1969 Season AFL All-Star Game

The 1969 Season
American Football League
ALL-STAR GAME

AFL

West 47

East 27

January 17, 1970
The Astrodome, Houston

The 1969 AFL All-Stars took the field at the Houston Astrodome on January 17, 1970. It was the final game in the history of the American Football League. The AFL-NFL merger became effective with the 1970 season. Many of the stars of the AFL were unavailable due to injury including quarterbacks Len Dawson, Daryle Lamonica and Joe Namath. A crowd of 30,170 looked on as the coaches were George Wilson of Miami for the East and Lou Saban of Denver for the West.
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John Hadl of the San Diego Chargers led the West to two first quarter scores. Both of the scores were produced by fellow Chargers. Dick Post scored on a one yard touchdown slant and Hadl hit Lance Alworth for 21 yards and a touchdown. That was all the scoring in the first half. Boston’s Mike Taliaferro and Buffalo’s Jack Kemp alternated quarters at quarterback for the East, but were basically ineffective.
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In the third quarter, Jan Stenerud of Kansas City kicked a 38 yard field goal which was matched by Jim Turner of the Jets who followed with a kick of 44 yards. Early in the fourth period, Stenerud kicked a 30 yarder. The score was 19-3. Kansas City backup quarterback, Mike Livingston, replaced Hadl in the final stanza and led the West on one more drive. Livingston scored the last touchdown in AFL history on a 12 yard run. The final score was 26-3
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John Hadl was voted the MVP. Hadl completed 18 (which tied an All-Star Game record) of 26 passes for 224 yards, but was intercepted three times. There was no defensive player chosen in 1970.

O.J. Simpson carries for the East
in the last AFL All-Star Game, at the Astrodome.

AFL All-Star Squads (to be added)
1969	West Squad	East Squad

SUMMARIES OF EACH AFL ALL-STAR GAME

        The American Football League did not play an All-Star game after its first season in 1960, but did stage All-Star games for the 1961 through 1969 seasons. All-Star teams from the Eastern and Western divisions played each other after every season except 1965. That season, the league champion Buffalo Bills played against a team made up of all-stars from the other teams.
        Because the games were played at the end of the season, they occurred in the next calendar year. Thus, the 1961 AFL All-Star game (with players selected as all-stars for the 1961 season) was played on January 7, 1962; the 1962 game was played in January 1963, etc.
         The links below will take you to summaries of each game, originally created by Mark Bolding. Most of the content of this and the other AFL All-Star Games was retrieved from the 'Internet Archive Wayback Machine' at archive.org/web/web.php, which claims copyright for the work.
         *Other than the final score and the image of the game program, his summary of the 1964 season all-star game incorrectly gave the report of the previous year's game.
         Bolding's original site classified the games by the calendar year they were played in. Since they were played at the end of AFL seasons and the All-Stars involved were so chosen for their play in those seasons, I classify them by the AFL season which they represented. Thus the AFL All-Star Game that featured stars of the 1961 season was played in January 1962, etc.

1961 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 7, 1962	'Wayback' link
1962 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 13, 1963	'Wayback' link
1963 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 19, 1964	'Wayback' link
1964 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 16, 1965	*'Wayback' link
1965 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 15, 1966	'Wayback' link
1966 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 21, 1967	'Wayback' link
1967 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 21, 1968	'Wayback' link
1968 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 19, 1969	'Wayback' link
1969 Season AFL All-Star Game:	January 17, 1970	'Wayback' link

Perhaps the greatest highlight of AFL All-Star Game history came not on the field of play, but in the actions of black players, supported by their white teammates and owners, when the best players in the AFL boycotted the City of New Orleans because of the disrespect black players were given when they arrived there for the scheduled 1964 season AFL All-Star Game, scheduled for January 1965.
The game was moved to Houston in a seminal action in the early civil rights movement in America. It is still recognized as such, as recently as a March, 2007 article by Evan Weiner on MSNBC. Another description of the incident is at my AFL Clippings page.

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