The American Football League: A Year-by-year History, 1960-69 [Paperback]

In 1959, when some of these oil men inquired after the NFL albatross Chicago Cardinals, venerable Bert Bell and the NFL did not wish to do business with them. Popular history [and Gruver] have it backwards: that the old conservative owners of the Redskins, Steelers, and Giants, among others, resented the modern upstarts, and only eventually accepted the idea of the Dallas Cowboys when absolutely forced to. In truth, any of the southwesterners were so conservative as to make Art Rooney look like Arlo Guthrie. The fact is that Bell, no fool, realized that the antitrust wolf was prowling around the NFL hen house, and recognition of franchises in Dallas and Minnesota was a small price to pay to make him go away. One can only imagine Bell's private disgust at being hoisted on his own petard, watching Texas oil interests, of all groups, threaten antitrust action.

The NFL expansion of 1961, modest as it was, left a string of frustrated suitors. In the long view of things, the fact that the late 1950's football entrepreneurs were fabulously rich established once and for all that whatever new league emerged would not be a dog-and-pony show. Prospective bidders for franchises would have to impress no less than the Hunt family with their solvency. With the notable exception of the Harry Wismer-New York Titans fiasco [later more than corrected by the Sonny Werblin consortium] the new AFL had more problems impressing critics than bankers. In its opening day clothes, the original AFL was a curious geographic imbalance, not surprisingly, tilted to the southwest. Boston and New York were courted for TV revenue, and those with long memories recalled that Buffalo had supported its 1940's pro team quite well.

But the banner teams-Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Denver-were two and three time zones west. From a television programming perspective, the new AFL mined a golden lode: a premier game in the Eastern Time Zone 4:00 P.M. slot where the NFL was generally signing off. Lamar Hunt, who for years had observed the ferocity of fan interest in Texas high school football, was able to convince ABC and then NBC, two networks eager to break CBS's stranglehold on pro football, that Americans would watch just about anybody play football if the time was right. It would be Nielsen ratings and popular opinion, not money, that would break or make the AFL.

Gruver's research of the business origins of the league is superficial. He relies on the popular misconceptions that have endured for over four decades, and adds little new by way of corporate analysis. Where he finds his comfort zone-not surprisingly for a professional sportswriter-is in his description of league play itself. There is a major implication here: the AFL, unlike other sports experiments, would not fold for lack of cash. Hunt, Hilton, Adams, Wilson, Werblin et. al. were not going to fold like cheap suitcases. If the league failed, it would be the brand of football on the field that brought it down.

Gruver's work is replete with descriptions of team characteristics, playing facilities, coaches and the like. Because of contractual problems-or the absence of major league sports in the new AFL cities-the playing conditions are a story unto themselves. Fully half of the home fields appear to have been either below sea level or had previous lives as toxic waste sites. In some cities the only available playing sites were literally salvaged from the wrecking ball: in New York the Polo Grounds, or the infamous "Rock Pile" in Buffalo. Interestingly, with the exception of a Sid Gillman, one is struck in the early days by an absence of great coaches [or somehow we have overlooked the genius of Frank Filchock and Buster Ramsey over the years.] By the end of the work, one is compelled to admit that the coach who most brought respectability to the league, love him or hate him, was Hank Stram, with Weeb Ewbank a close second. That Stram also appears to be one of the primary sources is not surprising,

The strength of this work is in Gruver's recognition that the players made the league. Those who are old enough to remember the AFL will be happy to relive memories with Gino Cappelletti, Wray Carlton, Mike Garrett, Don Maynard, Paul Lowe, Ernie Ladd, Billy Shaw, Lionel Taylor, Babe Parilli, Jim Otto, Jerry Mays, Charlie Hennigan, Buck Buchanan, Larry Grantham, Daryle Lamonica, and Keith Lincoln, to name some. Gruver follows a chronological sequence and monitors the division races throughout the text. The memorable games are recalled, often using text from the actual broadcast. Thus we get Merle Harmon's and Sam DeLuca's raw impressions of the infamous Heidi game-by radio, of course, due to NBC's never to be forgotten cutaway to Klara and Goat Peter.

Gruver has done well with this effort, probably about as far as a sportswriter could take it. I am of a mind that the two great sports developments of the post World War II era, the AFL and NASCAR, both deserve a masterful scholarly analysis. Gruver's work is a step in the right direction.