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For a League of the Past, the Uniforms Live On
Copyright 2009 by the New
York Times. |
Published: December 5, 2009
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Chris
Schneider/Associated Press |
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The
Broncos’ socks from the
team’s American Football
League uniform.
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It’s every retailer’s dream:
a product so hot that demand
outstrips supply. The
Denver Broncos could not
have guessed that this
season’s hot product would
be one of the ugliest sports
socks ever created, the
brown-and-yellow, vertically
striped leggings that the
team wore a half-century
ago.
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That does not seem to bother
Tim Kellond, who runs the
Broncos’ team store in
Denver. Kellond has sold
more than 1,800 pairs of the
high socks at $14.95 and
receives about 250 calls a
week from customers asking
when more will arrive from
the manufacturer who, he
said, has run out of brown
yarn.
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“I thought I ordered a whole
lot that would last until
next year,” Kellond said.
“My problem is deliveries. I
get them in and sell them
out in two hours.”
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The socks have been an
unexpected hit for the
Broncos and the
N.F.L., which is near
the end of its season-long
50th-anniversary celebration
of the American Football
League. The original eight
teams — the
Buffalo Bills, the
Denver Broncos, the Los
Angeles
Chargers (now the San
Diego Chargers), the Boston
Patriots (the New
England Patriots), the
Oakland Raiders, the
Houston Oilers (the
Tennessee Titans), the
Dallas
Texans (the
Kansas City Chiefs) and
the New York Titans (the
Jets) — have been
featured in legacy games
that have included vintage
uniforms. |
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The last of these 16
matchups will be Sunday when the
Patriots play the
Miami Dolphins, who joined the
A.F.L. in 1966. The
Cincinnati Bengals became the
10th team in 1968. The commemoration
of the A.F.L. has provided a
much-needed lift for the teams and
the league, which were looking for
ways to offset the effects of the
recession on merchandise sales.
More than two dozen licensees have
been making about 100 A.F.L.-related
products, which have produced tens
of millions of dollars in sales,
said Leo Kane, the N.F.L.’s vice
president for consumer products.
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“This economy has been challenging,
so it’s been a great story for our
clubs to have a positive story out
there,” Kane said. |
CJ Gunther/European
Pressphoto Agency
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On Sept. 14, the Patriots
and Bills
wore uniforms like
those of the
teams
in the
AFL |
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Sales of throwback goods are a small
slice of the $3 billion worth of
N.F.L. merchandise sold annually,
but they are proving to be the
biggest sellers this year.
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In New England, sales of A.F.L. and
50th anniversary goods have made up
20 percent of overall sales,
compared with 12 percent last year,
said Stacey James, a spokesman for
the Patriots. The best sellers have
been 50th-anniversary T-shirts for
$19.95 and red jerseys worn in 1963.
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The Chiefs, who started in 1960 in
Dallas, played the Dallas Cowboys
this season in a contest billed as
“the game that never was” because
the teams never faced each other
when they were both in Texas. Sales
of red sweatshirts with the original
Dallas Texans logo have been hot
sellers.
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We didn’t have vertically striped
socks, but it did very well,” said
Jim Fisher, the manager of
merchandise services for the Chiefs.
Russ Brand, the chief operating
officer of the Bills, said 30
percent of all merchandise sales
this year had been 50th anniversary
or A.F.L. related.
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“There was a lot of hype, and it’s
certainly helped,” he said.
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Bills fans have celebrated their
team’s 50th anniversary at an
exhibit at the Buffalo and Erie
County Historical Society, which has
900 team-related items, many of them
from the collection of Greg Tranter,
an avid fan.
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The exhibit includes black-and-white
photographs of players caked in mud
at the old War Memorial Stadium,
which had notoriously bad drainage.
Tranter, who has 100,000
Bills-related items in all, is
clearly fond of the team’s original,
silver-and-blue uniform.
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Few exist because old uniforms were
given away to high schools at the
end of the season, said Tranter, who
grew up in Elmira, N.Y., and went to
his first Bills game in 1965. His
other favorites include a Johnny
Hero doll in a 1965 Bills uniform
and a straw hat that says “All the
Way with O. J.”
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The A.F.L. still resonates with fans
not just because of the snazzy
uniforms and innovative marketing,
but because the league was a scrappy
underdog derided as a Mickey Mouse
league filled with N.F.L. rejects.
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“The fans definitely felt that the
A.F.L. represented something new,”
said
Angelo Coniglio, who runs
RemembertheAFL.com. “The owners
were rebels, and they acted the
part.”
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That spirit lives on in an
HBO Sports documentary from
1995, “Rebels
with a Cause: The Story of the
American Football League.” The
one-hour program will be rebroadcast
on Dec. 31 and several times in
January.
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“There are a lot of 20-somethings
looking at all these funny uniforms
and do not dig any deeper,” said
Ross Greenburg, the president of HBO
Sports. “This truly was the first
sports league that became a power on
its own.”
Gee, I
wonder how many copies of the DVDS
of 'FULL
COLOR FOOTBALL: The History of
the American Football League'
they might have sold, if they had
been available during the AFL's 50th
Anniversary celebration??
~
REMEMBER
the
AFL |
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