America's Passion: How a Coal Miner's Game Became the NFL in the 20th Century

By Evan Weiner

The NFL started in 1920, teams came and went. That history would repeat itself in the 1930s and the 1940s. Stability finally occurred in the 1950s with the arrival of television. Television transformed North American sports. In 1950, Baseball, Boxing and Horse Racing were among the most popular sporting events in the country. Within 10 years, football, the NFL, would begin its ascent and by 1965 become the country's most popular sport.
In the old days, you could find Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas at the Chicago Bears offices in the fall and part of winter, the rest of the year he would be in his Chicago sporting goods store. Andy Robustelli is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his work with the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants. Robustelli was a star with Los Angeles between 1951 and 1955 but requested a trade to New York because he could not be away from his thriving Stamford, Connecticut businesses and the Rams accommodated him. As Hall of Famer Artie Donovan once told me, his NFL of the 1950s bears absolutely no resemblance to today's NFL.
The National Football League was in the right place at the right time. There is no better TV game than football. A viewer can see everything as it develops on the field, the line of scrimmage, the quarterback handing off or passing the ball and the receiver catching it. It’s an easy game to watch and it didn't hurt that the New York Giants won a World's Championship in 1956 and played in the "Greatest Game of All Time" in 1958, losing in the NFL Championship game to Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts. That game started the lasting love affair between Americans and football. The Giants became the darlings of Madison Avenue, led by the handsome Frank Gifford and football gained acceptance. By 1960, the CBS show "20th Century" hosted by Walter Cronkite caught the football bug. The CBS weekly documentary ran a program entitled, "The Violent World of Sam Huff." Huff, the Giants middle linebacker was profiled and miked during a pre-season game to give the viewers an inside look during an NFL game.
The move from the mom and pop operations, the old football families, the Maras in New York, the Rooneys in Pittsburgh, Halas in Chicago to today's corporate status did not come overnight. The NFL had to fend off a rival league between 1946-49, taking in three All American Football Conference franchises in 1950, and continued to be plagued by franchise failures until 1952. The NFL enjoyed some franchise success between 1953 and 1956 and started to make plans to expand with the goal of adding teams by 1961. The Giants-Colts 1958 Championship Game changed football. Dallas businessman Lamar Hunt, who struck out in his attempts to move the Chicago Cardinals to his home city talked to Houston businessman Bud Adams in 1959 about starting a rival league after Adams failed to purchase the Cardinals and move them to Houston. The new American Football League was born and all of a sudden, football took off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evan Weiner
• Release date: Dec 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301093977

Evan Weiner

Evan Weiner is an award winning journalist who is among a very small number of people who cover the politics and business of sports and how that relationship affects not only sports fans but the non-sports fan as well. Weiner began his journalism career while in high school at the age of 15 in 1971. He won two Associated Press Awards for radio news coverage in 1978 and 1979. He was presented with the United States Sports Academy's first ever Distinguished Service Award for Journalism in 2003 in Mobile, Alabama. Advisor to the SUNY Cortland Sports Business Management Program. The United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award.He is the author of 14 books ,From Peach Baskets to Dance Halls and the Not-So-Stern NBA, America's Passion: How a Coal Miner's Game Became the NFL in the 20th Century, The Business and Politics of Sports -- 2005, The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition -- 2010 and 2014 Edition: The Business & Politics of Sports. The Stern Years: 1984-2014. The Politics Of Sports Business 2017, I Am Not Paul Bunyan And Other Tall Tales, The Politics of Sports Business 2018: Politicians, Business Leaders, Decision Makers, And Policy, The Politics Of Sports Business 2019, COVID-19 Edition: The Politics Of Sports Business 2020, The Politics Of Sports Business 2021, The Politics Of Sports Business 2022 and The Politics Of Sports Business 2023.He has been quoted in 25 other books and his words were read into the United States House of Representatives Congressional record: July 14, 2004 - Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eighth Congress, second session.He was been a columnist with the New York Sun and provided Westwood One Radio with daily commentaries between 1999 and 2006 called "The Business of Sports." He has also appeared on numerous television and radio shows both in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. He has been on msnbc, CN8 and ABCNewsNow.He has written for The Daily Beast about the politics of the sports and entertainment business and has a daily video podcast called, The Politics of Sports Business.Evan speaks on the business of politics of sports in colleges and universities as well as on cruise ships around the world.In 2015, Evan was featured in the movie documentary "Sons of Ben", the story of how a group of fans got a Major League Soccer team in the Philadelphia, PA market.Evan can be reached at [e-mail], https://www.facebook.com/evanj.weiner and @evanjweiner on twitter.

Book preview

America's Passion: How a Coal Miner's Game Became the NFL in the 20th Century

By Evan Weiner, TV and Radio pundit, newspaper columnist and public speaker

Dedication:

For my late father-in-law Edwin Schaffer, who would have enjoyed seeing this book and my mother-in-law Blanche Schaffer, my parents the late Arnold Weiner and Sally Weiner and all the Weiners, Stillers, Honigsfelds, Schaffers and Atkins.

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to Don Sabatini, who with one call in 1988 changed my career, Gary Bridges, R.D. Steele, Coach John Madden (who I doubt knew my first name), the daily gang at the NFL-USFL trial in 1986, including Gary Chester and Bruce Morton. Dan and Heather Rascher, Jeff, Jim Williams, Tanya Bickley, Shelly Saltman, Bob Block, Norman MacLean, Tom McClimon, Ted Fay and Scott Ammon. Very special thanks to a number of people connected with football for taking the time to talk to me about the business, including Wellington Mara, Dr. Harvey Schiller, Art Modell, Lamar Hunt, Alex Kroll, Tex Schramm, Tom Landry, Weeb Ewbank, Otto Graham, Pete Rozelle, Harry Usher, John David Crow, Jim Otto, John Unitas, Buddy Dial, Dan Rooney, Bud Adams, Abner Haynes, John Wooten, Ron Mix, Randy Vataha, Dave Jennings, Tom Benson, Roman Gabriel, Gil Brandt, Carl Francis, John Mackey, Nesby Glasgow, Harry Carson, Hank Stram, George Young, Stan Jones, Paul Maguire, Joe Namath, Jack Kemp, Harry Carson, Drew Pearson, Alex Spanos, Tom Catlain, Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, Brian Urlacher, Ron Riti, Mark Simoneau, Jack Faulkner, John Bankert, Lee Remmel, Bucko Kilroy, Bud Adams, Ben Agajanian, Dick Coury, Jack Pardee, Jerry Kramer, Arthur J. Donovan, who is my all-time favorite interview, and Frank Tripucka. Thanks to the people in the National Football League's New York office and to the various public relations departments around the NFL. Thanks to Vince McMahon. Also my wife Brenda and my two children, Megan and Jarred.

Cover photo: Beattie Feathers, 1938, Brooklyn Dodgers runner, courtesy of Norman C. Mac Lean.

Evan Weiner holds the copyright to the materials used in this book. Copyright 2001, 2006 and 2012 Evan Weiner

ISBN: 9781301093977

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Preface

I was giving a talk about football at New York University one night before a group of graduate students interested in sports business. I asked a question of the group. Do you think the National Football League has become the multi-billion dollar business because of planning or did the NFL become the NFL by being in the right place at the right time?

The students really didn't know. Nor did students at Ithaca College, Cortland State University, Sacred Heart University, Niagara University and the other colleges and universities that I have had the opportunity to speak at. The truth of the matter is that the National Football League was little more than a mom-pop operation until the 1960s.

The NFL started in 1920, teams came and went. That history would repeat itself in the 1930s and the 1940s. Stability finally occurred in the 1950s with the arrival of television. Television transformed North American sports. In 1950, Baseball, Boxing and Horse Racing were among the most popular sporting events in the country. Within 10 years, football, the NFL, would begin its ascent and by 1965 become the country's most popular sport.

In the old days, you could find Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas at the Chicago Bears offices in the fall and part of winter, the rest of the year he would be in his Chicago sporting goods store. Andy Robustelli is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his work with the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants. Robustelli was a star with Los Angeles between 1951 and 1955 but requested a trade to New York because he could not be away from his thriving Stamford, Connecticut businesses and the Rams accommodated him. As Hall of Famer Artie Donovan once told me, his NFL of the 1950s bares absolutely no resemblance to today's NFL.

The National Football League was in the right place at the right time. There is no better TV game than football. A viewer can see everything as it develops on the field, the line of scrimmage, the quarterback handing off or passing the ball and the receiver catching it. It’s an easy game to watch and it didn't hurt that the New York Giants won a World's Championship in 1956 and played in the Greatest Game of All Time in 1958, losing in the NFL Championship game to Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts. That game started the lasting love affair between Americans and football. The Giants became the darlings of Madison Avenue, led by the handsome Frank Gifford and football gained acceptance. By 1960, the CBS show 20th Century hosted by Walter Cronkite caught the football bug. The CBS weekly documentary ran a program entitled, The Violent World of Sam Huff. Huff, the Giants middle linebacker was profiled and miked during a pre-season game to give the viewers an inside look during an NFL game.

The move from the mom and pop operations, the old football families, the Maras in New York, the Rooneys in Pittsburgh, Halas in Chicago to today's corporate status did not come overnight. The NFL had to fend off a rival league between 1946-49, taking in three All American Football Conference franchises in 1950, and continued to be plagues by franchise failures until 1952. The NFL enjoyed some franchise success between 1953 and 1956 and started to make plans to expand with the goal of adding teams by 1961. The Giants-Colts 1958 Championship Game changed football. Dallas businessman Lamar Hunt, who struck in his attempts to move the Chicago Cardinals to his home city talked to Houston businessman Bud Adams in 1959 about starting a rival league after Adams failed to purchase the Cardinals and move them to Houston. The new American Football League was born and all of a sudden, football took off.

Both CBS and NBC battled to land NFL TV rights. CBS kept winning the prize, but in 1964, NBC gave the AFL a nearly identical contract to what CBS gave the NFL annually. Football was longer a mom and pop operation. The NFL merged with the AFL in 1966, the Super Bowl was created and football became a huge business, not out of some plan but by accident. The growth of TV and the NFL went hand in hand.

Today's NFL is a multi-billion dollar, global business. The Super Bowl is virtually a national holiday. But, it wasn't always like that. Football was nearly banned in 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt would not recognize what he helped save more than a century ago. Football has become America's sports pastime, not by design but by circumstances.

This book was originally scheduled to be published in 2001 but never did see the light of day for various reasons. Two publishers agreed to put out the book but both backed out. Ironically the manuscript you are reading was finished on June 8, 2001. That date was the thirty fifth anniversary of the announcement of the AFL-NFL merger.

Evan Weiner, New York,

December, 2012

>>Chapter 1 – The Super Bowl is now an annual American February holiday

The Super Bowl is uniquely American. The Fourth of July is America's Birthday Party but the Super Bowl is American's excuse for a party. Supermarkets have Super sales for countless Super parties, but it wasn't always like this.

Back in 1967, it was just called the World Championship Game, AFL vs. NFL. The game was held in the 94,000 seat Los Angeles Coliseum. The ticket prices were $12, $10 and $6. There were 33,000 empty seats. It was the last time a Super Bowl or the World Championship Game was not a sellout.

There were no parties, no weeklong football orgies. In fact, it wasn't until January 1973 when Super Bowl parties took on a different life. The Commissioner's Party was held on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Today, Super Bowl week is a holiday in the host city.

The first game was played on January 15, 1967 just 26 days after the final approval of the merger between the National Football League and the American Football League. Both CBS and NBC televised it using the same television feed but with different announcers. The networks charged $42,000 for a 30 second commercial. The two leagues had to put together a game in a hurry. The two networks paid $9.5 million to televise the game.

The leagues couldn't even agree on which ball to use, so they compromised. When Green Bay was on offense, they used the Wilson Duke football. When Kansas City had the ball, they used the AFL sanctioned Spalding J5-V.

Today there is still that one feed, but the game is internationally televised. Cities bid for Super Bowls years in advance. Networks put up big money for regular season games so they could get the Super Bowl once every three years.

It's no longer NFL vs. AFL, NFL advertisers vs. AFL advertisers. CBS vs. NBC. In fact, Disney televises the year's game every three years along with FOX and CBS but in 1967, the American Football League and the Kansas City Chiefs were considered to be part of a Mickey Mouse League by Vince Lombardi, the Green Bay Packers and the NFL.

To top that, Lombardi and the Packers prepared in Southern California because the league felt it was the best way to sell tickets.

He got a lot of pressure put on him by the other owners of the National Football League. That was a bitter relationship with the AFL and NFL, recalled Jerry Kramer, the former Packer offensive lineman. "I'm not sure there still aren't still some rivalries in that situation.

Lombardi got calls from virtually everyone in the NFL saying we were representing the NFL and the pride of the NFL and we couldn't be beaten.

Lombardi even had to deal with William Paley's CBS Television Network and NFL partner.

I was talking to Frank Gifford years ago and he mentioned that he announced that first Super Bowl, Kramer continued. "Gifford said he was fairly cool, fairly calm and relaxed and we went over to put his arm on Vince's shoulder and Lombardi was shaking like a leaf.

Gifford said that really made me nervous. Gifford, of course, was the CBS announcer and represented the NFL. Sadly, neither network bothered to keep a video of the game.

Lombardi’s Packers easily disposed of the Kansas City Chiefs in the first annual American Football League-National Football League Championship Game or World Championship Games AFL vs. NFL in Los Angeles 35-10. Green Bay would win the second championship game over the Oakland Raiders a year later in Miami.

The Los Angeles game did not sell out as just 61,946 people bought tickets in the 93,607 Los Angeles Coliseum. It was the only Super Bowl that didn’t sell out.

Green Bay won the first NFL vs. AFL matchup and Lombardi was able to exhale. But Lombardi was right in this sense. The NFL was the favored league of the sports media in those days with Tex Maule of Sports Illustrated leading the charge against the AFL. Green Bay won the first two championships and the football media dismissed the American Football League and players like Joe Namath and teams like the New York Jets, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders.

The flaw in the thinking was this. The AFL was signing players out of the same college pool as the NFL and the AFL coaches like Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gillman and Al Davis came out of the NFL. The AFL has had the same TV money available to them as the NFL thanks to David Sarnoff's anger at losing the NFL contract deal to his CBS rival William Paley. Sarnoff's NBC was the AFL's bank and the Sonny Werblin used some of Sarnoff's money to sign Joe Namath.

On January 12, 1969, the Super Bowl name became the unofficial-official name of the game and what people didn’t know at noon local time in Miami where some seats were still available for the game that the football industry was about to change before their eyes.

Going into that final World Championship Game AFL vs. NFL, the Jets had a legion of fans...the entire American Football League was behind them.

The press, of course, continued to malign the league through its entire existence, said the Hall of Fame Offensive Tackle Ron Mix who played with the LA/San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders between 1960-71."As a result, there was a mentality of us against them. If you were an AFLer, then you were very loyal to the AFL.

To this day, in the Super Bowl game, the one I am rooting for is in the AFL unless its Pittsburgh, they don't count, Cleveland (now Baltimore) doesn't count and Baltimore (now Indianapolis). An historic AFL team, I'm always rooting for.

The owners could not even agree to a name. Just the World's Championship Game, although by the next year Al Davis referred to the game as the Super Bowl. The very name Super Bowl came by accident and it came from Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, the man who founded the AFL because he could not get an NFL team in Dallas.

It was one of the spur of the moment things, said Hunt. No one ever said what are we going to call it? It was one of those things that just came out of the mouth. It was not too inspired.

Hunt was home one day watching his children play with a ball when he first uttered the words.

They each had a Super Ball that my wife had given to them and they were always talking about them and I just used the expression Super Bowl and it was an accidental thing and it seems to have caught on.

But NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle didn't like the name nor did NFL owners. Still, the game had no name and no one had suggested anything else. In fact, there was no Super Bowl Committee. It was Rozelle's idea to call the contest, The AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

Everybody said, that's a corny name, Hunt recalled. But the members of the committee started using that name and one thing lead to another. After the second game, it was formally adopted.

But Hunt did talk to Rozelle, and Hunt the visionary who founded the AFL was very persuasive and Rozelle listened.

Lamar talked to me after the first couple of games and told me his daughter had a funny ball, a toy. She’d bounce it. It was a super ball, remembered Pete Rozelle in September 1990. "He said why we don’t call it the Super Bowl?

Well to me, you know when I was in high school (in the 1940s), super was a big word. You know this was super, that was super. I thought that sounds a little corny, but then finally, I decided this was worth a shot and it course it has a totally different connotation when used on the game today. We decided to do it then, so we started calling it that and it really caught on.

Rozelle did not recall any formal discussion on the name. It just became the Super Bowl by 1969 despite the fact that he didn’t really like the name.

As far as the Wham-O Super Ball? It’s shelve life was considerably less than the Super Bowl. It was a toy made Zectron. Chemical Engineer Norma Stingley found that when formed at 50,000 pounds of pressure, Zectron becomes uncontrollably bouncy. Wham-O began producing a ball made of Zectron in 1967, the same year that Super Bowl I was played between the Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers. After only a few years, the double-top secret formula for Zectron was copied by Wham-O's competitors and the Super Ball floundered. The Super Ball was out of production by 1976.

Today the Super Bowl means millions of dollars for the airline industry, the hotel industry, the rent-a-car industry, the restaurant industry in the host city and the TV industry. The league uses the promise of awarding a game to a city if that town builds a new stadium. The Super Bowl is one of the few events that brings out of town money to a sporting event.

Miami is a regular in the Super Bowl rotation, but in January 1969 the Jets-Colts match up sold out just minutes before kickoff. The Jets victory might have been crushing for old line NFL owners, but even Rozelle in the NFL Publication, The Super Bowl, Celebrating a Quarter of a Century of America's Greatest Game, admitted the Jets upset that day mushroomed interest in football.

The Jets-Colts game was the turning point in the popularity of the Super Bowl. The National Football League and the media thought the old league would just be better all the time.

Jets Coach Weeb Ewbank and Hall of Fame Quarterback Otto Graham thought different. Graham had coached the College All-Stars in their annual pre-season game with the NFL Champions in Chicago and saw that the AFL was getting good football players.

Ewbank didn't see the Green Bay Packers crushing either the Kansas City Chiefs in January 1967 in Los Angeles or the Oakland Raiders in January 1968 in Miami in the World Championship Game. He saw teams that made mistakes and lost.

The New York Jets were the free spending rebels from the rebel league. New York quarterback Joe Namath had a large contract, wore long hair and played in white shoes. The Colts quarterbacks, Earl Morrall and Johnny Unitas both had crew cuts. Namath was known as Broadway Joe, a nickname given to him by former Colt and Jet offensive lineman Sherman Plunkett. Unitas was known as Johnny U and wore black high top cleats.

Namath had a public perception of being a playboy who enjoyed New York life to its fullest and was a braggart. Unitas had little to say.

While Ewbank was studying films of the Colts and analyzing why the Chiefs and Raiders lost, Namath was talking and was ahead of his time as a trash talk pioneer. Except Namath only said two things and was probably only echoing what his coaching staff and