20 19 20 15 2 THE HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE Alan Ameche’s 1-yard touchdown run gave the Colts a 23 17 overtime win against the Giants in the 1958 NFL title game invited three of the franchises Cleveland the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts to join the NFL The popularity of professional football grew in the 1950s as games were shown on television In 1950 the Rams became the first NFL team to have all their games on television The 1951 championship between the Rams and Cleveland Browns was the first nationally televised game The 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants pushed professional football’s popularity to another level The nationally broadcast game is still commonly called the greatest game ever played It was the first title game to go into overtime The Colts won in sudden death behind legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas Birth of the AFL Texas oilman Lamar Hunt tried more than once to buy an NFL team He was continuously denied So the young businessman decided to start his own league He worked with several 8
2 4 72 22 22 The Chargers in white and Buffalo Bills in blue were charter members of the AFL in 1960 9
THE HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE other millionaires to create the eight-team American Football League AFL in 1959 The new league signed a five-year contract to have games televised by ABC It started play in September 1960 The AFL featured a more exciting brand of football There was more passing and scoring than in the NFL The AFL added other features still used today These include player names on jerseys an official game clock on the scoreboard and the two-point conversion The leagues competed for fans and players but the AFL held its own against the more established NFL The bidding war for players hit a high point in 1965 Teams from both leagues drafted University of Kansas running back Gale Sayers He signed with the NFL’s Chicago Bears In addition both the AFL and NFL wanted to sign University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath The AFL offered Namath a massive salary which he took The Merger Leaders from both leagues saw the skyrocketing salaries as a problem They held secret meetings to discuss combining the leagues A merger was announced on June 8 1966 All 24 teams from the two leagues would keep playing The winners of each league would meet in a championship game after the 1966 season Starting in 1967 the NFL and AFL would hold one combined draft This would end the bidding wars that drove up player salaries In 1970 they would completely merge and the AFL would cease to exist The NFL’s Green Bay Packers won the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Games which later became known as 10
12 46 6 Joe Namath and the New York Jets showed that AFL teams could compete with the NFL 11
