The National Football League and the American Football League agreed to a merger on June 6, 1966. It might have been better to bring this up about this time next when the 50th Anniversary of the event will be in full swing. I bring it up now because it's always fun to repeatedly discuss the important moments in football history. And this was one of the most significant. Perhaps second only to the little gathering at a Canton Hupmobile dealership in 1920. The merger created the Super Bowl. The NFL struggled to make ends meet for 40 years before this AFL decided to get in the professional football game. Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were refused entry into the exclusive NFL fraternity so they decided to form their own league. Why not? They had the money. They actually had more money than most, if not all, of the NFL owners. Hunt, Adams, and the rest made up the "Foolish Club" and they formed the American Football League. The NFL had been challenged before. They had even been challenged a few times by leagues calling themselves the AFL. The NFL had crushed them all. Only the AAFC had any sort of lasting impact as three of their teams were absorbed by the NFL. This time was different even if the old league refused to accept it. The owners of this AFL had money. Some had a lot of money. This AFL also had a television contract which meant even more money and greater stability. Instead of another failed AFL there was a professional football war and it lasted six years. The AFL did not go away and they got stronger each year. When some in the NFL finally realized that the new league wasn't going anywhere anytime soon they wanted peace. The peace talks mostly involved Dallas Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. The talks lasted several weeks in the spring of 1966. By June 6, they had a merger agreement worked out. The announcement came two days later. The NFL had approved the deal unanimously. The AFL had accepted it with the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders dissenting.
Here are the terms of the NFL-AFL Merger Agreement:
1. All existing franchises would be kept.
2. A championship game would be held after the 1966 season. In January 1967.
3. The leagues would continue to play separate schedules until 1970, at which time teams from each conference would play a single schedule. Until then, teams from either league would meet only in postseason and preseason games.
4. The merged NFL-AFL would be presided over by one commissioner-Pete Rozelle.
5. Each league would add an expansion franchise in 1967. New Orleans Saints in the NFL. Cincinnati Bengals in the AFL. Two other expansion teams would be added sometime later. Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976.
6. Beginning in 1967, the two leagues would hold a common draft.
7. The AFL would pay $26 million to the NFL (to go to the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers) for the right to impinge on franchised territory.
-It's interesting that the two teams that did the impinging, the Jets and Raiders, were the two teams that did the dissenting in the AFL merger vote.
The merger really was a win-win. The runaway success of the Super Bowl is an indication of that. Raiders managing general partner Al Davis didn't really see it that way. At the time of the merger agreement Davis was the AFL Commissioner and he wanted an all-out war with the NFL. He wanted to sign their players. He wanted to sign all of their draft picks. He wanted to crush the NFL. Davis was fighting a war while others within his own league were negotiating a peace. An all-out war would have only hurt both leagues and that's why the NFL owners and most of the AFL owners wanted a merger. Davis didn't like the merger and especially didn't like that Rozelle was going to be the Commissioner of the merged leagues. That dislike only grew over the years. Davis' anger was misguided. If he was upset with anyone it should have been with some of the members of his own league. The negotiations took place without his knowledge. The negotiations started before Davis became the AFL Commissioner but they mostly took place while he was in charge. He had no idea. If he had he probably would have tried to end them. The two leagues merged and Davis went back to running the Raiders and hating the NFL and Pete Rozelle. Everyone else has been pretty happy.
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