June 8, 1966: The NFL-AFL Merger Is Announced

The AFL's logo, and the logo the NFL was using at the time

June 8, 1966, 60 years ago: After 6 years of "war," the established National Football League and the upstart American Football League reach an agreement on a merger.

The process began 2 months earlier, when Al Davis, head coach of the AFL's Oakland Raiders, was named Commissioner of the AFL, replacing Joe Foss, who had been Commissioner since the league's founding in 1959. Davis' approach, much like the pirate on his team's helmet, was "Take no prisoners." That spooked the NFL team owners, who were tired of the rising salaries that the bidding war between the leagues was producing.

So Tex Schramm, general manager of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, contacted Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. Hunt, more respected by the AFL team owners than Davis was, went behind Davis' back, and undercut Davis in his desire for all-out war. This resulted in Raiders vs. Chiefs being a very nasty rivalry that lasts to this day, in spite of the Raiders' moves.

On June 8, Hunt and Schramm called a press conference in New York, and announced that they'd agreed upon these points:

* The AFL's 8 teams, which would be 10 teams by the time the process was completed, would join the NFL and its 14 teams, which would soon grow to 16, and the combined 26-team league would keep the NFL name.

* All existing teams would remain in their respective metropolitan areas for the time being. Some teams soon built new stadiums out in the suburbs of their anchor cities, including the AFL's Boston Patriots and Buffalo Bills; and the NFL's New York Giants, Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. But no team in the combined NFL would move to a different metro area until the Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982. (That, however, began a new era in which several teams moved, and others at least threatened to do unless their current cities built them new stadiums.)

* Each league's champion would meet in an "AFL-NFL World Championship Game," starting with the end of the upcoming season. As it turned out, it would be informally nicknamed "the Super Bowl" at the time, officially so for the one at the climax of the 1968 season, and, for the 1970 season, officially named that with a Roman numeral added: Super Bowl V.

* Starting in 1967, there would be a common draft between the two leagues.

* Also starting in 1967, there would be preseason exhibition games between teams in the two leagues. So the first "AFL-NFL World Championship Game," retroactively renamed Super Bowl I, became, in Hunt's words, "the only time a pure AFL team played a pure NFL team."

* Starting in 1970, with everybody in one league, the National Football Conference would be made up of "original NFL" teams, while 3 such teams -- the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers -- were moved over to join the AFL teams in the American Football Conference.

* Each Conference would be divided into Eastern, Central and Western Divisions. Each Division's champion, plus a "wild card" team, would go into the Playoffs, resulting in 4 Playoff teams in each Conference, competing to be the Conference Champions, who would then face each other in the Super Bowl.

* Each league would keep its current television contract: CBS would keep the NFL/NFC games, and NBC would keep the AFL/AFC games. For interconference games, whichever was the visiting team would decide it: If an NFC team was visiting an AFC team, CBS would televise it; if it was the other way around, it was on NBC. This would hold until 1993, when new contracts were signed. (CBS ended up broadcasting so many Dallas Cowboys games that people joked that their initials stood for "Cowboys Broadcasting System.")

* And Pete Rozelle, currently the Commissioner of the NFL, would remain in charge of the combined league.

That last point ticked Davis off: He wanted to be Number 1 in everything he did, from running the Raiders to football competition. He resigned as AFL Commissioner in July, replaced by Milt Woodard, who had been Assistant Commissioner under both Foss and Davis, and served until the merger was completed in March 1970.