Revisiiting the AFL-NFL Realignment

[OrangeHoof]

I was re-watching the excellent series "Full Color Football" that aired on Showtime and made by NFL Films (now available on YouTube in episodes 1-5).

One comment came to my attention that I had not caught before. When the 10-team AFL merged with the 16-team NFL in 1970, three teams had to be bribed (Baltimore, Cleveland and Pittsburgh) to move from the NFL to the new AFC to give both sides 13-team conferences under the one NFL umbrella.

The AFL historian, noting how much loathing the two leagues still held for each other, said "Why not just have the two leagues separate but equal like the American and National Leagues in baseball and put all the future expansion teams in the AFL until they had the same number of teams?"

Yes, why not? Maybe the AFC would have been able to keep the 2-pt conversion like the AL has the DH.

In the less extreme realignment, the recently-born Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints would shift conferences, leaving a 14-12 disparity, then the additions of Tampa Bay and Seattle in 1977 would have created two 14-team conferences. If so, three-division alignment might have looked like this in 1977:

NFC East: Dallas, NY Giants, Philadelphia, St. Louis (Cardinals), Washington
NFC Central: Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota
NFC West: Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles (Rams), Pittsburgh, San Francisco

AFC East: Atlanta, Buffalo, Miami, New England, NY Jets
AFC Central: Cincinnati, Houston, New Orleans, Tampa Bay
AFC West: Denver, Kansas City, Oakland, San Diego, Seattle

Why is Baltimore in the West? Maybe because Washington owner George Preston Marshall was threatened having another team so close geographically to its own but the Colts were in weird alignments until they switched conferences in 1970. The Steelers and Browns seemed joined at the hip with their intense rivalry so they would have stayed in the same division no matter where they went.

In the more extreme 16-10 alignment, the AFC would have eventually added Tampa Bay, Seattle (1977), Carolina, Jacksonville (1993), the Baltimore Ravens (1999) and the Houston Texans (2002) to reach 16 apiece. It seems geography would have forced Seattle to switch conferences, just as in real life, with the Colts (now in Indianapolis) switching for balance. Then the league would look surprisingly similar in the East and West with the middle of the country looking quite different:

NFC East: Dallas, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Washington
NFC Central: Atlanta, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New Orleans
NFC North: Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota
NFC West: Arizona, Los Angeles - St. Louis (Rams), San Francisco, Seattle

AFC East: Buffalo, Miami, New England, NY Jets
AFC Central: Baltimore (Ravens), Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Tennessee
AFC South: Carolina, Houston, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay
AFC West: Denver, Kansas City, Oakland, San Diego

Remember, the NFL loves keeping traditional rivalries intact and they were once so geographically dense as to have Atlanta and New Orleans in the NFC West, so I make no apologies. But neither do I pretend this is anything all that significant. It's just a fun way of carving up the league playing "what if".

Try it yourself and see what you get.

[Joel]

The problem was that the NFL was just THAT MUCH better than the AFL. The merger was financially rather than competitively motivated: The leagues' annual bidding war for draftees was getting increasingly expensive for both sides, defeating the whole motive for successful teams to accept the draft in the first place. But there was never any doubt which league was BETTER overall, and by a wide margin. I'm an AFL guy through and through, but that's just reality.

Imagine how popular the SB would've become without the Colts to win Super Bowl V and Steelers 4 more for the AFC. Remember, after the Packers annihilated the Chiefs and Raiders in SBs II & II, the NFL Colts were 17½ pt favorites vs. the Jets: The only reason that game MATTERS is that the AFL won AT ALL, which NO ONE (except Namath) even thought POSSIBLE. The AFL knotted things a year later, and a year after that the Colts and Steelers switched sides, but what if they hadn't...?

The AFL goes 3-7, thanks to the perfect Dolphins and '75 being a bad year for Pitt AND Dallas. Then Oakland finally adds a 4th AFL win, a 5th in 1983—AND NOTHING ELSE TILL 1997! The AFL would've been 5-9 heading into a span where a pair of Marcus Allen teams were its ONLY success before a 13-game losing streak, mostly blowouts where the AFC Champ earned nothing but the privilege of being the NFLs annual whipping boy. Picture an AFC with a 7-24 Super Bowl record.

You don't have to: The ring doctor would've stopped that fight long before it got that far, much less to Super Beatdown 50.

The AFL needed 30 years to gain parity: Rozelle gave them the Colts, Steelers and Browns to jumpstart them, and it's a darned good thing.

[OrangeHoof]

Point taken although Rozelle didn't hand them three teams. The AFL teams had to pay the NFL entry fees and the three NFL teams that switched to the AFC each got paid by the NFL to switch. That's why I say they were bribed to change to the AFC.

[Ravage!!!]

Compensated I believe is a more correct term.

[Joel]

Point taken although Rozelle didn't hand them three teams. The AFL teams had to pay the NFL entry fees and the three NFL teams that switched to the AFC each got paid by the NFL to switch. That's why I say they were bribed to change to the AFC.
Which just underscores what a weak sister the AFL was, and for a surprisingly long time: By the time the AFC finally gained parity <20 years ago, the SB was older than most people PLAYING it, and the last AFL player had been retired over a decade. Wikipedias AFL article has an interesting claim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Football_League#Expanding_and_reintroduci ng_the_sport_to_more_cities) about that bribe though:


Kevin Sherrington of The Dallas Morning News (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dallas_Morning_News) has argued that the presence of AFL and the subsequent merger radically altered the fortunes of the Pittsburgh Steelers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Steelers), saving the team "from stinking".[43] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Football_League#cite_note-DallasNews20110201-43) Before the merger, the Steelers had long been one of the NFL's worst teams. Constantly lacking the money to build a quality team, the Steelers had only posted eight winning seasons, and just one playoff appearance, since their first year of existence in 1933. They also finished with a 1-13 record in 1969 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_NFL_season), tied with the Chicago Bears (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Bears) for the worst record in the NFL. The $3 million indemnity that the Steelers received for joining the AFC with the rest of the former AFL teams after the merger helped them rebuild into a contender, drafting eventual-Pro Football Hall of Famers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Football_Hall_of_Fame) like Terry Bradshaw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Bradshaw) and Joe Greene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Greene_(American_football)), and ultimately winning four Super Bowls in the 1970s.[43] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Football_League#cite_note-DallasNews20110201-43) Since the 1970 merger, the Steelers have the NFL's highest winning percentage, the most total victories, the most trips to either conference championship game, are tied for the most trips to the Super Bowl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl) (with the Dallas Cowboys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Cowboys), New England Patriots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Patriots), and Denver Broncos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Broncos)), and have won an NFL-record six Super Bowl championships.

In essence, the merger did for the Steelers what the millennium did for the Cheatriots: Transformed an eternal doormat into historys most successful team.

The article also has an interesting note that NFL owners essentially sought volunteers for the switch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Football_League#Legitimacy_and_the_end_of _an_era_.281968.E2.80.9370.29), and Modell dragged the Steelers along as he leapt at the chance to both profit from an OH rivalry with the Bengals and indulge his hatred of Paul Brown (the Bengals coach who led the Browns to 8 championships before Modell fired him essentially out of jealousy, dooming Cleveland to the futility it's endured ever since.)

In the end though, the NFL won most battles, but the AFL won the war: Its high risk/reward passing offense, developed to compete with the NFL when it was easier and cheaper to find a good QB and a couple fast WRs than five linemen and a bunch of good RBs, is now the NFL norm. Forcing and remaining competitive in a broadcast battle was as critical to forcing the merger as competitive bids for players, and the legacy of that TV presence is the modern NFLs biggest revenue source; even the names added to AFL jerseys to promote TV audiences were included in the merger. The NFL had briefly, haltingly broken the color barrier, but the infant AFLs desperate need for quality talent unclaimed by the NFL shattered it, with so many elite black players there was an ample pool to move into coaching and executive positions after retirement. The AFL even introduced wildcards in its final year, where KC upset Oakland on the road before winning the AFL Championship and then SB IV (so Oakland wasn't actually the first wildcard SB Champ: KC was, and BEAT Oakland to do it!) Perhaps it's fitting that the NFL finally adopted the AFLs 2PAT just before we broke the AFLs 13-year SB drought with repeat wins, the first over the very Packers who were defending the title after their first win since their OWN repeat beatdown of the AFL in the first two SBs; since GBs 3rd win, the AFC is 11-7 (hopefully 12-7 next week.)

I'm most impressed by how well Rozelle managed TV deals (helped by the inaugural AFLs TV revenue-sharing deal) with ALL broadcast networks: CBS kept its NFL monopoly, NBC kept its AFL monopoly and the odd man out, ABC, got: Monday Night Football, the ONE prime time game each week, broadcast coast-to-coast. That worked AMAZINGLY well and evenly till Fox came along in the early '90s to screw it all up permanently: Now TV fans must PAY for MNF, and ABC has NOTHING.

[OrangeHoof]

Except that ABC owns ESPN and Disney owns them both. the NFL essentially has contracts with every major player in Television.

The AFL may not have represented many post-merger champions the first 25 years but they did produce the 71-74 Dolphins who were the first post-merger dynasty so the AFL wasn't completely bad.

[Joel]

Except that ABC owns ESPN and Disney owns them both. the NFL essentially has contracts with every major player in Television.
Not every BROADCAST player though. Many Americans still feel that if they wanted to pay to see what's on airwaves they OWN, they'd move to Europe.


The AFL may not have represented many post-merger champions the first 25 years but they did produce the 71-74 Dolphins who were the first post-merger dynasty so the AFL wasn't completely bad.
The '71-73 Dolphins: The '74 team was one-and-done, and three years isn't much of a "dynasty." Maybe it would've been if most of its stars hadn't bolted to the World Football League for more cash (a decision that ended badly for pretty much everyone.) Miami reached three straight SB, but NO playoff wins before or after, until '82.