Fifty years ago, Pete Rozelle began plotting the future of the National Football League.
The commissioner already oversaw a blossoming 26-team circuit – one that grew by 10 three years earlier when the merger with the American Football League became official. And the NFL was coming off a season that produced the league’s first (and so far, only) perfect team – the 17-0 Miami Dolphins.
But there was still plenty of room to grow, and in early September, 1973, Rozelle announced that nearly two dozen cities were in the running for a future NFL franchise.
In an interview with U.S. News & World Report, Rozelle said an NFL committee was doing market research on possible NFL sites “within this decade.” The targets included: Anaheim, Birmingham, the Carolinas, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, central and north central Florida (Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville), Honolulu, Indianapolis, Louisville, Mexico City, Nashville, greater New York, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, Seattle and the Tidewater area of Virginia.
Exotic locales such as Honolulu and Mexico City were in the running, but Rozelle said the league had no interest in going north of the border.
“There are a number of negatives,” he told the USN&WR. “One is the weather. The Canadian football season really ends around Thanksgiving because of the cold weather. And there is also concern that if we moved into one of the major Canadian cities, we could be helping contribute to the death of the Canadian Football League, which we would not want to do.”
All that was big news as the NFL prepared to start its 54th season. And if Rozelle was paying attention (and you know he was), he might’ve noticed that other groups were out to grab a slice of the pro football pie, too.
In fact, 1973 was also the year that not one, not two, but three World Football Leagues were being organized – all with designs on competing with the NFL.
Louis P. Roberts was the first to unveil WFL plans, and he was followed later in the year by Tony Razzano and Louis S. Goldman’s circuit as well as Gary Davidson’s – the latter the only World Football League that made it off the drawing board and onto the playing field.
According to a Philadelphia Inquirer piece from February 27, 1973, Roberts – an insurance executive based in Anniston, Alabama – was looking to convince several millionaires to invest in a 10-city World Football League. The inaugural franchises in 1974 would be selected from Birmingham, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Honolulu, Jacksonville, Jersey City, Los Angeles, Memphis, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle, Tulsa and Wichita.
“The cost of a team will be at least $5 million,” Roberts told the Inquirer. “But we prefer the man to have $10 million in backup capital. We expect to line up eight to 10 teams in the next few months and sign the articles of association.”
Roberts had actually been seeking investors since 1972, so give him credit for being the WFL early bird.
Then on October 6, a story broke announcing that Davidson was ready to go with his World Football League for 1974. Chicago was getting the first franchise and Boston, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Toronto were expected to join soon.
“We plan for at least eight and possibly 12 teams operating the first season,” Davidson said to the Associated Press. “We currently are negotiating with 19 groups for franchises covering 15 cities from Mexico City to Vancouver.”
(For the record, Roberts told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1974 that Robert Schmertz, owner of the WFL New York Stars and John Bassett, who owned the Memphis Southmen, stole his idea and Davidson ran with it.)
Finally, there was the WFL proposed by Razzano and Goldman, which had to change its name to Universal Football League since Davidson beat them to the WFL punch when he held the first press conference.
“We had originally settled on the title of World Football League for our organization, and then when this other group made the announcement, we had to change ours,” Rozzano told the New Castle News for an October 9 story.
Its gimmick was to utilize some key CFL rules (12 men to a side, three downs to make 10 yards, etc.), plus kickoffs from the 20-yard line and field goals of varying point values.
Inaugural franchises were planned for Anaheim, Birmingham, Chicago, Mexico City, Memphis, New York, Phoenix, Tampa, Toronto and Seattle.
As you know, only one of the three pretenders to the NFL throne ever got beyond the idea stage.
They never had a franchise outside the United States, but Davidson’s WFL did make it to market – although its colorful history was short and marked by financial disaster.
Of course, we all know the next wave of NFL expansion came in 1976 when the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Bandits joined the league. And over time, six of Rozelle’s targets were hit – either through expansion or relocation.
Anaheim, for example, was home of the Los Angeles Rams for 15 seasons (1980-94).
Indianapolis infamously became an NFL city when Mayflower moving fans took the Baltimore Colts to Indiana in 1984.
Phoenix (or at least the Phoenix ‘burbs) tasted the gridiron big leagues when the St. Louis Cardinals headed West in 1988. They were the Phoenix Cardinals for six seasons (1988-93) and have been known as the Arizona Cardinals ever since.
The Carolinas got in the NFL in 1995 with the addition of the Charlotte-based Panthers, and Jacksonville joined them that same year with the birth of the Jaguars.
And Nashville was the new playground of the Houston Oilers after that franchise relocated to Memphis for the 1997 season and made a permanent move to Music City a year later, ultimately rebranding as the Tennessee Titans.
When it comes to the rest of Rozelle’s list, most found homes in upstart leagues – but not in the NFL.
(Birmingham, Columbus, Orlando and San Antonio did get consolation prizes, though, in the form of the NFL-funded World League of American Football). Regardless, it’s fun to look back on what was an active planning year in professional football half a century ago – even though many of those plans were never fully realized.