On November 21, 1963, the U.S. Fourth Court of Appeals decided in favor of the NFL in a $10 million antitrust suit, filed by the American
Football League. This new league, founded by Lamar Hunt, meant to compete with the NFL head to head. The news of this victory was sweet. But the following day, Friday, November 22, as Dad and I sipped coffee in the restaurant of the Roosevelt Hotel in Pittsburgh, someone shouted out, “The president's been shot!” We ran to our office and turned on the television, to learn John F. Kennedy had been gunned down in Dallas. We stayed glued to the TV set all day, caught up by the tragic events unfolding before our eyes. By nightfall, the tolling church bells echoed throughout the city. The next morning, the flags at half staff confirmed the death of the president. Steeped in Catholic tradition and strongly Democratic, Pittsburgh mourned.
I was still in shock when I received a call from Pete Rozelle late Friday, asking what I thought about playing football on Sunday as usual. I thought the assassination of the president demanded we cancel all games and told him so. We had a good talk and Pete agreed to think about it before making a final decision. Pete had called me instead of my father, not only because I was in charge of the day-to-day activities of the team, but because we had become very good friends. We always seemed to think alike.
Over the next two days, Pete and I talked almost hourly. Both of us received a flood of calls from family, friends, politicians, and business leaders. Of course, I talked to my father. He knew the Catholic community was especially shaken by the assassination.
Bud Rieland, my best man and longtime friend, called and said, “You're not really considering playing the game on Sunday, are you?”
While I tested the pulse of the community, Pete consulted the president's press secretary, Pierre Salinger. I knew they were good friends and years before had been classmates at the University of San Francisco.
When Pete called me he said, “Pierre says we should go ahead with the games. Jack Kennedy would have wanted it that way.” Rozelle had
discussed with Pierre the fact that no games had been scheduled in Dallas or Washington, D.C., that Sunday, which made the decision to go ahead with the games a little easier. Pete thought Salinger was right. Playing football on Sunday might have a positive effect on the country and signal to the world that America could still function during this time of tragedy and crisis. Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War. We didn't know whether the assassination was part of a Soviet-backed conspiracy or the work of a madman. Still, I didn't agree with the decision to play on Sunday, and I told Pete it was a mistake.
The back-and-forth calls continued until, finally, early Saturday morning, Pete called and told me the games would go on. I told him, “Okay, Pete, I disagree, but I'll support you.”
Hours later Rozelle issued the following statement: “It has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedy's game. He thrived on competition.” The games were played but not televised.
Pete later told me it was the wrong decision, one of the few he regretted making during his term as commissioner. But no one could have anticipated what came next. That Sunday, just two hours before kickoff, I was on the stadium roof at Forbes Field with a transistor radio pressed to my ear. Newscasters reported from Dallas that Jack Ruby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin. The Chicago Bears had already taken the field to warm up when I called security to alert them of this newest development. We determined to go ahead with the game and not make any announcements until all the facts were in. Following the national anthem, the somber crowd hushed for a minute of silent prayer and the game went on.
When we played at Forbes Field, I always watched the game from the roof, because here I could get the best view and follow the action as it moved downfield. Mike Ditka, a Western Pennsylvania boy who had starred at Aliquippa High School and later at the University of Pittsburgh, had a terrific game for the Bears. The Bears would go on
to win the NFL championship that year, but the Steelers fought them to a 17-17 tie. My mind was on the news reports from Dallas coming through my little transistor radio, and calls from our security team. We really didn't know what to expect that day. Fortunately, there were no incidents.
While I paced the roof, my father stayed in the press box. He had given strict instructions for the Steelerettes to stay seated on the bench and not lead any cheers. It was a very cold day, and by halftime a light snow began to fall. Dad took pity on the shivering girls and asked an equipment man to run to the locker room and get jackets for them. Soon they were decked out in oversized Steelers jackets, now warm but invisible to the crowd.
Rozelle and the league received a great deal of criticism for the decision to go on with the games, especially since the rival AFL had cancelled its games. When I reflect on this terrible time, it helps put football in perspective. There are more important things than playing football every Sunday, and we have to make decisions based on what's right. The NFL learned this lesson; we all learned this lesson in 1963. When Commissioner Paul Tagliabue called me following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there was little question we would postpone all the games scheduled that week.
The year 1963 tested the NFL in other ways, as well. Gambling represents one of the greatest threats to professional sports. Rozelle recognized this. Early in his administration he launched an investigation of players, coaches, and even owners to ensure that the NFL was squeaky clean. He hired former FBI agents to uncover any trace of gambling within the league. Then early in the year came shocking news. Two of the NFL's greatest stars, Paul Hornung, the Green Bay Packers MVP running back, and Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions All-Pro defensive tackle, had bet on gamesâincluding games involving their own teams. The national news media broke the story and Rozelle knew he had to get to the bottom of the rumors. If they were
true, he'd have to make an example of these superstars. The reputation of the league depended upon swift and decisive action.
My father and I backed him all the way and so did most of the other owners, although Carroll Rosenbloom, co-owner of the Baltimore Colts, was under league investigation himself. The evidence against Hornung and Karras was overwhelming. With the approval of the owners, Rozelle suspended both players, levied heavy fines, and sent a warning to the league that gambling would not be tolerated. He posted signs in every locker room, reminding players and coaches of the NFL's no-tolerance policy. Pete's toughness on this issue reflected my father's feelings exactly, and set a standard in the NFL that guides the league.
Both Hornung and Karras would return to their teams after missing one full season. But four years later, Karras made the front pages again. In August 1967 he fanned the burning competition between the NFL and AFL into open flame and threatened the fragile partnership brokered by Rozelle in 1966. The Detroit Lions traveled to Denver to play the Broncos in a preseason game. No AFL team had ever beaten an NFL team. In January, the NFL Green Bay Packers had defeated the AFL Kansas City Chiefs in the first Super Bowl. The Packers' domination of the Chiefs confirmed what many sportswriters thought: the NFL was a much better league and it would be years before the AFL would be competitive. Karras was so confident of victory over the Broncos that he announced on national television, “If Denver wins I'll walk home.”
I also believed the NFL to be the superior league, but I knew the AFL had latched on to a lot of talent, and several teams had the potential to be competitive with our teams. I didn't think Karras shooting his mouth off like that was appropriate. It wouldn't help the delicate merger process, and I didn't feel Karras was the ideal spokesman for our league, considering his gambling troubles.
So what do you think happens? Denver wins, the first AFL team to
beat an NFL team, ever, and the chant “Walk, Karras, walk!” could be heard in every NFL stadium.
This incident is only a small indication of the intensity of the rivalry that had been brewing since the founding of the AFL in 1960. The AFL comprised eight teams: Boston Patriots (later the New England Patriots in 1971), Los Angeles Chargers (later San Diego Chargers in 1961), Denver Broncos, New York Titans (later the New York Jets in April 1963), Houston Oilers, Buffalo Bills, Dallas Texans (later Kansas City Chiefs in 1963), and Oakland Raiders.
The genius behind the new league was Lamar Hunt, owner of the Dallas Texans, who had tried and failed to acquire an NFL franchise. Locked out of our league, he founded his own. The AFL was well financed and well organized, with its owners willing to go after the best talent in the country and pay top dollar. AFL coaches and scouts scoured the country looking for the best college players.
The NFL was so worried about losing top college talent, especially quarterbacks, that we implemented a “hand-holders” program. This odd scheme worked like this: we used experienced former players, coaches, and college associates to establish “relationships” with top-ranked players and make sure they didn't sign an AFL contract. The hand-holders got to know their charges and helped them in any way they could without violating NCAA and amateur rules. Above all, the hand-holders needed to keep the college kids away from the AFL agents who worked hard to lure them away.
The Steelers had set their sights on a kid named Aaron Brown, a big defensive lineman from the University of Minnesota. We assigned Buddy Young to take Brown under his wing. Only five foot four, Buddy was a stand-out African-American running back, known as the “Bronze Bullet,” and had played for several AAFC and NFL teams. He put Aaron up in a hotel but made the mistake of getting a room on the first floor. The AFL guys sneaked him out through a back window, and Brown was halfway to Kansas City before we knew what
happened. Brown went on to have a successful career with the Chiefs and, later, with the Green Bay Packers. Buddy was a good hand-holder, and he went on to become one of the first black executives in the NFL.
The bidding war was ruining us. The AFL teams seemed to have money to burn. Take Joe Namath, who signed with the New York Jets in 1965 for the unheard salary of $427,000. Namath quarterbacked his high school team in Beaver Falls, near Pittsburgh, before going on to break records at Alabama for Bear Bryant's Crimson Tide. He was brash, he was bold, a phenomenal talent, and everyone wanted him. The AFL guys simply outbid us.
Nothing like this had happened in the NFL since my father had signed Whizzer White in 1938 for $15,800, a salary three times the going rate. Just as then, Namath's contract shattered the salary barrier and the NFL-AFL rivalry entered a new phase.
In 1966 Al Davis, coach and general manager of the AFL's Oakland Raiders, took over as AFL commissioner. Lamar Hunt knew exactly what he was doing. He needed a tough guy at the bargaining table. Davis had already attracted attention with his in-your-face style, hard-nosed football, and aggressive pursuit of NFL-bound college players. He wanted nothing to do with the NFL, and would fight it tooth and nail, city by city. And he wanted the merger to come on his terms. Now he was AFL commissioner.
To complicate matters, in the spring of 1966 the New York Giants signed soccer-style kicker Pete Gogolak away from the AFL's Buffalo Bills. This shattered the six-year unwritten agreement that neither league would raid the other's veteran players. Davis encouraged retaliation by raiding NFL quarterbacks. At the very moment the war between the leagues seemed about to explode, Rozelle met with Tex Schramm and Lamar Hunt.
Tex was president of the Dallas Cowboys, an expansion team that entered the NFL in 1960. Tex had given Rozelle his big break years
earlier when he hired him shortly after the war as the director of publicity for the Los Angeles Rams. They were close friends, and Pete believed Tex was the guy to negotiate with the AFL. Pete asked him to meet in secret with Hunt, the kingpin of the AFL, because he didn't want Davis to undermine the negotiations.
Then on June 8, 1966, in a surprising joint statement, the AFL and NFL announced they had reached a merger agreement. It would be a gradual transition. Both leagues would remain separate until 1970, when the two leagues would combine to form the new National Football League with two conferencesâthe American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Until the final merger in 1970, play between the leagues would be limited to preseason games and a “Super Bowl” between the AFL and NFL champions at the end of each season. The provisions of the merger included two-network TV coverage (NBC-AFC and CBS-NFC) and the addition of four franchises. No franchises would move from their present cities. Most important, a common draft, beginning in 1967, would eliminate the bidding war.
No doubt, Davis felt betrayed, not only by the merger itself but by the way he had been deliberately cut out of the negotiations. The AFL owners had obviously used him when they needed a tough guy in order to gain a better bargaining position. Then they left him twisting in the wind. By the terms of the agreement, Davis would be out of a job in four years and, in the meantime, he would have to play second fiddle to the NFL commissioner.
I got to know Al Davis well in the late 1960s. He didn't take the Rozelle appointment well; maybe he thought he should have gotten the job. He quit after only three months as AFL commissioner to return to Oakland, where he emerged as part owner and general manager of the Raiders. From the start, Al and I were usually on different sides. He deliberately tried to confuse issues so he could gain an advantage. Everyone realized the merger was inevitable, that in four
years we'd be one league, but Davis still played by the old rules, treating other NFL teams as the enemy.