Category: History and More

When you think of the greatest players in Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers history, names like LaDainian Tomlinson, Junior Seau and Dan Fouts quickly come to mind.

But the greatest individual performance by a Bolt? That came on January 5, 1964, courtesy of fullback Keith Lincoln. And the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

Sixty-one years ago, the American Football League – after just four seasons – had established itself as a major threat to the NFL. The last clubs standing in the 1963 campaign were the Chargers (11-3) and Boston Patriots (8-6-1), who met at San Diego’s Balboa Stadium in the AFL Championship Game.

The Chargers had the league’s best record while Boston had to defeat the Buffalo Bills (also 8-6-1) in an Eastern Conference playoff game to earn the right to play for the crown.

It was never a contest as San Diego rolled to a 51-10 victory.

Obviously, a rout of that magnitude suggests the Chargers had superlative play across the board, and that was certainly true.

The winners outgained the Pats 610 yards to 261, and a smothering defense recorded several sacks totaling negative 42 yards and forced a pair of turnovers. Jumping out to a 14-0 lead, it was 31-10 at the half and San Diego scored all 20 second half points.

Winning QB Tobin Rote capped off a league Most Valuable Player season with a terrific championship game performance, throwing for 173 yards and two TDs and rushing for another score.

On defense, Paul Maguire and Bob Mitinger each had interceptions.

However, Lincoln closed the day with 206 ground yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries; reeled in seven receptions for 123 yards; and completed a 24-yard pass on an option play. He was voted title game MVP, picking up 38 of 39 votes.

Days before the clash Boston coach Mike Holovak inadvertently predicted the future when asked how to stop Chargers halfback Paul Lowe.

“We don’t expect Lowe to gain 200 yards, but we’re not going to key on him,” Holovak told the Associated Press. “Key on Lowe, and Lincoln will kill you.”

The Patriots boss was right, although Lincoln said after the game he felt out of sorts in the first quarter.

“I didn’t feel real good there early in the game,” Lincoln said. “My legs sort of went out after I made those first couple of runs. The heat got me. I just didn’t seem to have life in my legs. I felt I might have trouble running the 100 as fast as (Chargers 320-pound lineman) Ernie Ladd.

“This is the greatest game I ever played, but running 50 yards seemed like running a mile.”

Lincoln’s first four carries went for 56, 67, 11 and 44 yards – an astonishing 44.5 yards per carry average.

“Our offensive line was just too much,” the 6-1, 215-pounder said. “Our line just tore them open. Not often do you see any of Boston’s linebackers getting knocked down, but today they were.”

He got no argument from Patriot defensive end Bob Dee.

“Lincoln is the best back in the league, bar none,” Dee said. “One time about five of us hit him and we couldn’t bring him down.”

And Chargers coach Sid Gillman had high praise for his star freight-toter as well.

“Lincoln is the best all-around back we have on the squad,” Gillman said.

No question, Lincoln’s exploits in the AFL Championship Game were epic, but he was hardly a one-hit wonder.

In an eight-year AFL career – seven spent with the Chargers – he rushed for 3,383 rushing yards and scored 19 touchdowns on the ground while tallying 19 more TDs on 2,250 receiving yards (165 catches).

He was a five-time AFL All-Star and two-time First Team All-AFL selection.

In the AFL Championship Game the following season, Lincoln was immortalized again as the recipient of “The Hit Heard ‘Round The World.” He was crumpled by Buffalo linebacker Mike Stratton on a vicious collision that broke one of Lincoln’s ribs and knocked him out of the game midway through the first quarter.

The Bills dethroned the defending champs with a 20-7 victory.

Lincoln, who was voted into the Chargers Hall of Fame in 1980, starred at Washington State before playing pro ball and was nicknamed the “Moose of the Palouse.” A member of the Cougars’ Hall of Fame – setting a school career rushing record (1,501 yards), a single season punting average record (43.4 in 1959), and a career punting average record (40.3) – Lincoln passed away in 2019.

Still, his legend and legacy live on.

Major League Baseball has the World Series.

Basketball culminates with the NBA Finals.

And the NHL crowns its king with the Stanley Cup Finals.

But football? Unlike the other three that require multiple victories for a title, two NFL teams square off in a one-game, winner-take-all spectacle known as the Super Bowl.

But what if there was a Super Bowl Series, a best-of-three format to determine pro football’s ultimate champion?

As odd as it might seem now, it was actually discussed during the 1973 NFL owners meeting.

I was researching the late, not-so-great NFL Playoff Bowl when I stumbled across this novel idea.

The first mention came in the June 7, 1960, edition of the Miami Herald. Sports editor Jimmy Burns was notebooking NFL meetings when he relayed a throwaway comment by league commissioner Pete Rozelle.

After suggesting that the NFL – then 13 teams – was eying expansion to 16 franchises, Burns wrote that Rozelle said, “Then there might be the possibility of a two-out-of-three playoff for the NFL championship.”

I scrambled to find some other reference to what seemed like a pretty big deal, yet found nothing during that time range.

But …

Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders and one of the great movers/shakers/agitators in professional sports history, brought it up ahead of the NFL’s annual meeting of minds in 1973.

Sudden death overtime and adding a two-point conversion were on the agenda, and then Davis proposed the boldest innovation of all.

Davis was a member of the NFL’s four-person competition committee, so he wasn’t merely howling at the moon. He was serious.

“I believe it’s provocative and has a lot of merit,” Davis told wire service reporters in April, 1973. “The games would be played on three successive weekends and we’d eliminate the Pro Bowl. I had never explored the Super Bowl Series idea before with the other committee members (Paul Brown of Cincinnati, Tex Schramm of Dallas and Jim Finks of Minnesota), but I think it has a lot of merit.

“The commissioner is determined that pro football not stand still like some other sports but take a step forward. I think some of the proposals we’ll be discussing this week will become a reality. The country would be excited about it – it would be dynamic – and the series would give us more of a gauge of a true champion.”

George Allen, whose Washington team came up short to unbeaten Miami in Super Bowl VII, was on board.

“I’m in favor of a two-out-of-three Super Bowl Series,” he said.

The NFL was a juggernaut entering the 1973 campaign, and after completing the merger with the American Football League in 1970, it was up to 26 clubs. If Rozelle thought 16 was the threshold for a best-of-three championship, surely he would be all-in now, right?

Nah.

“The plusses are obvious,” Rozell told United Press International. “A better gauge, more television. But I have certain negative feelings about it. The logistics would be tough, not knowing where you were playing the following week. I think right now I’d rather have the impact of one shot.”

Davis, of course, disagreed.

“As for the last Super Bowl, Miami proved itself the champion on that day – no question,” Davis said. “But in the future a three-game Super Bowl Series might be a better test to decide who’s best. Each of the three networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) would get a game to televise, and we might play one at night. It might be a home and home arrangement. Maybe it won’t take place this year, but it might in the future.”

(One glaring problem there was that if a team swept, there would be no third game – thus one network would be left with no Super Bowl Series contest and the subsequent loss of major advertising dollars).

Turns out, not much came from that particular owners meeting.

Proposals such as the two-point conversion and sudden death overtime were voted down, and the Super Bowl Series never even came to a vote.

More than 50 years later, it’s still an interesting concept, though. Remove the physical toll it would take on the players from the equation, and it makes a lot of sense.

However, with the standalone Super Bowl an international cultural event and the NFL season already long – and brutal – one game to claim the Lombardi Trophy is enough.

The thought of any upstart challenging the National Football League seems ludicrous in 2024. Considered the most powerful professional sports league on the planet, the NFL generated more than 20 billion dollars in revenue last year, according to Statista.

Simply put, it’s peerless.

But that wasn’t always the case.

The circuit celebrated its Silver Anniversary in 1944. And while it had established longevity after a quarter century of competition, it was not yet considered untouchable.

The league played a 10-game regular season 80 years ago, with a lineup that featured the Boston Yanks, Brooklyn Tigers, Card-Pitt (the Chicago Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers merged for the season due to player shortages caused by World War II), Chicago Bears, Cleveland Rams, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins.

College football was king and the NFL was still primarily a regional operation, meaning intrepid souls who wanted to expand the pro game’s footprint had a real opportunity. And in 1944, the All-America Football Conference, Trans-American Football League and United States Football League all formed, taking aim at a piece of the play-for-pay pie.

Out of the gate first was the original iteration of the USFL, which was announced on July 24, 1944, in Philadelphia.

The league hoped to play its first season in 1945 – “war conditions permitting,” according to United Press International – and would feature Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Pittsburgh in the Eastern Division and Akron, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and Honolulu in the West.

Roland Donald Payne, a Pittsburgh industrialist who founded the USFL, said he had also received applications from investors in Seattle, Portland, Buffalo, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Dallas/Fort Worth.

The Honolulu entry had already been nicknamed the Bears and tapped F. J. Brickner as its head coach.

Due to travel issues, Honolulu would be based in California the first half of the season and play all its road games traveling from its West Coast base. The Bears would then return to the islands for the second half of the campaign and contest the rest of their slate at home.

Payne said that the clubs had posted anywhere from $60,000 to $250,000 in start-up costs.

Next up was the All-America Football Conference, which was introduced on September 2, 1944, in Chicago.

The  brainchild of Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward, the AAFC would be a coast-to-coast league with teams owned by “men of millionaire incomes” and begin play in 1945. Flagship cities and their owners were reported to be: Chicago, (John L. Keeshin, president of trucking concern); New York, (Eleanor Gehrig, Lou Gehrig’s widow, and Ray J. Ryan, oil company president); Baltimore, (former heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney); Buffalo, (James Breuil and Will Bennett, oil company executives, and Sam Cordavano, construction company head); Cleveland, (Arthur McBride, taxicab magnate); Los Angeles, (actor Don Ameche and Christy Walsh, former newspaper syndicate director); and San Francisco, (Anthony J. Morabito and Allan E. Sorrell, co-owners of a lumber terminal concern, and Ernest J. Turre, construction company manager).

Ward added that prominent business leaders in Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston were also seeking franchises for those cities.

And the third challenger, the Trans-American Football League, announced its intentions on September 18, 1944, in New York.

League president Chick Meehan said Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia were charter members of the TAFL, and groups from Boston and Miami were also being considered.

Teams would travel to games almost exclusively via airplane (hence the “Trans-America” name) and the league was slated to begin play “after the war.”

For a while, it appeared that two of the three had a chance to be successful. The USFL made the biggest splash early on by convincing gridiron legend Red Grange to become commissioner. The AAFC countered by tapping “Sleepy Jim” Crowley as its commish; he was one of the “Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.”

The TAFL, meanwhile, was pushing for a merger with the NFL without ever playing a game. Meehan also hinted that if his league couldn’t find a suitable place to play in New York, it would give up the fight.

As WWII continued, starting play in 1945 wasn’t feasible for any of the newbies. Thus, they’d have another year to prepare.

The USFL and TAFL didn’t need it; they both called it quits on June 4, 1945.

Once the NFL announced that Brooklyn would make Yankee Stadium home, that convinced owners in those two fledgling organizations to fold since they were counting on use of the famed baseball grounds to host their New York area entries.

“With Yankee Stadium, I had plenty of ammunition,” Meehan told UPI. “Without it, I just had conversation.”

But the AAFC had already invested $3 million in players, coaches and franchises, and refused to give up. While it also coveted Yankee Stadium for its club, league officials said 30,000-seat Triboro Municipal Stadium would do just fine.

There were no AAFC games played in 1945, yet Ward and company continued to build a strong foundation. Ward said in December of that year the NFL had already paid more than $100,000 to keep its players from jumping to his league.

“Anyone of several of our teams has more money behind it than the entire National Football League,” he claimed.

NFL commissioner Elmer Layden (along with Crowley, one of the Four Horsemen), didn’t take the challenge seriously.

“They should first get a ball, then make a schedule, and then play a game,” he said.

In 1946 – with the United States Football League and Trans-American Football League distant memories – the All-America Football Conference proved it had balls. It also had a schedule and games.

Populating the league were the Buffalo Bisons, Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Rockets, Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Dons, Miami Seahawks, New York Yankees and San Francisco 49ers.

Although the NFL tried to dismiss their rivals, it became apparent early on that it was a quality operation with stars such as quarterback Otto Graham and fullback Marion Motley of Cleveland, New York ballcarrier Frank Sinkwich and Los Angeles signal caller Angelo Bertelli.

By 1949, the AAFC was on par with the NFL – at least.

And just before its championship game between the 49ers and Browns, Cleveland, San Francisco and the Baltimore Colts, a franchise that replaced Miami in 1947, for the 1950 season, were admitted to the NFL.

The Dons merged with the Los Angeles Rams and the remaining AAFC clubs were shuttered.

While the 49ers (3-9) and Colts (1-11) struggled in their first NFL season, the Browns most certainly did not.

In September, the Browns defeated the two-time defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles, 35-10. NFL commissioner Bert Bell – who took over in 1946 – called the franchise from the (former) rival league, “the greatest team I ever saw.”

Cleveland won the American Conference with an 11-2 record (it beat the New York Giants, 8-3, in a conference tiebreaker game) and seized the NFL crown with a 30-28 victory over Los Angeles – which had several former Dons players on the roster.

After once looking down its nose at the AAFC, the NFL realized the addition of teams from the younger league made it better.

Of course, something like that could never happen today. But thanks to the seeds planted in 1944, remnants of the All-America Football Conference live on in the world’s premiere tackle football league.