AFL Spring Meetings 1955

The spring meetings came back home to Chicago, and the owners had some pressing issues to take on before the start of the 1955 season, as well as planning out events that were coming within the next year. First and foremost, commissioner Donovan Hasenkamp officially introduced the new owners to the rest of the league, as Boston owner Robert McNamara and New York owner Peter Stuyvesant were now official members of the league. Although they were not joining until next year, Philadelphia owner Sy Thompson and St Louis owner Arthur Dixon were welcomed to the meetings, as a majority of the items on the docket had to do with the expansion process. After the fanfare was over, the meetings were now officially underway.


LEAGUE REALIGNMENT

Boston and New York would have to be placed in the East Division, and some realignment would need to be done to balance out each division at 5. At first, it was proposed that one of either Cleveland or Detroit move from the East to the West to balance out the divisions, but Washington owner Bernard McCullough wanted to move to the East to reduce travel costs. As a result, both Cleveland and Detroit would move to the West in exchange for Washington moving east to be geographically closer to the other teams. The 1956 expansion class would be a bit simpler than 1955, as Philadelphia will join the East Division while St Louis will join the West.The league will also expand to a 12 game season. Each team will play every other team in its division for a total of 8 games, while playing the remaining 4 games against teams from the other division. The playoffs will also expand to 6 teams beginning with the 1955 season. The division winner will get a bye, while the 2nd and 3rd place teams in a division will play each other to determine who will play the division champion. The winner of those two semi-final games will then play for the American Football Championship. The owners had wanted to keep the playoffs on Thanksgiving day, but ultimately decided to move it to the last week of the regular season to keep the opening week on Labor Day weekend. This was met with mixed reactions by both players and fans, as the AFL had practically owned Thanksgiving Day in the playoffs and some thought that taking it out of the playoff schedule would lessen its significance on the schedule. Others understood the change was necessary, though noting that the owners could have moved the schedule forward to keep Thanksgiving in the playoffs. With the league continuing to expand in the future, it is unlikely that the traditional Thanksgiving playoff game will return to its spot unless in the unlikely scenario where the league would choose to start the season in late August.


INTRODUCTION OF THE EXPANSION DRAFT

Concerns of Boston and New York joining the league and immediately being competitive had been brought into question since the announcement of the league’s imminent expansion. Buffalo and Pittsburgh were able to compete at the AFL level immediately after joining from the NYPL, but the quality of talent in the NYPL has dropped drastically since then. The top teams of the Northeast were about equal in talent at the time of the defection, but are now nearing the quality of a semi-pro team with all the talent flooding to the Midwest. The owners were mulling over how to distribute talent to the Philadelphia and St Louis teams next year to at least make them competitive instead of throwing them into the fire like PAFC teams had been in the past. To give the newer teams a better chance of competing immediately, the owners decided to hold an “expansion draft”, where pre-existing teams could protect a certain number of players, and the new teams would select players from the non-protected lists the other teams provided them. For Philadelphia and St Louis, they would be able to select three players per team, while Boston and New York would be selecting two players per team since they already had some players coming over from the NEFL and NYPL, respectively. This is the first time any professional league has done anything like this in the United States, so it’s anyone’s guess as to if this will succeed or fail. Critics believe that it is a good idea on paper, and they will have to see if it will actually work. The expansion drafts are scheduled to take place as the final docket on this year’s and next year’s owners meetings. In addition, Boston and New York, and Philadelphia and St. Louis the year after, will be placed as the first and second overall picks in the draft, with whoever gets the first pick in the expansion draft and the first-year player draft being decided by a coin flip. 


REORGANIZATION OF THE NEFL

The biggest managerial question that the owners had to deal with was how to turn the NEFL into a developmental league for the AFL. They had already created plans to expand to 12 teams and move out of the smaller markets in the already regional NEFL, now the ASPFL. With the easiest part out of the way, the owners had to now figure out how to create the farm system. The National Baseball League (NBL) had turned the Mid-Atlantic League and Southern League into the minor leagues over the course of about 30 years since its first affiliation, but now the AFL had to do what the NBL did in 30 years in a single offseason, a much taller task. A majority of the owners did not want to directly purchase any of or have a significant stake in the existing NEFL teams, which was the practice a vast majority of NBL owners participated in for their farm system. Boston’s Robert McNamara was the only owner to have a significant stake in an NEFL team, as he was the majority owner of the now-relocated Boston Bards, keeping an ownership stake in the team as they relocated to Long Island. New York had signed a tentative agreement with the Newark Tigers to be their minor league team when the NEFL would transition to the ASPFL, but no formal agreement has come just yet. With the uncertainty if they wanted to adopt the traditional farm system model, the owners decided on a compromise if owners either wanted to directly own a team or just sign an agreement with teams to be their affiliates. The ASPFL is currently at 12 teams while the AFL won’t reach that mark until next year, so the farm system alignment in its entirety will not begin until next year. As a result, two teams (Albany and New Haven) will share affiliations with Boston and New York in the interim. The final AFL-ASPFL farm system agreement is the follows:

  • Guaranteed salaries for all ASPFL players, equal to that of a practice squad salaries

  • Raised minimum salary for practice squad players from $2500 to $3000

  • Teams may directly own a team in the ASPFL, or enter an affiliation agreement with any ASPFL team

  • The ASPFL schedule is moved to a 10 week season between August-October, with AFL play beginning after week 4 of the former’s season.

  • AFL players on a team’s practice squad can be transferred to and from each team’s affiliate’s starting roster, though players on an active AFL roster cannot directly be “demoted” to an ASPFL roster without transferring to the practice squad first.

  • Albany Titans and New Haven Lions will be co-affiliates of New York and Boston, respectively, until St. Louis and Philadelphia join the AFL in 1956


The league structure (and affiliate type) for the 1956 ASPFL season is as follows:

Albany Titans - St Louis (affiliate agreement)

Burlington Greens - Pittsburgh (affiliate agreement)

Concord Wildcats - Cleveland (affiliate agreement)

Hartford Colts - Cincinnati (affiliate agreement)

Long Island Lancers - Boston (directly owned)

New Haven Lions - Philadelphia (affiliate agreement)

Newark Tigers - New York (affiliate agreement)

Portland Lumberjacks - Washington (affiliate agreement)

Providence Bears - Tri-Cities (affiliate agreement)

Rochester Roosters - Buffalo (directly owned)

Springfield Knights - Detroit (affiliate agreement)

Worcester Valentines - Chicago (affiliate agreement)


NBC TO BROADCAST REGULAR SEASON THANKSGIVING GAME

With the Thanksgiving game being pushed back to the final week of the regular season to make room for an expanded playoff format, NBC decided that they would be broadcasting the Rivermen v. Hogs game on national television. The Hogs have been a mainstay in the Thanksgiving slot, as traditionally both Chicago teams played against each other on the holiday until the Hogs left for the AFL. The Stars have tried to renew a rivalry in the PAFC on Thanksgiving with a wide variety of teams, but have failed to gain any sort of popularity with the Hogs usually still playing in a more impactful game that day. The Dumont Network was still in a tentative agreement to broadcast some sort of Thanksgiving game, but the network’s looming bankruptcy forced the AFL to sign a new deal with NBC, who was already going to broadcast the championship game a few weeks later. This deal is set to continue the long-running tradition for Chicago fans by exposing it to a national audience, part of the AFL’s plan to expand football’s popularity nationwide.

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