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More MEMOIRS OF A MICKEY MOUSE FAN ©
a fan's History of the American Football League ©

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CHAPTER 2 - 1960:  In July 1960, less than a year after the August 1959 meeting of the "Foolish Club", the American Football League pumped up its first Spalding Cushion Control football (later called the Spalding J5-V), and the Boston Patriots played an exhibition game against the Buffalo Bills.
          In that brief year, an overwhelming amount had been accomplished.  For eight teams, stadium sites for home games were found, head coaches and their staffs were signed, training camps were run, and schedules were established.   Uniforms were designed, playing rules were devised, and game officials were hired.  The defection of Minnesota was formally acknowledged, and after considering both Oakland and Atlanta, the league chose Oakland as its eighth city.
         The stadia in which the AFL played were a varied lot.  The Patriots played at Boston University's Nickerson Field, the first of the team's three home fields during the sixties.  According to Mike Allen, "it cost a mere $2.50 to sit in the end zone to watch the Patriots."  Nickerson Field was once Braves Field, used by Boston's National League baseball team, and briefly by the NFL franchise that became the Redskins.  The Titans' home was the cavernous Polo Grounds; the Oilers toiled at a high school field, Jeppesen Stadium. The Bills played all ten years in Buffalo's old "Civic Stadium", re-named War Memorial Stadium, but best known as "The Rockpile".  
          The Broncos played in a baseball stadium, Bears Stadium, which would be converted to Mile High Stadium; the Dallas Texans in the Cotton Bowl; the Los Angeles Chargers in the LA Coliseum; and the Raiders in Kezar Stadium (since demolished and rebuilt), which was in San Francisco! The Bills and the Broncos were the only original American Football League teams to play the entire decade without changing home fields.

           In searching for its head coaches, the AFL's approach was similar to that used in stocking its teams with players: some from the college ranks, some "NFL rejects", and some "free agents".  They even had a couple of ex-CFL coaches in the mix.
          The league was divided in two, East and West.   In the Eastern Division, Lou Saban went from a perfect 8 - 0 record at Western Illinois University to coach the Boston Patriots; the Houston Oilers chose Lou Rymkus, a former star with Notre Dame, the Redskins and the Browns, and a former assistant coach with the LA Rams and the CFL's Calgary Stampeders; former star quarterback Sammy Baugh was head football coach at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, before becoming the New York Titans' head coach; and Buster Ramsey, a former pro lineman and a defensive coach for the Cardinals and the Lions, led the Buffalo Bills.
          In the Western Division, the Denver Broncos hired Frank Filchock, a one-time journeyman pro quarterback whose only head coaching experience was with the CFL's Saskatchewan club; while to coach his Dallas Texans, Lamar Hunt selected Hank Stram, who had been an offensive coordinator at Purdue, SMU and the University of Miami Hurricanes.   Barron Hilton initially wanted Frank Leahy, but instead hired a man who would forever change the way professional football was played: Sid Gillman, who coached the Rams for five years before coming to the Los Angeles Chargers.  Meanwhile, the eight-man ownership team of the Oakland Raiders settled on the legendary Eddy Erdelatz, the U.S. Naval Academy's former head coach. 

          The early AFL's ideal schedule was a consequence of the eight-team makeup of the league.  Whether that structure was fortuitous or a brilliant idea of Lamar Hunt's, the end result was perfect:  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 were not only not played at home, but not at all.  This left the NFL fans to depend on other teams' home-town reporters to tell them how great the players were.
          A further benefit of the AFL's structure and scheduling was that each team played essentially the same schedule, eliminating arguments about which team had the easier road to the championship game.  The team with the best record in each division obviously also had the best record against common opponents, against division opponents, etc.

           Before starting its first season, the AFL established rules of play to include the option of a two-point conversion after touchdowns, becoming the first professional league to adopt a rule that was by then followed by virtually all organized football, except the NFL.  Noting instances of confusion in NFL games when the scoreboard clock showed playing time left, but the on-field officials said the game was over, the American Football League instituted the scoreboard clock as the official clock in all games.  The AFL was also the first Professional Fooltball league to have its players' names displayed on the backs of their jerseys for easier identification by fans and media, an idea apocryphally attributed to Chargers' head coach Sid Gillmaan.

          Off the field, the American Football League followed a course that would help "small-market" teams compete financially, through revenue-sharing of home gate receipts 60% - 40% with visiting teams, a practice disdained by the NFL, as well as through its seminal ABC-TV contract.  Much is made of the claim that the AFL was not viable until its 1965 contract with NBC-TV 'saved' the League.  However, in 1960, before the NFL ever had a league-wide national contract, the American Football League landed a contract with ABC that guaranteed each of its teams one and a third million dollars, before a single fan came through the turnstiles.

           Former sports announcer Harry Wismer may have been derided for some of his foibles as owner of the Titans, but it was Wismer who devised a plan in which the proceeds from the broadcast rights to league games (initially with ABC) would be shared equally by all AFL teams.  The concept, very innovative at the time, set the standard for all future professional football television broadcasting contracts.  As Wismer owned what would seem to have been the most potentially lucrative franchise, especially with regard to broadcasting rights, in the nation's largest media market, the act seemed at first blush most generous for a self-described "hustler".  However, Wismer realized that the fledgling league needed for all of the eight franchises to be successful in order to survive long-term.
          Because of his media connections, Wismer was also able to convince the press services UPI and AP to give equal coverage to the AFL.  This too, was a tremendous accomplishment, in light of the biased manner in which most sports media derided or simply ignored the AFL.  Thus papers like the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press, even though their local writers scorned the new league, carried AP and UPI AFL line scores, and sometimes even feature stories on the AFL.         
          On July 8, at various locations around the country, the eight American Football League teams opened training camps. Just before camp started, a court ruling had voided a claim by the NFL’s Rams for LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, allowing Cannon to be signed by the Houston Oilers, and setting the precedent for the signing of other college stars by the AFL. These were joined by former NFL players, CFL players, and amateurs of all stripes who aspired to be professional football players. For example, the Oilers had Heisman Trophy winner Cannon, but they also had  former schoolteacher Charlie Hennigan, who kept his teacher's pay stub in his helmet for motivation.  Both ended up being AFL superstars.  Exhibition games were scheduled between AFL teams, and some were played against Canadian Football League squads. The games were optional for season ticket holders (the going rate for Bills’ exhibitions being $5!) with many games simply intra-squad contests to help winnow out the huge rosters and choose the potential contributors. Squads as large as 200 had to be reduced to the limit settled on in August: 35 players per team.

          Charlie McMahon's story is just one of the many experienced by AFL hopefuls.  As he tells it, in early July of 1960 he was one of about 200 players who passed through the first Denver Broncos training camp at the Colorado School Of Mines campus in Golden, Colorado.
          They literally had auto mechanics, farmers, stock clerks, high school football coaches (McMahon was one), Hollywood stuntmen, etc. come out of the woodwork for an opportunity to play pro football.  Some were cut and others fled in the night before another batch would be brought in the next day. It was a revolving door process and no one was safe except two or three players (Bud McFaddin, Frank Tripucka).
          McMahon relates the following: "The team was going to carry two QBs and it came down to George Herring and myself as Tripucka's backup.  We had an intrasquad scrimmage in Pueblo with Herring quarterbacking one team and myself the other with the team backup to be decided in the scrimmage.  I threw for one touchdown and my team was ahead 7-0 when I was injured in the second quarter.  Fearing injury to Tripucka, the coach Frank Filchock decided to let Herring QB both teams.  While I was at the local hospital getting sewed up Herring won the job and as a result he was also named the team punter.  The team asked me to stay on as the scout team QB on the taxi squad and backup if either QB were injured.  The minimum AFL salary was $7,200 which was twice what I made for 10 months of coaching, so the decision was easy for me.
                 Well, Tripucka literally played every single offensive down that season.  The only action Herring saw was punting so I never suited up for a game all season and was released the following season when the team signed a Lousiana Tech QB to a no cut contract (Don Breaux).  Buffalo asked me to come up for a tryout but by then we were expecting our second child so I went back to coaching never having played a down in a regular game.
                 I tell you this not out of bitterness but with a grateful heart.  The year will always be special to me and my wife. I am thankful to Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams for their foresight, and pocketbooks, for establishing the AFL and allowing all of the journeymen wanna-be's to attempt to live a dream.  If my family had the bucks of the aforementioned gentlemen I would have paid the team to let me continue playing. 
                 I am in the 1960 team picture below, but nowhere else in their archives that I can find."

[McMahon's signature is on the game ball below, evidently from an exhibition game.] .

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         At long last, on September 9, 1960, a Friday night, at Boston University’s Nickerson Field, the Boston Patriots faced the Denver Broncos in the American Football League's first regular-season game. Both teams’ rosters featured names that would resonate among football fans for years to come, including Boston’s wr-pk Gino Cappelletti, lb Harry Jacobs, and dt Jim “Earthquake” Hunt; as well as Denver’s wr Lionel Taylor, db Austin “Goose” Gonsoulin, and Gene Mingo, the nation’s first black Professional Football place-kicker. Cappelletti kicked the AFL’s first field goal, a 35-yarder, and Mingo scored its first punt-return touchdown as the Broncos prevailed, 13 to 10. In the three other AFL games on that opening weekend; on Saturday night the Los Angeles Chargers eked out a 21 to 20 win over the Dallas Texans at the LA Coliseum, while in the Sunday contests the Houston Oilers handled the Oakland Raiders 37 to 22 at Kezar, and at the Polo Grounds, the Titans of New York trounced the Buffalo Bills, 27 to 3.

          In addition to the excitement of the games themselves, the AFL fans' view of football was enlivened by elements like the Broncos' vertically striped socks, and the lightning bolts and powder-blue shirts of the Chargers.  Even the umpires and referees looked different, with red-striped jerseys and an AFL logo on the chest.  The head referee wore a red cap with the AFL logo on the front. The Chargers' strikingly unique uniforms set the standard for AFL style, while the Texans' red, white and gold uniforms became a hallmark of the team. The only significant change in that uniform from day one until today was the replacement of the team's "Texas" helmet logo with the Chiefs' "arrowhead" insignia, and the addition of an AFL shoulder patch honoring founder Lamar Hunt.
          The American Football League had a different appearance on television, too.  While CBS-TV was covering NFL games with a lone camera, stationary at the fifty-yard-line, and microphones in the press-box, ABC-TV shot their AFL action with a combination of several boom and field-level cameras (advances later claimed as their own by NFL Films). ABC also utilized sensitive field microphones so that the TV audience could hear the gritty sounds of the action on the field.

New York Titans Dewey Bohling (26) in action, tackle by (L-R) Houston Oilers Tony Banfield (40), Don Floyd (75), and George Shirkey (74) at the Polo Grounds, New York, NY 10/23/1960.  In the game, Bohling scored on a 48-yard pass from Titans quarterback Dick Jamieson, but the Titans lost 42-28 in a game in which Bill Groman scored three touchdowns on passes from George Blanda.

          The first American Football League season had high-scoring games like the Oilers-Titans game above, the week twelve Bills-Broncos 38-38 tie on November 27th, and the Chargers' 52-28 win over the Raiders on the same day. It also had four shutouts, and some tight defensive battles.  It had blowouts like the Raiders' 48-10 demolition of the Broncos in week five, with Oakland scoring 31 points in the fourth quarter; but it also had nail-biters like the Bills' "Hallowe'en game", a 25-24 win over the Oilers in week eight, on a last-minute Billy Atkins field goal.
           In its first year, the American Football League also played on Thanksgiving Day, with the Dallas Texans traveling to the Polo Grounds to face the Titans of New York.  In the first quarter, Don Maynard scored for the Titans on a 45-yard pass from Al Dorow, and Roger Donnahoo put the Titans ahead by two tds with a 57-yard fumble return.  Early in the second, the Texans got on the board with a Jack Spikes field goal and a 67-yard touchdown run by Abner Haynes, to trail by only 10-14, but the Titans struck again after two long drives, on a one-yard dive by Dorow and a two-yard pass from Dorow to Art Powell, to close the half leading 28-10.  In the third, the only scoring was another Spikes field goal.  The Titans opened the final quarter with another long drive and a one-yard plunge by Bill Mathis.  The PAT failed, and the score was 35-13.  But the Texans didn't give up, as Chris Burford scored on an 18-yard toss from Davidson, and they made a successful two-point conversion (thirty-four years before the NFL thought of it) when backup quarterback and holder Hunter Enis stood up and threw to Curley Johnson, making the score 35-21.   Dallas then made it 35-28 on a four-yard scamper by Abner Haynes, but the Titans answered with a two-yard dive by Dewey Bohling. 
           The Texans were not done yet, and Max Boydston scored on an 18-yard Davidson pass to again bring them within a touchdown.   Unfortunately for the Texans, the clock ran out on a late drive before they could score again, and the game ended at Titans 41, Texans 35, just another day at the office for the AFL!
           The exciting 1960 Thanksgiving game between the AFL's Titans and Texans, played six years before the Cowboys of the other league played a Thanksgiving game, was the first of many such games for the AFL, which continued the tradition of exciting contests throughout its ten year existence.  The league went to two Thanksgiving games from 1967 through 1969.  Yet, in its infinite wisdom, after the "merger", the NFL gave the "traditional" games to Detroit and the expansion Cowboys, with broadcast restrictions that meant only one former AFL team could play on Thanksgiving, while the NFC got to show three teams.
          Stars emerged during that first AFL season.   The Chargers' Jack Kemp and the Broncos' Frank Tripucka each threw for more than 3,000 yards.  Denver's Lionel Taylor and Houston's Bill Groman each had twelve touchdown receptions, with Groman's coming on 72 receptions for 1,473 yards, a 20.5 yards-per-catch average.  Denver's Gene Mingo led the league in scoring with 123 points - he scored on PATs, field goals, kick returns, and from scrimmage on runs and pass receptions: what, no safeties?.  Mingo's teammate "Goose" Gonsoulin led in interceptions with eleven.  Abner Haynes of the Dallas Texans pounded out nine rushing touchdowns on 157 attempts for 875 yards, an average of 5.6 yards per carry.  Haynes also scored three times on pass receptions, and combined with his kick returns, his 1,700 yards of production earned him the AFL's first Rookie-of-the-Year honors, as well as the league's MVP award.
          Chic Lurch, a fan from Centerville, Ohio, recalls: "I was 8 years old and living in New Rochelle, N.Y. when the AFL was established in 1960.   My first exposure to the AFL was in buying a pack of Fleer football bubblegum cards and not knowing a single player.    But disappointment soon turned to curiosity as I started to watch those AFL players on ABC.   I loved watching those early games in black and white.    Names like Elbert Dubenion, Jim Colclough, "Earthquake" Hunt,   . . . .  Tobin Rote and Jack Kemp I will never forget."  
          Eugene Jessup, an AFL fan in Macon, Georgia, had a similar experience: "When I was about 8 in 1960, I remember riding my bicycle to the "variety" (five and dime) store to buy some gum and a set of football cards. When I got home, I realized that I had purchased a brand of cards that I had never seen before! These cards featured teams and players that I had never heard of!  Boy, was I steamed!  I had mowed lawns to earn my spending money, and I didn't want cards of some no-name players from a no-name league!  I remember one was a logo card of the Los Angeles Chargers!  Boy, how I wish I had saved those first-issue cards!" 
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[Editors note: Examples of the 1960 Fleer cards can be seen above in the section on AFL coaches, and in Chapter 1 - 1959.   In general, 1960 cards showed players in the uniforms of their colleges or former NFL teams.  The 1961 and later cards showed them in their previous year's AFL uniforms, etc., so the cards below, for example, show 1960 photos even though they are actually from the 1961 Fleer set.  Incidentally, football historian T.J. Troup points out that the "Gonsoulin" card below incorrectly shows an image of  Fresno State wide receiver Darryl Rogers, who went on to coach Michigan State and the Detroit Lions.]

           Because another league was in competition for the class of 1961's college stars, the American Football League draft for 1961 graduates was actually held in 1960, with a six-round telephone draft on November 23rd, that saw the Buffalo Bills select Auburn's Ken Rice as the overall first draft pick.  The draft was completed on December 5th and 6th, and included Georgia Tech's t Billy Shaw (Bills), and Boston College's t Larry Eisenhauer (Patriots).  The Pats also signed Southern Illinois University's g Houston Antwine. Draftees signed by the Chargers included Grambling's massive dt Ernie Ladd, Clemson dt Bill Hudson, and Indiana de Earl Faison.  With Kansas State's de Ron Nery, an "NFL reject" and ex-CFLer who had joined the Chargers the previous year, this group was the first to earn the title "The Fearsome Foursome".  That nickname later was "appropriated" by the NFL's Rams.  Washington State hb Keith Lincoln also signed with the Chargers.  From the same draft, the Dallas Texans would sign Michigan State's te Fred Arbanas, Texas Tech c E.J. Holub, Ohio State t Jim Tyrer, and SMU t Jerry Mays.  Yet, to this day, NFL apologists claim that "The AFL didn't sign any good players until after the merger and the common draft."    

Card images from Vintage Football Card Gallery

           So the first champions of the new league were the Houston Oilers, in a state that had never had Professional Football, in a city that had never had a champion.  Yet these distinctions are clouded by the fact that the Oilers of the mid-1990s were so poorly run that fans stopped coming, and owner Bud Adams, when he couldn't squeeze a new stadium from the community, moved the team.  Further, he saw to it that no pro football team anywhere, leastwise Houston, could ever again be called the "Oilers".  Sad that the team's mismanagement led its fans to forsake it.  Sadder still that Bud Adams, who had had the foresight to join the "Foolish Club" and the gumption to fight the NFL for the rights to Cannon, didn't have enough respect for football history to at least let Houston keep its football heritage and the name "Oilers". 

            Adams remains an enigma.  In spite of his contributions to the American Football League, he chose not to have a ring made for his players after that first championship year.   Instead, according to Dr. Steve Hennigan, Charlie's son, he gave them "championship fobs", shown above.  Several years later, apparently chagrined, he gave rings to the 1960 team. Hank Stram‘s son Dale, good friends with Billy Cannon, relates that Cannon and Adams did not like each other, and when Bud tried to give the ring to Billy, he basically told him where to put it.  Adams, not knowing what to do with the ring, sent it to the “pro football” Hall of Fame, and there it remains. 
            Reportedly, those "make-up" rings were not gold, but sterling silver, and the image below seems to corroborate that claim.

The following are representations of American Football League team helmets, worn in 1960.
They are provided by Klaus Gebhard. (Click to enlarge.)

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