September 11, 1960: The New York Titans (Jets) Debut

This is the Titans playing at the Polo Grounds,

but it's not the first game.

The opponent is the Denver Broncos.

September 11, 1960, 60 years ago: The New York Titans play their 1st regular-season game. The New York entry in the brand-new American Football League takes the field at the Polo Grounds, at 155th Street and 8th Avenue, where Harlem meets Washington Heights, and beats the Buffalo Bills, 27-3.

The Bills scored first, on a 35-yard field goal by Darrell Harper. In the 2nd quarter, Bill Shockley scored the franchise's 1st points with a game-tying 15-yard field goal. Later in the quarter, Al Dorow rushed for 2 touchdowns. Shockley kicked a 39-yard field goal in the 3rd quarter. In the 4th, Dick Jamieson threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Art Powell. On all 3 Titan touchdowns, Shockley converted the extra point.

Despite good weather -- 65 degrees, with an 18-mile-per-hour wind -- the attendance was only 10,250. Not good. For comparison's sake, when the NFL's New York Giants played their 1st home game of the season, they brought 60,625 people to the old Yankee Stadium.

The Titans finished 7-7 in 1960. In 1963, to match baseball's Mets, with whom they were sharing the ancient Polo Grounds, they changed their name to the New York Jets. They also changed their colors from navy blue and gold to green and white. In 1964, both teams moved into Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow, Queens. In calendar year 1969, both teams improbably won their sports' World Championships.

The Jets joined the NFL with the 1970 merger with the AFL, and continued to play at Shea until 1983. The following season, they moved to the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, Bergen County, New Jersey, sharing Giants Stadium with the Giants. In 2010, both teams moved next-door to the new MetLife Stadium.

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September 11, 1960, as you might guess, was a Sunday. The rest of the inaugural week of AFL regular-season play went as follows: 

* The 1st game was 2 days before, on the 9th, a Friday night at Boston University's Nickerson Field. The Denver Broncos beat the Boston Patriots 13-10. The Patriots changed their name to "New England" in 1971, when they moved out to suburban Foxborough, Massachusetts.

* On the 10th, the Los Angeles Chargers beat the Dallas Texans, 21-20 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Chargers moved to San Diego in 1961, and back to Los Angeles in 2017. The Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963.

* The only other game played on the 11th was the Houston Oilers beating the Oakland Raiders, 37-22 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. The Raiders wouldn't actually play a game in Oakland until the 1962 season. They moved to Los Angeles in 1982, back to Oakland in 1995, and to Las Vegas in 2020. The Oilers moved in 1997, becoming the Tennessee Oilers, and became the Tennessee Titans in 1999. Hey, the Jets weren't using the Titans name.