AHC: Block AFL-NFL merger

Good morning, Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to block the 1960's merger between the American and National Football Leagues. After which, you must decide the future of the game. Is a monopoly inevitable, or can room be made for multiple leagues? It is all up to you.
 
I'm not sure you can block it after the Jets and Chiefs displayed the parity between the leagues but maybe you can get a Major League Baseball type situation with two separate leagues with some slightly different rules where there is no inter-league play during the regular season.
 
Go back and have Violet Wolfner sell majority shares of the Cardinals to Lamar Hunt in Jan. 1959. Hunt moves the Cardinals to Dallas, re-names them the Texans, and there is no AFL.
 
Go back and have Violet Wolfner sell majority shares of the Cardinals to Lamar Hunt in Jan. 1959. Hunt moves the Cardinals to Dallas, re-names them the Texans, and there is no AFL.

Oh yeah that would work.

So I take it the WFL and USFL would be butterflied then?
 
Probably the USFL. However, it depends on what Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy (founders of the ABA and WHA) do. Maybe they decide to form the WFL eight years earlier.

Hmmm...I think a new TL might be in order...

With Mr Hunt having taken over the Cards and bringing them to Dallas, maybe these guys could join Davidson and Murphy in...1966...ish...unless they get expansion teams in the NFL of course.

Bud Adams
Bob Howsam (Denver)
Barron Hilton (Southern California)
Sonny Werblin (New York)
Max Winter (Minnesota)
Joe Robbie
Ralph Wilson
David Dixon (New Orleans)
Art Modell
Paul Brown
Seymour Knox III (Buffalo)
Marvin Warner (Birmingham, AL)
Harry Glickman (Portland)
Rankin Smith (Atlanta)
Charlie O Finley
Lloyd Nordstrom (Seattle)
Billy Sullivan or John Y Brown (Boston)
 
Last edited:
Hmmm...I think a new TL might be in order...

With Mr Hunt having taken over the Cards and bringing them to Dallas, maybe these guys could join Davidson and Murphy in...1966...ish...unless they get expansion teams in the NFL of course.

Bud Adams
Bob Howsam (Denver)
Barron Hilton (Southern California)
Sonny Werblin (New York)
Max Winter (Minnesota)
Joe Robbie
Ralph Wilson
David Dixon (New Orleans)
Art Modell
Paul Brown
Seymour Knox III (Buffalo)
Marvin Warner (Birmingham, AL)
Harry Glickman (Portland)
Rankin Smith (Atlanta)
Charlie O Finley
Lloyd Nordstrom (Seattle)
Billy Sullivan or John Y Brown (Boston)

I'm not sure if Davidson or Murphy would have wanted to start any new leagues if the AFL didn't exist, but if they did, they would have had a lot of willing owners (that you show above) because the NFL didn't want to expand in the early-60's.
 
I'm not sure if Davidson or Murphy would have wanted to start any new leagues if the AFL didn't exist, but if they did, they would have had a lot of willing owners (that you show above) because the NFL didn't want to expand in the early-60's.

The AFL also benefitted from TV coming into its own in the 1960s as a sports watching medium. I think somebody will want to take advantage of that.
 
Go back and have Violet Wolfner sell majority shares of the Cardinals to Lamar Hunt in Jan. 1959. Hunt moves the Cardinals to Dallas, re-names them the Texans, and there is no AFL.

This is the best/easiest way. With Hunt in the "club," it at least delays another startup league (he was the driving force...). Also if the "NFL Texans" are successful (stable, profitable...) it will reduce the rest of the NFL owners (and especially Bert Bell's) fear of expansion (when expansion was discussed, Bert always brought up the failed teams of the late forties up as a caution against expanding...), so you could see expansion on the lines of the AFL by the NFL 60-64, Buffalo, 2nd New York & LA teams, Boston, Houston & Atlanta (being the Texans would have proven the an NFL team could survive alongside college football in the south...
 
This is the best/easiest way. With Hunt in the "club," it at least delays another startup league (he was the driving force...). Also if the "NFL Texans" are successful (stable, profitable...) it will reduce the rest of the NFL owners (and especially Bert Bell's) fear of expansion (when expansion was discussed, Bert always brought up the failed teams of the late forties up as a caution against expanding...), so you could see expansion on the lines of the AFL by the NFL 60-64, Buffalo, 2nd New York & LA teams, Boston, Houston & Atlanta (being the Texans would have proven the an NFL team could survive alongside college football in the south...

I wonder if the situation you are describing could also lead some to push for some sort of merger between the NFL and CFL and that time (we have talked about this in other threads). There was relative financial parity between the two leagues in the 1960s making this the last time this sort of thing could have been possible.
 
Wasn't the Superdome and New Orleans Saints franchise part of a deal to swing the Louisianan delegation vote for the merger? I may very well be making this up, but I feel like I've heard this.
 
fear of expansion
That is not an expansion as a relocation, ie Chicago cardinals ( later ST Louis football cardinals now Arizona cardinals) getting south to become Dallas Cardinals. Another POD would be otl Lamar hunt NFL texans pitch did being sucessful
 
Here's a possible alignment assuming Hunt buys in to the existing league...

East: Baltimore, Cleveland, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington
West: Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Green Bay, Los Angeles, San Francisco
 
Here's a possible alignment assuming Hunt buys in to the existing league...

East: Baltimore, Cleveland, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington
West: Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Green Bay, Los Angeles, San Francisco

I did a timeline on this site nine years ago (dealing with the Hunt buying Cards topic), and this is what I did, too. If this happened, the Giants probably don't make the championship in 1959, and Baltimore probably plays the Bears for the title (who had the second-best record in the West in OTL).
 
Top