All-America Football Conference


The All-America Football Conference was a major professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the nation's best players, and introduced many lasting innovations to the game. However, the AAFC was ultimately unable to sustain itself in competition with the NFL. After it folded, three of its teams were admitted to the NFL: the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns and the original Baltimore Colts.
The AAFC was the second American professional football league to have its teams play in a double round robin format in the regular season: each team had a home game and an away game with each of the other AAFC teams.
The Cleveland Browns were the AAFC's most successful club, winning every annual championship in the league's four years of operation.

Founding

The AAFC was founded by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward on June 4, 1944. Ward was also the originator of baseball's All-Star Game and football's College All-Star Game. Ward brought together a number of wealthy pro football enthusiasts, some of whom had previously attempted to purchase NFL franchises. Ward had previously encouraged the NFL to expand, but now he hoped to bring about a permanent second league and a championship game with the NFL, similar to baseball's World Series.
The idea was not originated in vacuum, as two additional upstart leagues were trying to challenge the NFL in 1944:
  • United States Football League - the USFL, with Red Grange as the league commissioner, announced teams in eight cities: Akron, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, New York, Philadelphia and Washington. The league faded away after failing to attract major investors or sign players, as Grange claimed they were "holding out for between $400 and $600 a game when they used to get $150". The league folded altogether on June 4, 1945, after Grange's resignation.
  • Trans-America Football League - the TAFL had plans for franchises in Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Philadelphia, with a unique ownership model as only a group of five or more people could own a franchise. On January 5, 1945, they announced a six team league in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, which had leased stadiums. The league folded on the same day as the USFL, after failing to secure a lease to Yankee Stadium.
On November 21, 1944, the AAFC chose James "Sleepy Jim" Crowley, one of the "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame", as its commissioner. Not coincidentally, the NFL commissioner at this time was Elmer Layden, another member of Knute Rockne's legendary 1924 "Fighting Irish" backfield at the University of Notre Dame.
During the next months, the AAFC's plans solidified. The league initially issued franchises for Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Brooklyn and Miami were later added. A group representing Baltimore was considered for admission, but could not secure use of Baltimore's stadium. The league planned to begin to play in 1945, but postponed its opening for a year as World War II continued.
As the eight franchises built their teams, no move was more far-reaching than Cleveland's choice of Paul Brown as its head coach. Brown had won six Ohio state championships in nine years at Massillon High School and the 1942 national championship at Ohio State, and had also coached successfully at the military's Naval Station Great Lakes. As coach of the new Cleveland franchise, Brown would become one of American football's greatest innovators and eventually have the team named for him.

NFL reaction

As might be expected, the NFL did not welcome its new rival. In 1945, Layden remarked that the AAFC, still a year from its first game, should "first get a ball, then make a schedule, and then play a game". This insult, often paraphrased as "tell them to get a ball first", would be long remembered.
Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall was perhaps the NFL's hardest-liner regarding the AAFC. In 1945, he commented: "I did not realize there was another league, although I did receive some literature telling about a WPA project". Later he declared, "the worst team in our league could beat the best team in theirs". After the AAFC put a team in Baltimore, Marshall's opposition to it would be a major obstacle to interleague peace. Not coincidentally, his team was badly hurt by the AAFC. A top team from 1936 to 1945, the Redskins began a decades-long title drought after coach Ray Flaherty and many key players defected in 1946.
Layden's successor, Bert Bell, pursued a policy of official non-recognition, generally answering "no comment" to queries about the other league. In 1947, Pro Football Illustrated previewed both leagues in its annual publication and was banned from NFL stadiums.

Competition

The AAFC posed a formidable challenge. In most interleague sports wars, the established league had major advantages over the challenger in prestige, finance, size, and public awareness. The NFL-AAFC war differed in several respects.
The NFL was just emerging from its wartime retrenchment. The Cleveland Rams had suspended operations for 1943, and on three occasions teams merged for a season. The Boston Yanks had played only one season as an independent entity.
Meanwhile, the AAFC had advantages not enjoyed by many challengers:
  • The AAFC was founded by a key figure at a major newspaper, so it enjoyed ample attention in the press.
  • The AAFC owners were wealthier than their NFL counterparts. Among them were Cleveland's Arthur B "Mickey" McBride, San Francisco's Anthony Morabito, Chicago's John L. Keeshin, and Los Angeles’ group of racetrack owner Benjamin Lindheimer, actor Don Ameche and MGM's Louis B. Mayer. The NFL owners were generally men whose primary assets were their teams.
  • Peace produced a surplus of talent and an opening for a new league, as many pro and college players returned to civilian life. Many college-eligible players were signable despite longstanding tradition because their original classes had graduated. The AAFC took its share: its 1946 rosters included 40 of the 66 College All-Stars, two recent Heisman Trophy winners, and more than 100 players with NFL experience.
  • Air travel was now viable. Like Major League Baseball, all NFL teams still played in the Northeast and Midwest, but the AAFC seized the opportunity to place teams in open cities in Florida and California.
Yet it remained to be seen if there was a market for this much pro football. Since achieving stability in the early 1930s, the NFL had never fielded more than 10 teams. No competitor had endured for more than two years. In 1946, there would be 18 teams, including three in Chicago, three in New York, and two in Los Angeles.
Baseball and college football were substantially more popular. Longtime NFL president Joe Carr had said, "No owner has made money from pro football, but a lot have gone broke thinking they could." At a time when the World Series had long been a national institution, and the Rose Bowl drew crowds of 90,000, the NFL's title game typically drew about 35,000 fans. Across the U.S., a growing number of college stadiums designed or retrofitted for football were being built and expanded across the U.S. Most pro football teams in contrast shared stadiums with the local baseball team, and as such had to make do in facilities designed for another sport with mediocre sight lines for football. Both leagues saw fit to choose college football legends as their commissioners.
There was even a sense that collegians could defeat pros. 1946 saw the famous Army–Notre Dame scoreless tie in Yankee Stadium. At season's end, Arch Ward opined that both teams were superior to either pro champion.
It was in this landscape that the AAFC prepared to compete with the NFL.

Maneuvers and intrigue

, owner of the NFL's Brooklyn Tigers, wished to move his team from Ebbets Field to the much larger Yankee Stadium. New York Giants owner Tim Mara used his territorial rights to block the move. He had good reason: the Yankees had displaced the Giants as New York's premier baseball team after moving into The House That Ruth Built, three rival football leagues had planted teams there hoping to duplicate that feat, and Topping was significantly wealthier than Mara.
Topping responded by buying into the baseball Yankees and transferring his football club to the AAFC. Most of his players followed. His renamed New York Yankees were rewarded with $100,000 from each of the other seven AAFC teams while the AAFC's initial New York investor withdrew.
Shortly after Topping defected, the NFL owners fired Commissioner Layden, replacing him with Pittsburgh Steelers co-owner Bert Bell. Bell had already made a major contribution to the league: the NFL draft, begun in 1936, was his idea.
Meanwhile, Dan Reeves' Cleveland Rams had consistently lost money, despite winning the 1945 NFL title. Compounding his problems, the local AAFC competition already looked strong: Arthur McBride was aggressively marketing the Browns, and coach Paul Brown was an Ohio icon. Accordingly, Reeves proposed to move the Rams to Los Angeles.
With two teams planned for California, the AAFC had national aspirations. The NFL's thinking was more modest: it rejected Reeves' move because of travel expenses. After the NFL refused to consider his second choice, Reeves threatened to move his team to the AAFC. Having already lost Topping, the NFL reconsidered and approved the Los Angeles move.
It was unprecedented for the NFL champion to move at all, let alone partly to avoid an unproven rival. On the other hand, the NFL would now face the AAFC as a national rather than regional league, and the AAFC would not have a West Coast monopoly.
Rather than hold a collegiate draft, Crowley encouraged his owners to sign as many good players as possible to compete with the NFL. However, this open market favored Paul Brown, who had built the most extensive recruitment network in all of football. He thus had a head start in signing top players coming out of the colleges and military. Years later, Crowley acknowledged this was a fatal mistake, as it planted the seeds for the Browns' near-total dominance of the league.