Gosselin Book Excerpt

(Editor’s note: Rick Gosselin’s second book, “The Team That History Forgot: the 1960s Kansas City Chiefs,” is published by the University of Nebraska Press. It details the start of the franchise, the Dallas days, the Kansas City days and the AFL days leading up to the first Super Bowl — and the three-game revenge tour that followed that loss to the Green Bay Packers. Here is a sample chapter from that book:)

Chapter 10: The Merger

There may not have been a more competitive person in the AFL than Al Davis. So his disdain for the Kansas City Chiefs was understandable.

At 34, Davis was named head coach of the Oakland Raiders in 1963. The previous season, the Raiders finished at the bottom of the league with a 1-13 record. The Dallas Texans – soon to be the Chiefs — were atop of the AFL with an 11-3 record and the championship trophy. The Chiefs were big, strong, fast and had the league’s best quarterback in Len Dawson. The Chiefs were all that Davis aspired his Raiders to be – and Kansas City was now standing in his way in the Western Division.

In the short-term, Davis wanted to take the Chiefs down. But he also had a long-term goal – take the NFL down.

“I loved the AFL,” Davis said. “It was a young league. It was meaningful to me. Even when I was in the American Football League, I had opportunities to go to the National Football League. But I wouldn’t take them. With no disrespect, I’ll say it – I thought they were arrogant. I wasn’t afraid of them. We thought we could beat them without any trouble.”

The AFL was cherry-picking some NFL draft picks – but the majority of the top college players was still signing with the older league. But the perception of the AFL started to change in 1964 when the league signed a five-year, $36 million deal with NBC for broadcast rights. That gave the AFL a blank check to aggressively go after players.

The New York Jets then rocked the NFL by signing Alabama quarterback Joe Namath a day after his final college appearance in the Orange Bowl to the richest contract ever for a rookie in any sport — $427,000 over three years. Davis himself signed Florida State All-America wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff under the goalposts after he caught four touchdowns against Oklahoma in the Gator Bowl.

That spending certainly got the attention of NFL players.

“It was exciting from the potential of salary standpoint,” Green Bay’s Pro Bowl guard Jerry Kramer said. “It was going to have an impact on salaries almost immediately with certain players. Eventually you had some hopes that it would impact your salary. We had our Gold Dust twins in (Jim) Grabowski and (Donny) Anderson. They were making in the $300,000-$500,000 range, whereas Bart (Starr) was making in the $35,000 range, Paul probably $35,000 and Jimmy $30,000. The huge salaries were an immediate topic of conversation.”

The AFL’s focus shifted from survival to becoming an actual rival of the NFL. And who better to lead the charge against the NFL than Davis, who was named the commissioner of the AFL in April 1966. Some of the AFL owners were hoping Davis could force a merger with the NFL. But not Al – he wanted to bring the NFL to its knees.

And there was a faction of AFLers who believed he could do it.

“I don’t know that there’s a greater competitor in the world than Al Davis,” Hank Stram said. “Nobody in the world wants to win more than he does. Nobody will pay more of a price than he does. His whole life is football.”

Davis grew up in Brooklyn and set up his AFL office in New York.

“(NFL commissioner Pete) Rozelle was in fear of me,” Davis said. “There was pandemonium. We had taken over New York. We had a press conference and everyone was excited. I had made the statement I didn’t give a care about the other league. We can beat them head-to-head. We can out-recruit them. We’ve out-signed them already.

“Howard Cosell, sitting right up front, asked what about the disaster in Denver and another city. I said I’m going to name eight of those cities in the other league and you’re going to have to agree that they’re a bigger disaster than those two.”

A month after setting up shop, Davis flew to Detroit to confer with Ralph Wilson, the owner of the Buffalo Bills and the president of the American Football League. While Davis was in Detroit, Wilson received a shocking phone call – the New York Giants had signed away his placekicker Pete Gogolak. He became the first star AFL player to defect to the NFL.

“I told Ralph, `You just got a merger,’” Davis said. “He said, `What do you mean? Gogolak just signed.’ He was incensed. I said, `You’ve got a merger, don’t worry about it.’”

Davis returned to New York with a plan – if you’re going to take our players, we’re going to take yours.

“It was pretty obvious they (NFL) had a lot of players that wanted to leave,” Davis said. “They wanted to come over to the new league. One of them I knew very well from the Green Bay Packers – Willie Wood, who played for me at Southern Cal. He was with Herb Adderley, who was from Philadelphia. I knew him when he was in high school. The plan was pretty simple. It was brinkmanship, putting the fear of God in them.”

The AFL plotted to sign NFL players to future contracts. The NFLers could play out the final year of their existing NFL contracts in 1966 and then change leagues in 1967. Davis established some targets – quarterbacks Roman Gabriel, John Brodie and Jim Ninowski, tight end Mike Ditka…

“There were about eight of them,” Davis said. “I didn’t need to draw up a list. Everyone was vulnerable.”

Davis did indeed put the fear of God in the NFL. Within a month of the Gogolak signing, the two leagues had announced a merger. The AFL agreed to pay $18 million to the NFL as indemnification because two AFL teams would be sharing markets with NFL teams, New York and San Francisco.

“I thought the merger was excellent,” Davis said. “But I didn’t like the terms of it, giving all that money to them. For what? They pulled a fast one. They wanted to go 16 (NFL teams) and 10 (AFL teams) — keep our league separate. I said, `No, we’re going 13 and 13.’ I forced that. So Art Modell, the Rooneys and Carroll Rosenbloom saw an easy way to pick up $3 million and they came over to our league.”

Modell was the owner of the Cleveland Browns, Art Rooney the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Rosenbloom the owner of the Baltimore Colts. They agreed to change affiliation to the AFL to facilitate the merger and balance out the two conferences. As Davis noted, they were paid handsomely for their transfer in allegiance.

But the merger also cost Davis his job. Rozelle would become the commissioner of the combined leagues when the merger officially took place in 1970. So Davis returned to the Raiders in the summer of 1966 as a part owner and the head of football operations.

Under terms of the merger, the NFL would become the National Football Conference (NFC) and the AFL the American Football Conference (AFC) in 1970. But the two leagues would begin playing a “world championship game” at the end of the 1966 season, then start playing a series of exhibition games in 1967.

The NFL always downplayed the impact of Davis on the merger, maintaining that the wheels were already in motion with clandestine talks in Dallas between AFL founder Lamar Hunt and Cowboys president Tex Schramm.

“Thirty years from now they’ll probably say (Norman) Schwarzkopf had nothing to do with the Persian Gulf,” Davis smirked.

And suddenly, teams in non-NFL markets Boston, Buffalo, Denver, Houston, Kansas City and San Diego had the chance to play for a world championship.