the Chargers was arguably the best receiver of the 1960s; Johnny Robinson of the Chiefs, although he has been ignored by the pro football hall of fame, was the equal of any NFL defensive back of the era; the term "Fearsome Foursome" was coined to describe not an NFL defensive line, but the Chargers' formidable unit, anchored by Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison; and the 1964 Buffalo Bills defense allowed their opponents only 300 rushing attempts and held them to a pro football record 913 yards rushing, while recording fifty quarterback sacks in a fourteen-game schedule.
The AFL achieved its success in spite of sparse coverage by the print and electronic media. CBS-TV, which then carried NFL games, refused to give AFL game scores on its football broadcasts. Sports Illustrated ridiculed the new league, and even after the AFL was established, SI gave full-page color action shots of the NFL, while it used black and white photos in its AFL coverage.
The bidding war, which was financially draining both leagues, and the rapidly rising popularity of the AFL were factors that eventually led to the merger.