AFL - who's joking now?

BOSTON - Billy Sullivan saw big football crowds as the publicity director at Boston College and Notre Dame, and he was sold on the pro game and its televised future when he watched the landmark 1958 NFL championship with his sons on the black and white Zenith in their family room.

So when the fledgeling American Football League wanted to put a team in Boston, Sullivan needed no convincing. Still, the former marketing maven had one more deal to close: He had to talk his wife into taking the $8,300 nest egg they were saving for a summer house on Cape Cod and instead use it as seed money for an AFL franchise.

"She was eventually convinced it was the right thing to do," their son Pat said this week as the AFL approached the 50th anniversary of its inaugural game. "It was obviously one of the great success stories in sports."

With that - and a lot more money he raised from investors - Billy Sullivan became the eighth and final member of "The Foolish Club," an octet of owners who challenged the stodgy NFL and prospered where others before and after have failed. On Sept. 9, 1960, Sullivan's Boston Patriots played the Denver Broncos in the AFL's first game, starting the league on its way to a merger with its long-entrenched rival that still shapes the form and flavor of pro football to this day.

"It was the start of something big, although no one knew it at the time," said Ken Rappoport, author of The Little League that Could, a new book that chronicles the league's feverish formation and lasting success. "It was a monumental achievement."

From its opening night at Boston University Field through the merger in which all of its original franchises were absorbed by the NFL, the spirit of the AFL lives on wherever the No Fun League is at its most fan-friendly. The AFL had more colorful uniforms and logos, names on the back of players' jerseys, the 2-point conversion and a pass-heavy offensive style that helped usher the sport from its leather helmet beginnings to the modern offenses of today.

"The NFL was kind of a stodgy, staid league even then," said Ron Hobson, who covered the opening game for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy and continued on the Patriots beat until his retirement in January.

Meanwhile, AFL's "fools" celebrated the entertainment value of the sport over the more disciplined, conservative style embodied by the NFL's Vince Lombardi and George Halas.

"Nobody took themselves too seriously. There were a lot of funny moments and a lot of fun moments," Pat Sullivan said. "The game would end and the players and the fans would all mill around on the field together. Players would say to their families, 'I'll meet you at the 20-yard line.' You didn't have 18 state troopers ushering the coach off."

The AFL also had longer seasons - 14 games instead of 12 - along with higher minimum salaries and better benefits as it tried to lure players from the NFL. It brought the sport to Texas (forcing the NFL to follow on its heels) and other areas that were clamoring for pro football.

And the new league was different in even more important ways: AFL teams scouted the traditionally black colleges and other small schools that NFL teams could afford to ignore, and the rosters showed it. Then, when black players were unhappy over segregation in New Orleans before the 1964 All-Star game, the league moved the event to Houston.

"They most definitely had a more of an open door than the NFL," Rappoport said. "The AFL had no choice if it wanted to compete with the NFL. It took a while for the NFL to catch up in terms of black players."

Others had tried to compete with the NFL before, including three groups that were also known as the American Football League. But the one that finally took root was the brainchild of Texas oil scion Lamar Hunt, who had been frustrated in his attempts to bring an NFL team to Dallas. (next page »)