The AFL/NFL Merger (1966)

The Merger That Changed the Face of Professional Football

By November, they had been joined by Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills and William H. Sullivan's Boston Patriots. The AFL got their players two ways, the first was by signing last year's college graduates to the team. The second was signing free agents; people whose contracts had expired with the NFL or those with no professional experience.

Finally, after all what had been accomplished in the previous year, led to the creation of the AFL. For the eight total teams, head coaches were hired, schedules were created and the rules were set in stone, but no team had a stadium of their own. The AFL had a distinction for going after the “NFL Rejects,” the players and the coaches that had been turned down or had a expired contract with the NFL. Ange Coniglio, an author that contributes to remembertheafl.com, states “in a fourteen-game schedule, each team played every other team in the league twice, once at home and once away. In their own home stadium, every year, fans of an AFL team got to see every other team in the league, with all its stars. Thus, they could enjoy and judge the merits of those teams and players first-hand, unlike the NFL, in which some teams did not play at home at all. This left the NFL fans to depend on other teams' home-town reporters to tell them how great the players were,” (remembertheafl.com).

Due to the AFL’s tendency to take college talent, the NFL started the merger talks. They were fearful that Al Davis’ “take no prisoners” tactics would reduce the talent they could choose from. Buffalo placekicker Pete Gogolak, the first soccer-style kicker in pro football, played out his contract with the Bills and signed with the Giants, even though both sides had a tacit agreement not to touch players in Gogolak's position, which almost ended the merger talks. The two leagues would combine to form 26 total teams by 1969. Those teams were the New Orleans Saints in 1967, the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968, and the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976. The Atlanta Falcons and the Miami Dolphins were already established and set to start play for the 1966 season, before the merger was announced in June (“NFL- AFL Merger” via wikipedia). There were originally sixteen teams that were in the NFL and ten teams in the AFL. The commissioner of the NFL Pete Rozelle needed three teams to join the AFL also known as the AFC and those three teams were the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts, and Pittsburgh Steelers. They all joined the AFL making the NFL and AFL have even amount of teams, thirteen on each conference.

With the merge announced and happening, many changes came about. For example, teams got jerseys with their last name on them (adopted by the NFL in 1970). They also had a scoreboard to keep official time, instead of field officials keeping track. All the existing franchises would remain where they were, no one would be moved. Other changes included a permanent switch to a 14 game schedule. The NFL had played a 12-game schedule since 1947, and then changed to a 14-game schedule in 1961, a year after the American Football League instituted it. The AFL also introduced the two point conversion to professional football 34 years before the NFL instituted it in 1994. With all the changes that the merger created, the NFL is more like the old AFL today. Including the more exciting style of play and colorful uniforms (“NFL-AFL Merger” via wikipedia).