AFL Spring Meetings 1954

The offseason meetings for the AFL take on some new scenery, joining in on the hustle and bustle of New York City. The 8 AFL owners and NEFL commissioner Robert McNamara were invited by acting NYPL president Peter Stuyvesant to the Warwick Hotel to finalize the merger between the AFL and NEFL, and potentially discuss a merger between the AFL and the NYPL. With some fanfare for introductions, the meetings quickly got underway.


THE MANHATTAN PLAN TAKES SHAPE

The AFL had been looking at potential options for expansion partners for Boston, even reaching out with prospective owners in Minneapolis, Omaha, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. But when the NYPL came knocking on the AFL’s door with the potential of a merger, Donovan Hasenkamp couldn’t say no to that opportunity. It would quickly become apparent that the New York Dutch Lions would be joining the AFL as its 10th team, and Hasenkamp made the move official on the first day of the meetings. Though the AFL wanted them to join Boston in 1956, they decided to move their joining date from the 1956 season to the 1955 season, primarily to compete with the ever-expanding PAFC. The AFL still had to deal with what to do with the rest of the NEFL, and now had the NYPL to figure out what to do with the remains as well, but decided to leave those for the second day of the meetings. What was more important now was the fact the PAFC was now attempting to compete with the AFL for national football supremacy. With the PAFC’s expansion plan now known, Hasenkamp decided that the AFL needed a plan for the future. The league decided that it would expand from 8 teams to 16 teams over the course of 5 years, beginning with Boston and New York in 1955 for the first part of a four-pronged expansion approach. The next most difficult part was finding the next 6 owners. Luckily, Hasenkamp already had a few owners already on the line already in talks to join the AFL, with two markets in particular that he wanted to scoop up immediately. Sylvester “Sy” Thompson was a member of the Philadelphia Federals owners group before the team got folded, and was looking for another way to get football back in the City of Brotherly Love. Thompson had formerly played in the American Association along with Hasenkamp,but has since become a very successful businessman. After his time in the AA, Thompson founded the one of the nation’s larget paper manufacturers and distributors, as well as having a large stake in the Philadelphia Pennies baseball team. Hasenkamp had called on Thompson as a potential expansion partner for Boston, and graciously accepted the bid to join in 1956. Joining Thompson is Arthur Dixon, a brewing magnate from St. Louis and die hard fan of the former St. Louis Arrows of the PAFC wanting to bring football back. While the Arrows lacked the capital needed to run a football team, Dixon owns a very successful brewery in St. Louis, as well as the St. Louis Brewers baseball team, having the resources to potentially run a successful football team. Like with Thompson, Dixon graciously accepted, and the AFL now had two additional prominent cities with promising backing to make it 12 teams. After spending nearly an additional week negotiating expansion fees with both prospective owners, the AFL announced that it would be officially expanding to Philadelphia and St. Louis for the 1956 season. After exhausting a lot of the league’s manpower to get two more teams in the league within another year, the league was done expanding, at least for now. Hasenkamp and the other owners almost unanimously agreed that if they wanted to completely surpass the PAFC in popularity, they would need to expand to markets that would benefit from a large media deal. While they did not say where they would be expanding to, they were open to discussions for potential markets, which were almost all out west. The league realized that the west was growing rapidly, as the National Baseball League is currently in talks to merge with the Pacific Professional League to create a massive 24 team league. The AFL wants to take a more calculated approach to expansion, which is why they are willing to wait to expand further than they are currently. 


With the league meetings now going a week over schedule, the owners now had to finalize what to do with the remainder of the NEFL, which was to become the AFL’s farm league, and the NYPL. Acting NEFL president Robert McNamara had numerous locations to where the NEFL could either expand or relocate teams to, and now left it to the owners to decide what to do. With the NYPL already having limited assets, it was determined that the remainder of the league would be merged with the NEFL, and the Newark Tigers would be the sole team joining the league from the NYPL. The assets of the Brooklyn Kings and the Bronx Bulldogs would be redistributed among the other 10 teams in the league. However, parts of these assets would go to a new expansion team, as McNamara found an owner in Albany, NY to keep the league at an even 12 teams, one for each of the 12 teams in the AFL by 1956. The new team would be christened the Albany Titans, and will begin play on the campus of New York State for the 1954 season. In addition to adding one team, two existing NEFL teams would be relocated. The first, and most obvious, are the Boston Bards, who will vacate the campus of Armitage University for the grounds of Roosevelt University in Garden City, NY on Long Island. The team will begin play in 1955, named the Long Island Lancers, and will almost certainly be the affiliate of the AFL Boston team once they begin play in the same year. The other team is the reigning runners-up, the New London Captains. After not being able to pay Connecticut State to play at their stadium, the Captains owners were forced to sell the team, which was bought by investors from Rochester, NY, who would be resurrecting the Rochester Roosters for the 1954 season. With the expansion outside of the New England region and becoming a developmental league for the AFL, the NEFL was going to need a new name for itself. The newly-reorganized league, partially owned by the AFL, would be renamed to the Atlantic Semi-Professional Football League for the 1954 season. The 1954 season would be a transitional period of sorts, as the ASPFL will take its time to reshape itself from a mid-major league in the Northeast to the best developmental league in America.


The final plan, nicknamed the “Manhattan Plan” by the press, is as follows:

  • The AFL will expand to 10 teams in 1955 with the addition of Boston and New York, and will expand to 12 teams in 1956 with the addition of Philadelphia and St. Louis

  • The AFL will also look to expand to 16 teams by 1961, with the league beginning to look at bids from cities for future teams

  • The NEFL will be reorganized into the Atlantic Semi-Professional Football League (ASPFL) for the 1954 season

  • The remainder of the NYPL will be absorbed into the ASPFL, with the Newark Tigers joining the ASPFL, and the Brooklyn Kings and Bronx Bulldogs’ remaining players getting distributed among ASPFL teams.

  • Two teams will relocate as part of the ASPFL reorganization: The Boston Bards will relocate onto Long Island to become the Long Island Lancers in 1955, and the New London Captains will relocate to Rochester, NY to become the second iteration of the Rochester Roosters for the 1954 season. One additional team will be created for the 1954 season, the Albany Titans, to bring the league to 12 teams


AFL TO INTRODUCE NEW UNIFORM, FACE MASKS

Most had thought that Chicago RB Brian Bruce had just broken his jaw in the week 3 matchup against the Detroit Knights, and should have been back in action for the West Play-off game. However, he was absent from the benches that day, and it was revealed that his injury was a lot worse than it appeared. His injury got severely infected, and Bruce nearly died because of it. Bruce made his first public appearance since the injury the week after the Hogs’ devastating playoff loss, and assured Chicago fans that he would be back on the field for the 1954 season. The league will require all players to wear a facemask for the 1954, nicknamed the “Brian Bruce Rule” by the press, adding to the AFL’s innovativeness as a league. The uniforms teams wear will also be slightly different, removing the “cuffs” to make them easier to manufacture and to play in. These new uniforms will debut in the 1954 season. 


NBC TO BROADCAST CHAMPIONSHIP GAME IN 1955

In order to reach as many people as possible, the AFL signed a massive $100,000 deal with NBC to broadcast the championship game in 1955, with the possibility of broadcasting future AFL championship games. NBC was attracting significantly more viewers and markets in their broadcasts of the “Big Five” of the Interprovincial Football Union, and expanding to a larger network is what the AFL is looking for after its relatively unsuccessful time with the DuMont Network. This comes as a surprise to the DuMont Network, whose broadcasting contract with the AFL ends after the 1954 season, but not as a surprise to anyone following their financials. The DuMont Network had been struggling since signing the deal in 1953, resulting in some broadcasts being shared between them and ABC. A potential merger between ABC and DuMont was in the works, with ABC giving DuMont around $5 million in cash to keep afloat for some time, allowing DuMont to purchase broadcasting rights for the AFL. DuMont’s struggles with broadcasting means that ABC will step in for several of the scheduled night games. ABC also decided to dabble further into the AFL broadcasting, signing deals with the Buffalo Hammers, Chicago Hogs, Cincinnati Rivermen, Pittsburgh Shamrocks, and Washington Federals to broadcast their games in certain regions throughout the country. The Hogs would be broadcasted in mostly Midwestern markets, the Rivermen and Federals would split the Southern markets, and the Hammers and Shamrocks would have their games broadcasted in eastern markets. The teams hoped that these games would expand the AFL’s presence throughout its current footprint to make it significantly more popular than the PAFC within the same region. ABC would rotate which of these games would instead be broadcasted nationally, which may bring the AFL even more popularity within the Midwest and Northeast, and delve into the potent Southern market.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicago Hogs

Image
The Hogs are one of the oldest teams in the nation, first coming together in 1919 as the Rockford Athletic Club during the AA. After it fell apart, the Athletics limped along for almost 10 years, with the Depression almost forcing the team to fold. They were saved at the 11th hour by former AA star Donovan Hasenkamp in 1929, who moved them to the south side of town to play in a better and more comfortable market. Unfortunately for Hasenkamp, Chicago was already occupied by MWFC commissioner Virgil Bradshaw and his Chicago Stars, and a deep hatred developed between the two. Two years later, the Stars and Athletics played a particularly brutal game in muddy conditions, with Bradshaw proclaiming that Hasenkamp coached his players to “behave like feral hogs in a bloody pigpen.” Hasenkamp was already considering changing the team’s brand at this point, and loved his rival’s insult so much he changed the team’s name to the Hogs. After the rebrand, the Hogs’ play began to improve, winning the...
Read more

Washington Federals

Image
COLUMBUS BUCKEYES  Columbus is the oldest team of the inaugural AFL teams, formed by former players of the University of Ohio in 1906, hence why both of them share the same name. They were an independent team for a long while, and joined up in the AA for all three of its seasons before joining the MWFC. They were dominant in their early years, winning 2 out of the 3 AA titles and snagging the first ever Bradshaw Cup in the Championship. Now, UOhio has basically become a feeder team to the pro Buckeyes, but even then that isn’t helping the Buckeyes get back to the top. They have not been contenders lately, and have been living in the basement for some time now, mainly due to the Buckeyes going through 2 ownership changes and several roster rebuilds in order to be relevant once more. Randolf Durant is the 3rd owner the Buckeyes have had since their last championship, and was the final owner approached by Hasenkamp to form the league. Durant believes the exposure that the league will ...
Read more

Buffalo Hammers

Image
The first and older of the two teams joining is Buffalo, who was one of the charter members of the New York Professional Football League in 1923, which eventually became the New York-Pennsylvania League a few years later. The Hammers are actually one of the older teams in the U.S., founded in 1905 as a company team for the newly-relocated Lackawanna Steel Company. They became an amateur team in 1913, and went pro when they joined the NYPL in 1923. The team almost didn’t make it to going pro, as Lackawanna was in the process of being bought out by Bethlehem Steel and was going to end its company team after the purchase was complete. Willis Ware, who was an executive in Lackawanna, rushed in at the 11th hour and used what he had left of his savings to buy the Hammers and joined the NYPL, where they stormed through the whole league and won its first-ever title. The Hammers have always been successful during their time as a pro team, finishing in the top half of the NYPL in all but 2 of th...
Read more