BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…August 16, 1965:
After five increasingly successful seasons and about to enter a sixth, the American Football League awards its first expansion franchise to Miami. The team would be named the Dolphins and would debut in 1966. It was another line drawn in the sand by the upstart AFL. Two years later, with the AFL-NFL merger already announced and interleague play set to begin in 1970, the AFL expanded again, awarding a franchise to Cincinnati. The Bengals began play in 1968.
The original eight AFL teams in 1960: The Buffalo Bills, Boston (now New England) Patriots, New York Titans (now the Jets), Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans), Denver Broncos, L.A. Chargers, Oakland (now Las Vegas) Raiders and Dallas Texans (now the Kansas City Chiefs). It was vengeance for some of the new AFL owners who had been denied franchise opportunities in the NFL. They were fired up. Then they went out and signed 75 percent of the NFL’s first-round draft picks in 1960, including Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon of LSU.
It took a while to build fan bases, but by 1965, the AFL was a force. It had landed an attractive TV contract with NBC, and one of its teams, the New York Jets, had won a bidding war to sign Alabama quarterback Joe Namath, the second overall pick in both the NFL and AFL Drafts behind Gayle Sayers of Kansas (who signed with the Chicago Bears). That was the tipping point, and the two leagues conducted “peace talks” after the leagues continued to steal each other’s players.
In 1966 they agreed on a timetable that would create an AFL-NFL Championship Game in January, 1967 (to be renamed the Super Bowl), as well as a common players draft. In 1970, the full merger would take effect. A two-month stretch in late 1968 and early 1969 told the NFL that the merger couldn’t come soon enough. That’s when NBC cut away from a dramatic Jets-Raiders game to show “Heidi,” and the resulting outcry overshadowed anything that happened in the NFL that day. Then the Jets upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III.
When the AFL was absorbed into the NFL in 1970, three longtime NFL franchises, the Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns, agreed to join the existing AFL franchises to form the AFC.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
