Category: History and More

Although the circuits wouldn’t play as one for four more seasons, the 1966 announcement that the National Football League and American Football League had agreed to merge created pro football’s first 600-pound gorilla.

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was hoping it would soon grow into King Kong.

Part of the agreement between the 14-team NFL and 10-team AFL was that the combined organization would expand to 26 franchises by 1969 and 28 for the 1970 campaign.

The addition of New Orleans (NFL, 1967) and Cincinnati (AFL, 1968) took care of the first deadline, but the NFL was still at 26 and holding by 1970.

Rozelle, however, predicted a major growth spurt by the end of the decade – featuring up to 32 clubs with Honolulu and Mexico City in the expansion mix.

“I would think that within the next decade we would probably go to 32 teams,” Rozelle said during a Q&A with Associated Press in January, 1971. “When one considers that in a little over 10 years professional football has gone from 12 to 26 teams, you are not forced to stretch the imagination to envision six more being added. But it will not be in the immediate future.”

Cities across the United States – and beyond – had clamored for franchise consideration throughout the 1960s. Rozelle admitted there were already frontrunners by the early 1970s.

“Cities such as Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Tampa, Birmingham, Memphis, perhaps the general area of the Carolinas, then Mexico City and Hawaii.

“I think we would first put franchises in mainland U.S. cities that merit them, but (an international flair) would be a decided plus for Hawaii and Mexico City.”

Rozelle was making the interview rounds as part of Super Bowl week and the annual “State of the League” address. And when he mentioned taking the league south of the border, it stood to reason that the NFL would strongly consider going north of the border, right?

Nah.

Even though the early 1970s was an era in which the Canadian Football League could compete with the American leagues for players, Rozelle was hoping the NFL and CFL could have a peaceful coexistence.

“I see no use in going up there and causing problems,” Rozelle said. “The reason we wouldn’t be interested in Canada is simply a matter of public relations, of international goodwill. And we have a number of cities down here that would have to be taken care of first.

“I’m not ruling out Canada and there’s no obligation against us moving there, but we wouldn’t consider it without the approval of the people up there, the fans and maybe even the government along with the league owners. We don’t want to take steps to kill off the Canadian Football League.”

By 1972 expansion talk centered mostly on Memphis, Phoenix, Seattle and Tampa, and Lamar Hunt – founder of the AFL and president of the NFL’s American Football Conference – suggested those hopefuls would get a hearing in front of NFL officials in 1973.

However, expansion never got beyond the talking stage and drug on into 1974, when the NFL found itself dealing with a competitor in the World Football League. The WFL put franchises in Birmingham, Honolulu and Memphis, cities that Rozelle had mentioned as possible expansion sites. Whether that impacted the NFL’s decision to grant Tampa and Seattle teams for 1976 is debatable, but the Bucs were formed in April, 1974, and the Seahawks joined two months later to give the NFL its 27^th and 28^th teams.

As for expanding to 32 by the end of the 70s, that, of course, didn’t happen. In fact, Rozelle had been retired for six years before the NFL hit the 30-franchise mark, that coming when the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars were added for the 1995 season.

The growth to 32 was ultimately realized as a byproduct of relocation. Cleveland, which lost its team when the franchise moved to Baltimore in 1996, was added as the NFL’s 31^st team in 1999 and rechristened the Browns.

The Houston Texans made the league a 32-franchise organization when they came on board in 2002; Space City lost the Oilers to Tennessee in 1997.

Of Rozelle’s original 1970s expansion teases, Portland, Birmingham, Memphis, Mexico City and Honolulu are still on the outside looking in (although Memphis got the Oilers for a stopover year while Nashville built a stadium).

So, while the National Football League has seen quite a few established franchises begin play in new locales during the modern era (Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982; Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis in 1984; St. Louis Cardinals to Phoenix in 1988; Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis in 1995; Raiders back to Oakland in 1995; Houston Oilers temporarily to Memphis in 1997 and permanently to Nashville in 1998; Rams back to Los Angeles in 2016; San Diego Chargers to Los Angeles in 2017; and the Raiders to Las Vegas in 2020), it has had 32 members for the last two decades.

From a strictly numbers standpoint it seems to be the perfect size: two 16-team conferences each with four divisions comprised of four teams.

But it’s hard to imagine the NFL standing pat forever, and you have to believe there will be further expansion in the not-too-distant future.

Now that London is a regular season stop and talk of expansion there has gone on for several years, the league might throw logistical caution to the wind and give England its own team (or teams).

Speaking of wind, the Windy City could conceivably be in line for a second franchise. With the Bears leaving Soldier Field, city leaders are already talking about getting a new tenant for its old gridiron cathedral.

St. Louis would love to be back in the NFL, as would San Diego and Oakland. Toronto always seems to be in the expansion conversation as well, and it doesn’t take a huge leap to picture the sport’s preeminent business growing to 36 teams.

Who knows?

As enormous as King Kong is now, he could still bulk up even more.

Ask someone if they remember the Dallas Texans, and they’ll likely tell you they were one of the charter members of the American Football League.

They’d be right.

But eight years before that team hit the gridiron, the NFL had its own versions of Dallas Texans.

A success story, it was not.

While the AFL Texans ultimately moved to Kansas City and now boast a pair of Super Bowl titles, the NFL Texans struggled through a one-and-done 1952 season – and finished the year as a road team.

The franchise actually had a long history before arriving in Dallas; its lineage can be traced back to the Dayton Triangles of 1920. But after the NFL originals morphed into the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), they were rebranded as the Brooklyn Tigers (1944), merged with the Boston Yanks (1945), moved to New York in 1949 and became the New York Bulldogs, and then remarketed as the New York Yanks in 1950.

They couldn’t make a go of it in the Big Apple and were sold back to the league, opening the door for Dallas textile millionaire Giles E. Miller to buy them on January 29, 1952. Part of the deal meant that Miller paid $100,000 to relocate the Yanks franchise and underwrote an agreement to pay off that club’s $200,000 in debts. Miller’s brother, Connell Miller, and 12 other Dallas businessmen were part of the ownership group.

According to the Associated Press, the team was expected to be called the Texas Rangers but Giles Miller christened the franchise Dallas Texans instead. Saying he was a “rabid football fan,” Giles Miller admitted owning a team was a new experience for him and “I’ll need plenty of advice.”

However, the smiles displayed at the opening press conference didn’t last long.

Not only were the Texans – who finished 1-9-2 a year earlier as the Yanks – unable to figure out how to win games under coach Jimmy Phelan, they never managed to win the hearts of Dallas fans. Their largest crowd at the Cotton Bowl was 17,499, which came in an opening day loss to the New York Giants.

But while starting the season with nine consecutive losses, they played only four games in Dallas. On November 14, the league took control of the team again, with NFL Commissioner Bert Bell releasing a lengthy statement on the matter:

I have determined that the Dallas Texans Football Club, Inc., is guilty of acts detrimental to the National Football League, namely a refusal to continue to operate the club and field a team throughout the balance of the 1952 season. The franchise of the Dallas Texans’ Football Club, Inc., is hereby canceled and forfeited and the player contracts, including the reserve player list, are hereby taken over by the National Football League acting on behalf of the remaining clubs in the league. The National Football League, acting for its remaining members and for the benefit of the players employed by the Dallas club, will continue to field the team with the approval of the Dallas club, under the name of Dallas Texans, for the balance of the 1952 playing season.

The club spent the rest of its 12-game slate as a road team, winning its only game in Akron with a 27-23 upset of the Chicago Bears. The traveling Texans closed out an 1-11 season with a 41-6 thrashing at the hands of the Detroit Lions at Briggs Stadium in Detroit.

So, what went wrong?

Pretty much everything.

Although they featured sensational running back Buddy Young (who would later have his number retired by the Baltimore Colts) and all-purpose standout George Taliaferro (the first African-American drafted by the NFL and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame), the Texans were overmatched game in and game out. They were last in the 12-team league in scoring offense, 11^th in overall offense, 11^th in passing offense, 10^th in rushing offense, and last in both team defense and rushing defense.

And the fact that Dallas was a segregated city and made sure to stay that way on game day did the team no favors at the box office.

Rhett Miller, grandson of Giles Miller (and lead singer of alt-country band Old 97’s), wrote about the situation in the January 12, 2015, edition of Sports Illustrated:

In the opening game, Taliaferro connected with Young for the new team’s first touchdown. (It came after the Texans’ defense forced a New York Giants fumble by, of all people, Tom Landry.) Despite initial enthusiasm within Dallas’s African-American community for the team’s two black stars, very few black fans were on hand to see Young score. Cotton Bowl officials had coerced Pop (Giles Miller) into denying black fans access to the $3.60 grandstand seats, allowing them access only to the $1.80 end zone areas. The first preseason game was marred by overcrowding in these sections, and much of the local black community boycotted subsequent games.

Art Donovan, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee as a defensive tackle who gained additional fame in later life as a popular talk show guest, was also a member of the Texans. He said by the time the squad left Dallas behind, players just wanted to make it to the end of the season.

“Hershey, Pennsylvania, was our headquarters for the last four games of the season, and the league paid our salary,” Donovan said during an NFL Films interview. “When we were in Hershey, we were running out the string. We didn’t have any bed check, we were trying to get the season over … it was a disaster.

“We practiced maybe for about an hour and we used to play volleyball with the football over the crossbar. That was a big thing, and the best thing in Hershey was the night life. Man, we stood Hershey on its ear.”

In the end, the remnants of the Texans would provide the bones to build the Colts; the 1953 Baltimore team is considered an expansion franchise, but owner Carroll Rosenbloom was awarded the assets of the Texans and retained many of their players.

Thus, the ill-fated Dallas Texans hold the distinction of being the last NFL franchise to fold.

In the classic film Inherit the Wind, there’s a scene when lawyer Henry Drummond – with dogmatic rival Matthew Harrison Brady on the stand – expounds on the advancement of society:

“Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powderpuff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.” 

So … what does this have to do with college football?

On the surface, absolutely nothing.

However, for people like me – folks who have spent more than a half century following the game – those words resonate.

Why, yes, I’ll be glad to explain …

The latest installment of college football is now 31 games old with a full slate of action set for today. Of those 31 games already played, most were televised by some outlet.

And if you so choose, at 11 a.m. today you can start your gridiron viewing fest by tuning into the Big Ten Network to watch the Buffalo-Maryland clash, or catch Michigan-Colorado State on ABC, or Delaware-Navy on CBS Sports Network, or North Carolina State-East Carolina on ESPN, or Rutgers-Boston College on the ACC Network, or Sam Houston State-Texas A&M on the SEC Network, or … well you get the idea.

Point being, there is all the college football your eyes can handle, available throughout this day and night, as well as once on Sunday (Florida State vs. LSU, ABC) and again on Labor Day (Clemson vs. Georgia Tech, ESPN).

And with that, I now shift to the “remember when” portion of this column, where I (clumsily) tie-in Drummond’s fiery courtroom elucidation with the old days of college football.

Go back 50 years to the start of the 1972 season, and you’ll see that except for a West Coast tilt on September 8 (San Diego State vs. Oregon State), September 9 was Opening Day.

For a young boy growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, then (spoiler alert: I was that young boy), the two biggest games of note were Duke vs. Alabama at Legion Field and Auburn at Mississippi State, both set for 7:30 p.m. kickoffs.

Nationally, the UCLA-Nebraska and Southern Cal-Arkansas clashes were billed as great lid-lifters for a new campaign.

Kids today (I’ve been wanting to use that expression for the longest time) would be shocked to learn that none of those games were on TV in the Birmingham area. If you wanted to follow the Tide or Tigers without actually being in the stands, you had to do it via the radio.

As for the showdowns between the Bruins and Cornhuskers and Trojans and Razorbacks, you’d need to watch the late news in hopes you got a score because you couldn’t even listen to those intersectional battles.

Nope, if you lived anywhere near my hometown on September 9, 1972, and wanted to watch a college football game you had one shot and one shot only. That came at 4 p.m. when ABC broadcast the Tennessee at Georgia Tech game from Atlanta.

And it was magnificent.

Why wouldn’t it be? It was all I knew. Back in the day, ABC carried all the regular season college football games, and you got what you got and liked it. (Every now and then they’d have a day game and a night game and man, that was glorious).

Sure, it was even better if Alabama or Auburn were on TV, but the fact that any contest was being televised was a huge deal.

It allowed me to hear legends like Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson call games from such exotic (to me) locales like Ann Arbor, South Bend, Los Angeles and Austin. Teams I might never see in person from states I’d never been were right there in the living room, and they demanded my attention.

When Southern Cal and UCLA would meet, it was like spending the day in Hollywood – or at least how I imagined it. With the Bruins donning baby blue and gold and the Trojans rocking cardinal and a yellowy gold, the sartorial splendor on display was wonderful.

And I’d always get excited when I knew Ohio State would be one half of the game of the day, because I could cheer against Woody Hayes.

In a word, these events were special, and college football games on TV are no longer that. To paraphrase Mr. Drummond, they’ve “conquered the air but lost their wonder,” so to speak.

But before you fear I’ll start complaining about the fact that athletes don’t wear leather helmets anymore or play games while it’s lightning, rest easy. I’m not an older guy who pines for the way college football was, I simply appreciate how it made me feel when I was young.

Nowadays I love being able to watch one game on my TV, another on my laptop and a third on my iPhone. And if I want to find a tilt involving one of the 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams on any given Saturday (or whatever day they play), I can do it.

But I can also plant my patootie on the futon today and take a few moments to reminisce … thinking back fondly on a time when one TV game on a College Football Saturday was a genuine thrill.

And I plan to work those moments in – probably sometime between the Georgia-Oregon and Florida-Utah games.