Remembering the AFL
By Barry Wittenstein; photo by Mike Groll
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“I am passionate and I’m sarcastic, too,” the seventy-year-old resident of Buffalo and die-hard Bills fan tells me. “But all that I do is not for my own glorification. It’s to get the AFL the respect that I feel it deserves.” The “AFL” Coniglio is referring to is not the current Arena Football League, but the old American Football League that existed from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the National Football League. Coniglio, a retired civil engineer and former university professor, says even though the NFL was “embarrassed and outflanked” by the AFL, the younger upstart league lost its name, its identity, and its history once the merger was completed.
And that’s what’s eating Angelo Coniglio.
“I do get frosted when NFL Films calls the Jets’ Super Bowl win one of the NFL’s greatest games,” Coniglio says, “or when the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a display on the AFL boycott of New Orleans over that city’s mistreatment of the black 1965 AFL All-Stars, and essentially gives the NFL credit for that seminal civil-rights action. The main reason I’m so passionate is that I believe in justice and fairness, and the AFL was not fairly treated by the NFL-dominated sports media during the 1960s. That mistreatment has spilled over to this day.” To hear Coniglio tell it, the history of the AFL and its attempt to join the NFL is a tale of money, politics, and power. In the late 1950s, led by twenty-seven-year-old Lamar Hunt—the son of oil tycoon, H. L. Hunt—an upstart ten-team league was formed when the NFL refused to expand or offer franchises to the founding members of the AFL. Self-described as the “Foolish Club,” these businessmen joined Hunt and set up teams in Oakland, Kansas City, San Diego, New York, Houston, Buffalo, Boston, Miami, Cincinnati, and Denver. Compared to the NFL’s plodding “three yards and a cloud of dust” offense, the AFL’s offense was wide-open and exciting, and featured Joe Namath, the Chargers’ acrobatic wide-receiver Lance Alworth, and running backs O. J. Simpson and Cookie Gilchrist of Buffalo.
Coniglio contends that the NFL incorporated many of today’s football innovations without giving proper credit to the younger league. To support his point, he lists the many rules that the NFL “stole” from the AFL after the merger following Super Bowl IV. “Fans should know,” Coniglio says, “that with the official scoreboard clock, names on jerseys, revenue and gate sharing that helps small market teams compete, the two-point conversion, and the emergence of black athletes, today’s pro football is really theAmerican Football League. They just call it the NFL.”
The 1960s featured an intense rivalry between the two leagues fed by the rule of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who represented the old-school owners. With each league holding its own draft, bidding wars for the top players escalated to the point that the New York Jets drafted and were able to sign University of Alabama star quarterback Joe Namath for an astronomical $400,000—huge money for that era. But the signing, and the Jets’ Super Bowl victory five years later, facilitated the end of hostilities and essentially gave the original owners in the AFL what they wanted: entry into the NFL.
So why wasn’t everybody happy when the merger occurred? “The owners got what they wanted,” Coniglio maintains. “They ignored the pleas of fans to keep the leagues separate, or at least to retain the name and logo of the AFL. The players lost out, because with both leagues now holding only one common draft, there was no more competition for talent. “History is written by the winners,” he says. “The NFL downplays the existence of the AFL.”
Coniglio has gone so far as to build a website devoted to the history of the old league. Called Remember the AFL (www.remembertheafl.com), it is a repository of articles, links, cards, letters, and memorabilia. For football fans, it’s a jewel. Coniglio’s site is also important in that it provides a bulletin board which serves as an online meeting place for former AFL players and fans to correspond with each other. Recently, when Coniglio found out that former AFL and Bills running back Cookie Gilchrist was seriously ill, he posted the news on his website and sent out an e-mail to his mailing list (which includes 300 former AFL players or relatives) with contact information to send Gilchrist get-well wishes. Many did, and Gilchrist, once he recovered, wrote to Coniglio thanking him and his fans for showing their concern.
But this effort by Coniglio isn’t a yearning for his youth or a way to fill up his golden years. This mission to keep the memory of theold league alive dates back thirty-nine years to 1970 when he made a predictionthat would make Nostradamus proud. While working for Pro Football Weekly, he wrote, “The year 2009 will be praised in song and story, not as the fiftieth anniversary of the AFL, but as the ninetieth of the NFL. And no one will remember the AFL existed, except for a few fans with scrapbooks and long memories.” That this prophecy is about to come true is not something Coniglio wishes to see.
Which is why he has begun his current campaign two years in advance to give the NFL enough time to plan, organize and produce the throwback memorabilia and events for a proper celebration. To that end, he recently sent out another e-mail to the thousand members of his mailing list urging a letter-writing campaign to NFLcommissioner Roger Goodell. Among his suggestions are a commemorative AFL patch to be worn by all AFL teams for the entire 2009 season, AFL logos to appear on the fields of the former AFL teams, and an “AFL Sunday” where each former AFL team plays another, both wearing AFL uniforms.
So far, the Bills and the Chiefs have expressed interest, he says. “In response to my letter to Goodell urging a celebration of the AFL in 2009, with AFL throwback uniforms, an AFL players’ reunion, etc.,” Coniglio says, “I got a form letter back. It said, ‘Thanks for your interest in the NFL.’”
Barry Wittenstein is an editorial producer and writer for Major League Baseball Advanced Media in Manhattan. He is married with a fifteen-year old son, and remembers watching Super Bowl III on television in 1969. He may be contacted at barry.wittenstein@mlb.com.
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