CURT GOWDY had an illustrious career as a sports broadcaster, but his finest comment was not known to many fans.  He made it near the end of the third AFL-NFL World Championship game, when the Jets were whipping the NFL's over-rated champions, the Baltimore Colts.

        If you can find a copy of that telecast's NBC-TV  'network feed', which stayed on the air during commercial breaks, you can hear Gowdy asking: "I wonder if that son-of-a-bitch Tex Maule is watching?"

A member of the American Football League Hall of Fame

CHARLIE JONES spent 38 years as a Professional Football announcer and play-by-play man, and was one of ABC's original AFL voices in 1960.  He covered the Dallas Texans on radio and is shown at left in a image from a 1961 team photo from Dale Stram, son of Hall of Famer Hank Stram. 

       In his first TV assignment, Jones called the play-by-play the first AFL game ever broadcast, on ABC-TV.  Jones followed the AFL to NBC-TV in 1965, and covered all ten years of the league's existence.

A member of the American Football League Hall of Fame

GEORGE RATTERMAN learned about  Professional Football with the Buffalo Bills, as a quarterback in the All America Football Conference, and then under Paul Brown as Otto Graham's able backup.  He started in TV in 1960 with the inception of the American Football League. . 

        Ratterman was a 10-year AFL television broadcaster on ABC-TV and NBC-TV.  He was teamed regularly with Jack Buck, Jim Simpson or Charlie Jones.  He worked Super Bowls I and III and several AFL championship games on TV and radio

PAUL CHRISTMAN was a two-time All-American quarterback at the University of Missouri, elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1956, whose #44 is retired by the university.  He played Pro Football six years as part of the Cardinals' "million-dollar backfield." 

         With Curt Gowdy, he broadcast AFL games from the league's inception through 1967, first with ABC, then with NBC's "full color network."  He was color commentator for the first eight AFL title games before leaving NBC for CBS in 1968.   He was the first modern football analyst on television, providing detailed commentary of the game as it unfolded, not simply announcing what the viewers could see. 
          Christman's pioneering work was not emulated by the other league until the mid-1960s.

A member of the American Football League Hall of Fame