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SLAM! Sports Century in Review INTERACTIVE CONTESTS ALSO ON SLAM!  |
$50 IN 1922 WENT A LONG WAY IN NFL FOOTBALL As the 1900s ended, those three franchises were worth at least a half-billion dollars each. The NFL has become a multibillion-dollar enterprise that through the magic of television holds much of the nation in thrall on Sundays, Monday nights and occasional Thursdays every fall and winter. The NFL and its television partners also have produced celebrities, from Jim Brown, John Unitas, Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach to Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, John Elway and Brett Favre. And it also produces instant celebrities, like St. Louis' Kurt Warner, a former Arena League nobody who has quarterbacked the St. Louis Rams from 4-12 to the NFC's best record this season. To be fair, the Maras and Rooneys struggled for decades while college football was the preferred form of the game. The professional version didn't blossom until the second half of the century, when commissioners Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle used television to spread its appeal. But the league that was founded Aug. 20, 1920, at the Jordan and Hupmobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, remained an afterthought for most of its first three decades. Collegians like Red Grange and Notre Dame's "Four Horsemen" were renowned. The renamed National Football League relied on the likes of a Jim Thorpe far past his prime to gain fans. In 1925, for example, it took the signing of Grange by George Halas' Chicago Bears to gain national attention for a league based primarily in the Midwest and Northeast. The college game was considered so superior that in 1930 it was a shock when Mara's Giants beat Notre Dame 22-0 in an exhibition game. Those early years, from the league's founding through the end of World War II, produced such stars as Don Hutson, Sammy Baugh and Grange, voted 2-3-4 behind Brown as the century's best football players by a panel of experts for The Associated Press. One watershed game was played in 1940, when the Chicago Bears beat the Washington Redskins 73-0 for the league championship. The score astonished people, and Baugh, who quarterbacked the Redskins, recently suggested some of his teammates didn't try, thinking they would get back at owner George Preston Marshall, whom they considered a tightwad. In 1946, Bell became commissioner and, a year before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode signed with the Los Angeles Rams, the first blacks in the NFL. The new All-America Football Conference was also integrated when Bill Willis and Marion Motley joined the Cleveland Browns. Coach Paul Brown's team, led by Motley, Otto Graham and Lou Groza, dominated the AAFC and when that league folded in 1949, joined the NFL and won the 1950 title. But collegians were still the stars, from Tom Harmon and Forrest Evashevski at Michigan, to Doc Blanchard and Glen Davis at Army, Johnny Lujack and Leon Hart at Notre Dame, Doak Walker at SMU, and Choo-Choo Justice at North Carolina. Hart, who played offense and defense, is the last lineman to win the Heisman Trophy. The NFL continued to grow in the '50s -- a perfect fit for the burgeoning medium of television. The 1958 NFL championship game in which the Baltimore Colts beat the Giants in the first overtime game ever, captivated viewers. But 1960 turned out to be the most important year. Bell, who had done much to wed football and television, died and the 33-year-old Rozelle, general manager of the Rams, was elected commissioner. Dallas joined the league that year, too, with Minnesota beginning play in 1961. At the same time, a group headed by Lamar Hunt formed the American Football League, which began almost immediately to compete for NFL players. Soon after the New York Jets signed Alabama quarterback Joe Namath in 1965, merger talks began. An agreement came in 1966 and the leagues played their first championship game on Jan. 15, 1967, with Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers of the NFL beating Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs 35-14. At the same time, a common draft was instituted heading toward a full merger in 1970, when Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cleveland joined the renamed American Football Conference to balance the new 26-team NFL. By then, the AFL had earned parity on the field. That came in 1969, when Namath guaranteed that the Jets, a 17-point underdog, would beat the Colts. Then they delivered a 16-7 win in the newly renamed Super Bowl. The merger also brought a new showcase -- "Monday Night Football," which debuted in 1970, the brainchild of Rozelle and ABC's Roone Arledge. Bringing the NFL to prime time was a stroke of genius, and in its 30th year, Monday night games remain high in the ratings. The Super Bowls do even better -- most are among the top-rated TV shows ever. In the '70s, the AFC dominated, notably the Pittsburgh Steelers, who won the Super Bowl four times, and Miami, which in 1972-73 went unbeaten under Don Shula and won the title again the next season. Only the Cowboys, marketed as "America's Team," broke the AFC stranglehold with Super Bowls victories in 1972 and 1978. But the pendulum swung with a vengeance. From 1984-96, NFC teams won 13 straight Super Bowls. San Francisco, winner of the 1982 Super Bowl, won four more during the streak, with Montana and then Steve Young at quarterback and Rice becoming the most prolific receiver in NFL history. In the early '90s, the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years. Denver finally won for the AFC in 1998, making Elway the first Super Bowl-winning quarterback from the class of 1983, which also included Miami's Dan Marino (0-1 in Super Bowls) and Buffalo's Jim Kelly (0-4). Kelly and Young were among the NFL stars who began in the United States Football League, which played in the spring between 1983-85 before being awarded just $3 in its antitrust suit against the NFL and folding. There were strikes in 1982 and 1987, the second ending in a lawsuit that was finally resolved in 1992, five years after the players returned to work. It led to free agency for players and a salary cap for owners. The mid-1990s was a period of franchise free agency, with moves by some of the leagues most traditional teams. The trail was paved by the Colts, who left Baltimore after the 1983 season and moved to Indianapolis. The Cardinals, moved from Chicago to St. Louis for the 1960 season, and moved to Arizona in 1988. Franchise free agency was caused in part by free agency for players. Teams needed more revenue for signing bonuses, meaning they wanted new stadiums with club seats and luxury boxes. If they couldn't get them from their existing cities, they looked elsewhere. So after the league awarded expansion franchises to Carolina and Jacksonville to begin play in 1995, more moves began. St. Louis, which had failed in its bid for an expansion team, enticed the Rams from Los Angeles. The Raiders moved back to Oakland, which they had left for LA in 1982. In 1995, Baltimore lured the Browns from Cleveland, a move approved by the other owners only after they guaranteed creation of a new Cleveland Browns, who would keep the history and colors of the old team. Those Browns came back in 1999, a season that has become the showpiece for the parity that the salary cap brought. Two of the league's three best teams -- St. Louis and Indianapolis -- won just seven games between them in 1998. The third, Jacksonville, is a fifth-year team built slowly and carefully into a power. The Rams have been energized by Warner and Marshall Faulk, the all-purpose running back traded by the Colts because he wanted too much money. Faulk has been replaced on the Colts by rookie Edgerrin James, a Faulk clone who has meshed with Peyton Manning, the first overall draft pick in 1998. As the season winds down, the Super Bowl favorite looks like an expansion team or a relocated one. It would be a fitting end to the century of change. 
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