Peacemakers The Pioneers Jim Perry 1990 Super Bowl XXV Their first meeting was right out of a spy novel. On Monday night, April 4,1966, 33-yearold Lamar Hunt, founder of the American Football League and owner of the league's Kansas City Chiefs, flew into Dallas. He would take another flight to Houston to attend AFL meetings. While waiting for his next flight, however, Hunt left the plane and walked quickly into the terminal. At the airport's towering statue of a Texas Ranger, he met 45-year-old Tex Schramm, president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys of the rival National Football League. It was a secret rendezvous. The two men shook hands, then walked into the darkness of the parking lot to Schramm's 1966 Oldsmobile. As they sat in the front seat of the car for half an hour, the Cowboys' general manager outlined the details of a plan-one that had the backing of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The plan would prove critical for the future of pro football. Schramm proposed a merger of two bitter enemies-the AFL and the NFL. Informal talks had gone on for six years, with no success, but this time Schramm was determined to have serious talks that would not fail. Bidding furiously against each other, the two leagues had spent a combined $7 million to sign 1966 draft choices, a small fortune at that time. Hunt listened politely to Schramm's proposals and agreed to talk further. Then he flew to Houston. Slightly more than two months and countless conversations later, the merger of the two leagues was announced on June 8. It was a remarkable end to six years of warfare, and Tex Schramm and Lamar Hunt deserve much of the credit for the final agreement that paved the way for the success of the NFL since. Nearly 25 years after their secret meeting at the airport, Hunt, now 58, and Schramm, 70, agreed to relive those exhausting, but ultimately successful days and nights. Incidentally, the name of that Dallas airport is Love Field. Tex, what led you to initiate negotiations for a merger? Schramm: "It became clear to me that something had to be done because the whole framework of professional football was being destroyed. "What was basically happening in their league, and eventually in our league, was that players were no longer being drafted on their ability and potential. Instead, they were selected on whether or not they could be signed. "The draft was the guts of our system. The weaker teams could get the better players and strengthen themselves. But the whole system was falling apart. Money was becoming more preeminent in signing a player than the draft was. "In other words, the weaker teams were being forced to take lesser players, because they couldn't sign the better ones. So they wouldn't draft them in the first place. If they did draft them and couldn't sign them, they turned them over to the better teams, so the league wouldn't lose them. "Some clubs were drafting players in the first round who normally would have been third- or fourth-round picks. "Several teams in their league were winding up with all the players, and this was happening in our league, too. You can't have three or four great teams and the rest lousy ones. Once you take away the competitive aspect of the game, you destroy the package." Hunt: "I believed a merger was desirable because the economics in pro football were not good for either side. I felt it would be a good thing if we could stabilize the sport. "I also was prejudiced. I was looking at it from the AFL standpoint, and I wanted to see the AFL succeed more than anything. We needed stability. We needed for the public to know that our teams were going to succeed in the cities where they were located." Were you surprised by Tex's phone call to set up that first meeting? Hunt: "It wasn't a total surprise, because there had been merger conversations on an informal basis for a number of years, but in this case it was much further along than before."
What was different? Schramm: "These talks involved an entirely new concept. The other ones wanted AFL teams, like Denver, to drop out. But in my proposal all AFL teams would still exist. That was what was critical." How did the negotiation process start? Schramm: "I felt that we had to do something. I called Dan Reeves [owner of the Los Angeles Rams], who I worked with for ten years, and told him what my concept was and asked him whether or not he thought it could be done. After talking it over with Dan, I called Pete Rozelle. "Pete said, 'Go ahead, give it a try.' I told him I would and that I would keep him advised as we went along." Schramm and Rozelle agreed to keep the merger discussions confidential and only involve two NFL owners in the early stages, Wellington Mara of the New York Giants and Lou Spadia of the San Francisco 49ers, who were sharing New York and the Bay Area with AFL teams-the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. Schramm talked to both men, who expressed reservations but agreed that he should proceed further. Schramm and Rozelle then decided to approach Hunt, who had founded the AFL in the summer of 1959, when he was only 27. Although his team was located in Kansas City, Hunt lived just a few blocks from Schramm in Dallas, which would prove convenient as the talks progressed. Tex, why did you choose Lamar as your AFL counterpart in negotiations? Schramm: "He was the league. He started it. I also thought he was the type of guy who would see a way to get it done." Were the two of you optimistic at the start of negotiations? Schramm: "I'm always an optimistic person if I start something." Hunt: "I was cautiously optimistic, but these conversations had gone on informally for a number of years, even as early as 1960 [theafl s first season], and I had no reason to think that these were going to be any more productive than the ones before. "The biggest stumbling block was the personal antagonism that had gone on for six years between the two leagues. There was a lot of distrust." If talks had taken place before with no success, why did they ultimately succeed in 1966? Hunt: "They were really quite different in 1966, because at that point the AFL had begun to prove to some people that it could stay alive. "Our new TV contract with NBC, which began in 1965, was for escalating amounts of money, and it really insured that the AFL would stay in business. It was the most dramatic single development in regard to the competition of the two leagues. The first contract with ABC gave us some exposure, but the money was not large. The second one gave us the competitive ability to go and sign players, and it was much more stabilizing than the first one. "But it was a chain reaction of things. Our success in New York was very, very important. The Jets had played in Shea Stadium since 1964-the best stadium in NewYork City--and in 1965 they signed Joe Namath and averaged about 55,000 [fans] a game paid. I think that convinced the NFL that, 'Hey, they're gonna make it in NewYork City. In fact, they have made it.' New York had appeared to be our real Achilles heel. "In addition, we had other new stadiums that were under construction, the Oakland Coliseum [which opened in 1966] and San Diego Stadium [1967]. I think the people in the NFL could see the handwriting on the wall." Schramm: "With due respect to Lamar, I don't think the AFL's success had anything to do with it. What was happening was, both leagues were going to die. Our weaker teams could not compete." But by 1966 you must have been convinced that the AFL was going to survive. Schramm: "After they got their NBC contract, we were both going to go down the drain. They had nine teams, and we had fifteen, and we were going to be down to where we had maybe fourteen or fifteen total. Both leagues would be half leagues. That's what was already in the process." As the discussions began, Schramm and Hunt agreed they should be kept confidential. In the NFL, Schramm discussed the potential merger only with Rozelle, Mara, and Spadia. In the AFL, Hunt didn't inform the other owners until early May. After that, he part of a three-man committee that included Ralph Wilson, owner of the Buffalo Bills, and Billy Sullivan, owner of the New England Patriots. A new force also was about to get involved in the relationship between the two leagues. At the AFL meetings in Houston, Joe Foss resigned as commissioner, and Al Davis, coach and general manager of the Raiders, was selected to replace him.
Was Davis part of the early discussions? Hunt: "No. Al had just been hired as the commissioner, and the conversations we were having really were exploratory in nature. He was not involved in them. I didn't even keep him aware of what was going on. At a point where I let all the owners know what was going on, I let Al know. "In early May, I told all the AFL owners that I had had discussions with Tex, and thought there was a chance for peace. There were a lot of doubters. 'Lamar,' they said, 'these conversations have gone on before. "That's when Ralph Wilson and Billy Sullivan were appointed to join me in maintaining contacts with Tex." Hunt and Schramm met twice in early May at Hunt's home, and the talks progressed. On May 13, Schramm, Rozelle, Mara, and Spadia met to discuss the negotiations, with the two NFL owners continuing to express reservations. On Tuesday, May 17, at a meeting of all the NFL owners, Mara stunned everyone in both leagues by announcing that the Giants had signed Buffalo Bills kicker Pete Gogolak, who had played out his option. Up to that point, the two leagues largely had refrained from going after each other's players. Within a few days, the AFL retaliated. Oakland signed Los Angeles Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel, and Houston came to terms with San Francisco quarterback John Brodie and Chicago Bears tight end Mike Ditka. What was your immediate reaction to the signing of Gogolak? Schramm: "We were pretty far along in the negotiations, but that almost ended the possibility of peace. "Everybody knew it was dumb to start doing that, so it made some people in our league absolutely irate. Vince Lombardi, who was the Packers' chief operating officer and coach, had been longtime personal friends with the Giants, but he got very angry and had a famous explosion against them in one of our meetings. It caused a big fight in the league. "It also gave Al Davis the open door to go out and start signing our players. That damn near blew the whole thing up because then everybody on both sides got mad." Hunt: "The signing of Gogolak was a very negative thing because the AFL people who didn't want to have a merger said, Aha, they haven't been dealing in good faith.' It was a volatile thing, and you can imagine it certainly did a lot to discourage Ralph Wilson [whose team lost Gogolak] from believing the NFL people were sincere. "The signing set people in the AFL in motion, specifically Al Davis, and Al devised his own plan to sign NFL players and began to implement that plan without consulting with the AFL ownership as a group. He talked to individual AFL dubs, and they began a recruiting campaign for NFL players." Did that campaign come dose to destroying the negotiations? Schramm: "It did. My big problem was holding everybody in line. Lamar's big problem was telling them to lay off, to stop signing NFL players." Hunt: "I think the merger ultimately was going to happen, but maybe the fact the signings were taking place helped speed the process up." This obviously was a difficult time. As the man who started and pushed for the negotiations, Tex, did you ever despair that you wouldn't succeed? Schramm: "That isn't my nature. If it gets tougher, I just try to figure a better way around it." Despite the heated atmosphere, merger talks proceeded. On the last day of the NFL meetings, Rozelle informed all of the owners of the possibility of a deal. He and Schramm stayed in contact with them the rest of the month, trying in particular to relieve the fears of the Giants and 49ers about the Jets and Raiders joining the NFL. Hunt had his own problems with Sonny Werblin and Wayne Valley, owners of the lets and Raiders, who were just as concerned about sharing their areas with the Giants and 49ers in a merged league. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Rozelle flew to Dallas and stayed at Schramm's house, and the two men, calling NFL owners on the phone, put together a revised list of proposals for the AFL. They gave the list to Hunt on the morning of May 31. If the proposals could be accepted by the AFL owners without too many changes, the merger might become reality. The AFL countered with a list of 26 points of difference, and negotiations resumed. Lamar as difficult as the negotiations were, did you usually get along? Hunt: "Yes, our meetings-and we had many other conversations on the phone-were amicable.
"One evening, I even got Ralph Wilson and Billy Sullivan on extension phone lines just so they could hear Tex's sincerity for themselves. They had felt that the NFL people were just leading me on." Schramm: "It was a very, very emotional thing with everybody by that time. And, when you were trying to resolve the problems, it could be trying. "We both had the difficulty of trying to sell to our leagues whatever we were going to be agreeing to. And he had the biggest problem because we were in essence dictating the terms." Lamar how did you resolve all of the differences at the end? You couldn't talk to each AFL owner as each point was discussed. Hunt: "Wilson, Sullivan, and I hammered out the final details. We were free to resolve issues at the end; we never had total formal agreement among the AFL on all of them. If it always took everybody's approval, you'd have an impasse. "Ultimately, everybody said, 'Hey, our individual feelings don't make that much difference. The important thing is to work out an arrangement that's really good for everybody.' "The issues that we had the hardest time with were points relative to New York and San Francisco/Oakland. I have several pages of notes from my May 31 meeting with Tex, and it's flabbergasting. Over half of my notes are related to New York and the Bay Area. "But at some point Sonny Werblin [Jets] and Wayne Valley [Raiders] said, 'Okay, we'll go ahead with you."' All the points of disagreement were ironed out during many, many intense phone conversations and meetings the first week of June-and on June 8, at a press conference in New York, the merger of the AFL and NFL um announced. Major points of the agreement included: l. All existing franchises would remain in the same cities. 2. Rozelle would be commissioner of the combined league. 3. There would be a championship game between the two leagues after the 1966 season. 4. There would be a common draft after the 1966 season. 5. The two leagues would continue their current TV contracts for the four years each of them had left, and keep their own income. 6. Interieague preseason games would be played, beginning in 1967. A common regular-season schedule would begin in 1970. 7. AFL clubs would pa y the NFL a total of $18 million over 20 years. Lamar was the NFL's demand for that money a problem in the negotiations? Hunt: "It was definitely a conversational point. But ultimately, as a group, we agreed to it. We recognized that it increased the value of our franchises by more than $2 million, which was the amount each of our nine teams paid. The payout was spread over 20 years, or $100,000 a year. "We assumed that all the NFL teams shared the money, and there was never any breakdown given until a month or more after the merger was announced. Then I became aware that the Giants were getting $10 million of it and the 49ers $8 million." As the years passed, it must have seemed strange to keep paying that money. Was it all paid? Hunt: "Yes. We just considered it a long, slow note." Was negotiating the merger one of the most fulfilling things you've ever done? Schramm: "It was a landmark, one of the big steps, yes." Hunt: "I think history has proved that it was a wise decision. Pro football-and that includes the compensation to the players and the prosperity of the teams-came into a new, golden era. And there were a lot of things that came out of the merger that weren't there before-like the Super Bowl and the preseason games between the two leagues, which for a period of five or six years were very big revenue producers. "I'm glad we merged. But I will always think of it as the AFL versus the NFL. We still keep track of the American-National rivalry and always will." After all these years? The final merger was 20 years ago. Hunt: "Every Monday, I check to see how the American Conference teams did against the National Conference. I keep a running total of the games won and lost for each week. "You're more than welcome to print how far ahead the AFL is because the AFL is leading in combined preseason and regular-season games. Super Bowls are tied 12-12. " Schramm: "I still keep track, too. They're still the AFL. They're the other league.
"The only reason they're anywhere close to the NFC is all of their wins came from the three teams we gave them-[pittsburgh, Baltimore, now Indianapolis] and Cleveland." Hunt: "I knew you'd bring that up. Heck, once a team comes over, you can't count it on the other side."