Why isn’t Sonny Werblin in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
FRIDAY, 30 APRIL 2010 13:42
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
A quick exchange with Joe Namath this week got me to thinking. Why isn't Namath's old boss David A. "Sonny as in Money" Werblin enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio? Werblin, the New Jersey guy, is pretty much a forgotten figure in the history of pro football even though both Werblin and Namath helped create the Super Bowl as a non-official national holiday in the United States.
Both the New York Giants and Jets are looking at draft picks and free agents and will have mini-camps this month at multi-million dollar training complexes in East Rutherford and Florham Park. The two teams have built a new stadium that cost over a billion dollars and will manage a real estate around the facility. Werblin's fingerprints 19 years after he died are all over the place within the businesses of the Jets, the Giants and the National Football League.
Sonny Werblin along with his partners Leon Hess, Townsend Martin, Donald Lillis and Philip Iselin bought the bankrupt American Football League New York Titans franchise in 1963, renamed the team the Jets, and changed pro football although the quintet didn't alter the history of the game the minute they bought the franchise. That would not happen for about a year and it was circumstance that brought Werblin to the forefront.
The National Football League or the initials NFL of the days prior to Werblin's arrival in pro football, and today have just one thing in common — the name or the initials. As the David Letterman frequent guest and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle Arthur J. Donovan (by way of the Grand Concourse in da Bronx) who played for the original Baltimore Colts in 1950, the New York Yankees in 1951, the Dallas Texans in 1952 and the Colts again from 1953-61 (the original Colts, the Yankees and Texans all folded) pointed out.
National Football League owners had a 12 team league in the 1950s and none of the 12 owners could figure out what to do with their business. Chicago's George Halas and Pittsburgh's Art Rooney along with Bert Bell have been glorified as football deities over the decades but the truth is that without Lamar Hunt the game might have strangled itself financially.
There was no forward thinking from Halas, Rooney, the Giants Tim Mara or NFL Commissioner Bert Bell in those days. They put a shingle up, "Football on Sunday" six times a year for six home games except in Chicago where there were two teams.
Hunt was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Dallas. Bud Adams was unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals from the Bidwill family and move the team to Houston. Neither Hunt nor Adams could get an NFL expansion franchise in Dallas and Houston even though Halas and Rooney chaired an expansion committee starting in 1956. By 1959, Hunt decided he had enough and asked Adams if he wanted to join him in forming the fourth American Football League.
The AFL started play in 1960 and pushed the stodgy old football men into a different business plan, one they never wanted to explore. The AFL went to new cities and had a better TV plan. There were now two leagues and the older National Football League played follow the leader to the new league when it came to television. The AFL was able to sign a contract with the American Broadcasting Company, ABC, with each team sharing revenue equally. The AFL deal technically violated antitrust laws and was not originally a Hunt idea. Hunt borrowed a concept from Branch Rickey who was out of baseball and trying to form a third major league, the Continental Baseball League, and one of Rickey's ideas was for the 12-team Continental League owners to share national TV revenue equally.
Rickey's idea died but there are three living monuments to his league. The New York Mets, the Houston Colt 45s (now Astros) and the National Football League's "leaguethink" business plan.
The old line NFL owners didn't know what to do with TV as late as 1960 and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had to persuade Giants owner Jack Mara along with the Chicago Bears Halas and the Los Angeles Rams owner Daniel Reeves that sharing TV revenues instead of having teams have their own networks was economically better for the league. He did just that and got Congress to approve the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to sell all 14 teams as one to a TV network.
In those days, it was just CBS and NBC.
Rozelle worked out a deal for the 1962 season which brought the 14 NFL owners more than $4 million that year and beyond. In late 1963 Rozelle pitted CBS against NBC in a battled for a long term TV agreement and this is where circumstances came into play. The NFL was in a battle with the AFL for players and control of football and a big money TV deal would give them cash to go after talented players coming out of college. Rozelle signed a big money deal with CBS and William Paley in 1964 and that deal infuriated NBC's David Sarnoff.
Sarnoff wanted revenge.
Sarnoff had worked with Lew Wasserman's MCA where Werblin was employed. MCA was placing TV shows on Sarnoff's network. Sarnoff and Werblin had a relationship and Werblin became the point guy between the AFL and NBC. Werblin knew TV and entertainment inside out and knew that football was more than just a game play, it was entertainment and it was TV programming. That was not something that was an easy sell to football men who in those days viewed football as a game. It was easy to understand the football owners mentality of the day. Football business operations were open between July and December. In the 1950s, if someone wanted to buy a Chicago Bears season ticket package in April, they would have to hunt down George Halas at his sporting goods store. Nobody protected team logos because no one was thinking of selling t-shirts, underwear and hats with team logos.
Werblin got the deal done with Sarnoff, which brought the AFL $7 million annually between 1965 and 1969. Sarnoff also advanced money to AFL teams so they could sign players out of college, which Sarnoff knew would enhance the AFL on NBC. With some of that money (and revenues Werblin and his fellow Jets owners suddenly got from larger crowds at the new Shea Stadium starting in 1964), Werblin signed Namath to a three-year $427,000 deal, the largest contract ever given to a player at that point.
Namath was going to be the face of the Jets and ultimately the face of the American Football League. The Werblin-Sarnoff connection changed football and for that alone, Werblin should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Werblin changed the dynamics of pro football and eventually the two leagues merged with the formation of the Super Bowl as one of the after effects of the June 8, 1966 accord between the warring leagues.
Ironically, Werblin, Hess, Martin, Lillis and Iselin were not interested in joining the NFL because the merger agreement required them to pay the Giants $10 million for "invading" the New York territory. Werblin never did see the Jets win the Super Bowl as one of the team owners as he was bought out prior to the 1968 season, the year Namath led the Jets to a Super Bowl championship.
Namath's guarantee that the Jets would beat Baltimore in Super Bowl III was the foundation that built the Super Bowl franchise.
Werblin was permanently exiled from pro football but the story didn't end there. In 1971, the New Jersey guy Werblin was back but this time as a state employee and again Werblin changed the NFL. Werblin convinced Giants owner Wellington Mara to commit to move the Giants across the river to wetlands off of Route 3. The deal was inked in November 1972. Yankee Stadium was slated to be rebuilt and Mara's Giants played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven in 1974 and shared Shea Stadium with the Jets in 1975. Mara had a new stadium in 1976 and Giants revenues exploded.
Werblin left the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1977. Hess moved his Jets to the Meadowlands in 1984.
Werblin's pro football career was rather short as an owner compared to those of Mara, Halas and Rooney, the NFL's Mount Rushmore, but he was far more a visionary than any of the faces on the NFL's Mount Rushmore. Halas last had a real idea in 1925 when he signed Red Grange and put him on tour with the Bears. Grange's appearance before more than 70,000 people at the Polo Grounds in a game against the Giants gave Tim Mara the money he needed to keep the Giants solvent and in business. Rooney was a grand old guy of the game but in the 1950s, his Pittsburgh Steelers franchise was the last stop for a player. If a player was cut by Pittsburgh, his football career probably was at an end. Ironically because of Werblin, Pittsburgh eventually was able to spend top dollars on players. Rooney was paid three million dollars to move the Steelers from the NFL to the American Football Conference prior to 1970. Rooney used that money to invest in players and scouting and won four Super Bowls.
Werblin is in the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame, but there should be a bust of him in Canton. Without Werblin, Namath might have ended up in St. Louis or maybe the New York Giants. The Titans might have been sold to someone who knew football but not the TV business and the Super Bowl might have just been another championship game without the "wow" factor which Namath as the Jets quarterback, who was signed to a record contract by Werblin, gave the game. Without Werblin, the Giants might not be in New Jersey and Hess might have looked elsewhere for a stadium with clean bathrooms.
Werblin is more than a footnote in NFL history. He was a game changer.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Joe Namath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Namath. Show all posts
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7545
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
By Evan Weiner
September 29, 2009
10:00 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- September 30th is Emanuel Cellar Day around the NFL and NFL owners and players should be celebrating the life of one of the 20 most important people in NFL history. Wait a second, when did Emanuel Cellar play football? Did Emanuel Cellar coach a team? Did Cellar own a franchise? Was he a Commissioner?
The answer to all of those questions is no. Emanuel Cellar never put on a uniform, never patrolled a sideline or ran the NFL yet without Emanuel Cellar, the NFL of today might be a totally different entity. It is conceivable that there would be no Super Bowl without the Brooklyn native, Congressman Cellar.
New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar first entered the House of Representatives in 1923. In 1923, the NFL was a floating craps game with teams scattered throughout the American northeast and Midwest that would come and go. It is unclear if the young Congressman liked football in his early days in office. But the Brooklyn representative's impact on professional football would come nearly four decades later in 1961, when Congressman Cellar authored legislation that would give the NFL tremendous clout with growing television networks: the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961. That summer, both the House and Senate passed Cellar’s legislation, and the Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961. The Cellar Bill allowed the NFL to market its broadcast rights as a league package, evenly spreading the broadcasting revenues among the franchises and guaranteeing each team substantial annual revenues.
In 1961, the National Football League was still mired in a mom and pop store mentality not long removed from the days of when Chicago Bears owner and Coach George Halas would travel to Wisconsin and lend a hand at Green Bay Packers fund raisers. The NFL was growing in the 1950s because of television exposure but the league owners were extremely cautious in their business decisions and with good reason. The business of the National Football League was strictly a six month a year affair and there was not much financial growth or stability until the mid 1950s.
That all changed in 1959 when Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals, Hunt wanted to move the franchise to Dallas and Adams wanted to place it in Houston, nor were they able to convince Halas and Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney that the 12-team NFL should expand. So Hunt started his own circuit, the American Football League, got Adams to join up and found six other owners. Hunt's new league, the AFL would start operations in 1960.
In early 1960, Hunt's league or AFL IV (three previous AFLs folded in the 1920s and 1930s) signed a television contract with the rather weak American Broadcasting Company for $2 million per year for the first five years, with each AFL franchise receiving $250,000 per team per year, which was approximately 15% less than received per team in the NFL.
The deal, which was brokered by among others Jay Michaels, the father of Al Michaels who was the announcer of Monday Night Football and now Sunday Night Football, was somewhat astounding as the AFL had no track record but neither did ABC which wasn't even seen in a number of American cities in those days. But ABC needed something and the AFL would be a perfect partner.
Part of the success of the league in attaining coverage was due to New York Titans owner Harry Wismer, who was also a noted sportscaster of the time. Wismer got AFL IV game coverage on the Associated Press and United Press International wires and helped the league land a contract with ABC. History has been unkind to Wismer as the New York Titans franchise skirted with bankruptcy but without Wismer, there might not have been a big TV deal. The AFL pooled its eight teams and sold ABC the league's team as one entity which was against United States antitrust laws. But the AFL was a new business that flew under the radar, at least in legal circles.
The NFL owners and new NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle took note of the AFL-ABC TV deal and wanted the same thing. In 1960, NFL teams were on TV but each of the 13 teams put together a local TV network and the large city teams, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles received far more TV money than Green Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The inequity of TV revenues could have become a big problem but Rozelle went to work convincing his owners that selling the league as one TV package to either the two big networks at the time, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) or the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was the way to go.
In 1961, the 14 NFL owners decided to sell their TV rights as one and give a TV network the right to show all 98 games on the schedule just like Hunt's league was doing (not every one of the AFL's games was shown on ABC in 1960) Rozelle cut a two-year, $9.1 million deal with CBS but the NFL decided to make sure their deal was legal and submitted the deal before Federal Judge Alan K. Grim in Philadelphia.
Justice Grim was very familiar with NFL TV deals. In 1953, Judge Grim handed down a ruling that gave the NFL the right to blackout team's home games which meant that a local fan either had to buy a ticket to a home game to watch the team or travel about 75 miles and watch the game in an out of town bar or hotel and cheer on the home team from there. In the 1960s, it was common for New York Giants fans to travel to Connecticut to watch WTIC, Channel 3 in Hartford if they wanted to see Giants games and could not get a ticket inside Yankee Stadium. In July 1961, Judge Grim decided the NFL-CBS deal violated antitrust laws because the agreement the competition between teams for TV deals. The decision flew counter to the AFL-ABC deal as well as the National Basketball Association's partnership with the National Broadcasting Company
Because the league was under a court-ordered injunction which prevented it from signing a league-wide contract with a network which meant Rozelle had to become a lobbyist and find a sympatric ear in either the House or the Senate. Rozelle found just the man he needed in Congressman Cellar, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly. The long time Brooklyn Democrat in the House got a bill through the House and a similar bill introduced in the Senate by one time Vice Presidential candidate, Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver pushed a bill through the Senate. The whole process took about a month as Cellar began hearings on August 28. The proceedings took a day.
President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 into law on September 30. The legislation gave both the NFL and AFL cover from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and gave the same protection to the National Basketball Association as well as the National Hockey League. The American and National Leagues of Baseball already had an antitrust exemption thanks to the Supreme Court decision of 1922 in the Baltimore Terrapins versus the National League case. Congressman Cellar and Senator Kefauver didn't overlook college football in the bill.
There was provision included which precluded the NFL from televising any game on either Friday night after 6 PM or on Saturday between the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December. This was done to protect college football which had a TV deal in place for Saturday afternoons.
After operating under local contracts for the 1960 and 1961 seasons, the NFL pooled its television rights and sold them to CBS for $4.65 million annually for the league. In 1963, NBC was awarded exclusive network broadcasting rights for the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000, and later signed a five-year, $36 million television contract with the AFL IV to begin with the 1965 season.
In 1950, the most popular sports in the United States were baseball, horse racing and boxing. Within a decade, Americans had falling in love with Sunday afternoon football, with the 1958 NFL title game between the Baltimore Colts, led by a crew cut quarterback named John Unitas taking on the glamour boys from New York. The Giants were led by handsome Frank Gifford and were the darlings of Madison Avenue. The close game went into overtime and with Unitas leading the Colts downfield for a game-winning touchdown. That game changed the course of TV history for the NFL. The Giants would lose the 1959 NFL title game as well to the Colts, but that didn’t diminish TV’s appetite for Giants players. In 1960, middle linebacker Sam Huff was featured on the CBS television show 20th Century with Walter Cronkite providing the narration of “The Violent World of Sam Huff.” TV embraced football, both the National and American Football League. It was the perfect sports event for the small screen.
Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, is the most important piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed into In 1964, CBS submitted the winning bid of $14.1 million per year for the NFL regular-season television rights for the 1964 and 1965 seasons, and also acquired the rights to the championship games for $1.8 million per game for those same seasons. In 1965, CBS acquired the rights to the NFL regular-season games in 1966 and 1967, with an option for 1968, for $18.8 million per year (an increase of 33% over the prior deal). The NFL later moved to an arrangement in which all of the networks got some of the games, making all networks solely interested in broadcasting the games of the NFL, and not those of a rival league. By 1969, TV income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
The television deals signed by CBS and the NFL solidified the profitability of the NFL and the 1964 AFL-MNC deal enhanced football's popularity. “The TV contract and then the June 1966 AFL-NFL merger made it possible,” said Wellington Mara, the long time owner of the NY Giants, years later in analyzing the NFL's success. “You can't predict what would have happened, but we certainly would not have the league we have today. That was the most important decision ever made in the league.”
After the merger of the AFL and the NFL in 1966 (the television contracts did not expire until 1970), Rozelle thought a Monday Night televised game would be a ratings grabber. After CBS and NBC declined, due to the success of shows such as Laugh-In, Rozelle approached ABC. ABC, which had been struggling in prime time for years, jumped at the chance in 1969. Monday Night Football (MNF) debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972. The Jets lost to Cleveland 31-21 in the first Monday Night Football contest, and Howard Cosell and Don Meredith provided commentary. Joe Namath, star Quarterback for the Jets who eventually would be on the MNF crew, could not envision what kind of franchise Monday Night Football would become. “For players back then especially, we didn't realize anything about prime time or how many people would be watching. It was another game for us. It was exciting knowing that you are on television,” said Namath. “Monday Night Football is great for the fans and the players alike. Heck, I didn't have the foresight to see how important that was.”
Congressman Emanuel Cellar has never been honored by the NFL or recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio but he is as responsible for the NFL's success as much as Rozelle, Halas, Namath, Red Grange and a handful of others including two Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (who single handily saved football) and Ronald Reagan (who signed into law the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act which changed sports). Cellar's legislation propelled the NFL and by 1965, pro football eclipsed baseball as America's favorite sport.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
By Evan Weiner
September 29, 2009
10:00 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- September 30th is Emanuel Cellar Day around the NFL and NFL owners and players should be celebrating the life of one of the 20 most important people in NFL history. Wait a second, when did Emanuel Cellar play football? Did Emanuel Cellar coach a team? Did Cellar own a franchise? Was he a Commissioner?
The answer to all of those questions is no. Emanuel Cellar never put on a uniform, never patrolled a sideline or ran the NFL yet without Emanuel Cellar, the NFL of today might be a totally different entity. It is conceivable that there would be no Super Bowl without the Brooklyn native, Congressman Cellar.
New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar first entered the House of Representatives in 1923. In 1923, the NFL was a floating craps game with teams scattered throughout the American northeast and Midwest that would come and go. It is unclear if the young Congressman liked football in his early days in office. But the Brooklyn representative's impact on professional football would come nearly four decades later in 1961, when Congressman Cellar authored legislation that would give the NFL tremendous clout with growing television networks: the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961. That summer, both the House and Senate passed Cellar’s legislation, and the Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961. The Cellar Bill allowed the NFL to market its broadcast rights as a league package, evenly spreading the broadcasting revenues among the franchises and guaranteeing each team substantial annual revenues.
In 1961, the National Football League was still mired in a mom and pop store mentality not long removed from the days of when Chicago Bears owner and Coach George Halas would travel to Wisconsin and lend a hand at Green Bay Packers fund raisers. The NFL was growing in the 1950s because of television exposure but the league owners were extremely cautious in their business decisions and with good reason. The business of the National Football League was strictly a six month a year affair and there was not much financial growth or stability until the mid 1950s.
That all changed in 1959 when Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals, Hunt wanted to move the franchise to Dallas and Adams wanted to place it in Houston, nor were they able to convince Halas and Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney that the 12-team NFL should expand. So Hunt started his own circuit, the American Football League, got Adams to join up and found six other owners. Hunt's new league, the AFL would start operations in 1960.
In early 1960, Hunt's league or AFL IV (three previous AFLs folded in the 1920s and 1930s) signed a television contract with the rather weak American Broadcasting Company for $2 million per year for the first five years, with each AFL franchise receiving $250,000 per team per year, which was approximately 15% less than received per team in the NFL.
The deal, which was brokered by among others Jay Michaels, the father of Al Michaels who was the announcer of Monday Night Football and now Sunday Night Football, was somewhat astounding as the AFL had no track record but neither did ABC which wasn't even seen in a number of American cities in those days. But ABC needed something and the AFL would be a perfect partner.
Part of the success of the league in attaining coverage was due to New York Titans owner Harry Wismer, who was also a noted sportscaster of the time. Wismer got AFL IV game coverage on the Associated Press and United Press International wires and helped the league land a contract with ABC. History has been unkind to Wismer as the New York Titans franchise skirted with bankruptcy but without Wismer, there might not have been a big TV deal. The AFL pooled its eight teams and sold ABC the league's team as one entity which was against United States antitrust laws. But the AFL was a new business that flew under the radar, at least in legal circles.
The NFL owners and new NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle took note of the AFL-ABC TV deal and wanted the same thing. In 1960, NFL teams were on TV but each of the 13 teams put together a local TV network and the large city teams, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles received far more TV money than Green Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The inequity of TV revenues could have become a big problem but Rozelle went to work convincing his owners that selling the league as one TV package to either the two big networks at the time, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) or the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was the way to go.
In 1961, the 14 NFL owners decided to sell their TV rights as one and give a TV network the right to show all 98 games on the schedule just like Hunt's league was doing (not every one of the AFL's games was shown on ABC in 1960) Rozelle cut a two-year, $9.1 million deal with CBS but the NFL decided to make sure their deal was legal and submitted the deal before Federal Judge Alan K. Grim in Philadelphia.
Justice Grim was very familiar with NFL TV deals. In 1953, Judge Grim handed down a ruling that gave the NFL the right to blackout team's home games which meant that a local fan either had to buy a ticket to a home game to watch the team or travel about 75 miles and watch the game in an out of town bar or hotel and cheer on the home team from there. In the 1960s, it was common for New York Giants fans to travel to Connecticut to watch WTIC, Channel 3 in Hartford if they wanted to see Giants games and could not get a ticket inside Yankee Stadium. In July 1961, Judge Grim decided the NFL-CBS deal violated antitrust laws because the agreement the competition between teams for TV deals. The decision flew counter to the AFL-ABC deal as well as the National Basketball Association's partnership with the National Broadcasting Company
Because the league was under a court-ordered injunction which prevented it from signing a league-wide contract with a network which meant Rozelle had to become a lobbyist and find a sympatric ear in either the House or the Senate. Rozelle found just the man he needed in Congressman Cellar, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly. The long time Brooklyn Democrat in the House got a bill through the House and a similar bill introduced in the Senate by one time Vice Presidential candidate, Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver pushed a bill through the Senate. The whole process took about a month as Cellar began hearings on August 28. The proceedings took a day.
President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 into law on September 30. The legislation gave both the NFL and AFL cover from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and gave the same protection to the National Basketball Association as well as the National Hockey League. The American and National Leagues of Baseball already had an antitrust exemption thanks to the Supreme Court decision of 1922 in the Baltimore Terrapins versus the National League case. Congressman Cellar and Senator Kefauver didn't overlook college football in the bill.
There was provision included which precluded the NFL from televising any game on either Friday night after 6 PM or on Saturday between the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December. This was done to protect college football which had a TV deal in place for Saturday afternoons.
After operating under local contracts for the 1960 and 1961 seasons, the NFL pooled its television rights and sold them to CBS for $4.65 million annually for the league. In 1963, NBC was awarded exclusive network broadcasting rights for the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000, and later signed a five-year, $36 million television contract with the AFL IV to begin with the 1965 season.
In 1950, the most popular sports in the United States were baseball, horse racing and boxing. Within a decade, Americans had falling in love with Sunday afternoon football, with the 1958 NFL title game between the Baltimore Colts, led by a crew cut quarterback named John Unitas taking on the glamour boys from New York. The Giants were led by handsome Frank Gifford and were the darlings of Madison Avenue. The close game went into overtime and with Unitas leading the Colts downfield for a game-winning touchdown. That game changed the course of TV history for the NFL. The Giants would lose the 1959 NFL title game as well to the Colts, but that didn’t diminish TV’s appetite for Giants players. In 1960, middle linebacker Sam Huff was featured on the CBS television show 20th Century with Walter Cronkite providing the narration of “The Violent World of Sam Huff.” TV embraced football, both the National and American Football League. It was the perfect sports event for the small screen.
Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, is the most important piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed into In 1964, CBS submitted the winning bid of $14.1 million per year for the NFL regular-season television rights for the 1964 and 1965 seasons, and also acquired the rights to the championship games for $1.8 million per game for those same seasons. In 1965, CBS acquired the rights to the NFL regular-season games in 1966 and 1967, with an option for 1968, for $18.8 million per year (an increase of 33% over the prior deal). The NFL later moved to an arrangement in which all of the networks got some of the games, making all networks solely interested in broadcasting the games of the NFL, and not those of a rival league. By 1969, TV income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
The television deals signed by CBS and the NFL solidified the profitability of the NFL and the 1964 AFL-MNC deal enhanced football's popularity. “The TV contract and then the June 1966 AFL-NFL merger made it possible,” said Wellington Mara, the long time owner of the NY Giants, years later in analyzing the NFL's success. “You can't predict what would have happened, but we certainly would not have the league we have today. That was the most important decision ever made in the league.”
After the merger of the AFL and the NFL in 1966 (the television contracts did not expire until 1970), Rozelle thought a Monday Night televised game would be a ratings grabber. After CBS and NBC declined, due to the success of shows such as Laugh-In, Rozelle approached ABC. ABC, which had been struggling in prime time for years, jumped at the chance in 1969. Monday Night Football (MNF) debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972. The Jets lost to Cleveland 31-21 in the first Monday Night Football contest, and Howard Cosell and Don Meredith provided commentary. Joe Namath, star Quarterback for the Jets who eventually would be on the MNF crew, could not envision what kind of franchise Monday Night Football would become. “For players back then especially, we didn't realize anything about prime time or how many people would be watching. It was another game for us. It was exciting knowing that you are on television,” said Namath. “Monday Night Football is great for the fans and the players alike. Heck, I didn't have the foresight to see how important that was.”
Congressman Emanuel Cellar has never been honored by the NFL or recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio but he is as responsible for the NFL's success as much as Rozelle, Halas, Namath, Red Grange and a handful of others including two Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (who single handily saved football) and Ronald Reagan (who signed into law the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act which changed sports). Cellar's legislation propelled the NFL and by 1965, pro football eclipsed baseball as America's favorite sport.
eweiner@mcn.tv
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