AFL Spring Meetings 1956

Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford Hotel would be the home of both the league meetings and the upcoming draft to welcome the next slate of expansion teams into the league. The football world around the AFL has been rapidly changing, and the owners were ready to adapt to the new landscape around them. Commissioner Hasenkamp officially welcomed Philadelphia and St. Louis as the league’s two newest teams, and the meetings began with haste.

PHILADELPHIA, ST. LOUIS WELCOMED TO LEAGUE
The Philadelphia and St. Louis football clubs were officially welcomed as the 11th and 12th teams, both announcing their full identities at a later date. With the two entering the league, it now needed to align itself again like last year. Unlike past years’ struggles with aligning teams, these two teams will slot in without any issue, with Philadelphia joining the East Division and St. Louis the West. Just like the year prior, this season’s expansion draft will see both teams selecting 3 players from each team, except from Boston and New York where they will each select 2 players apiece. The protected player process will remain the same as last year, where teams are able to protect 12 players and 4 extra players under the age of 24. Philadelphia won the coin toss for either the first pick in the expansion draft or the rookie draft, and they would choose the latter, gaining the first overall pick in the upcoming draft. The league will continue to play a 12 game schedule, modifying the schedule so that teams play 2 games against each other team in their division and 2 other games against 2 teams in the other division based on where they finished the year before. The playoff format introduced last year will also remain the same, with the top 3 teams in each division making the postseason.

DETROIT HERE TO STAY
The fate of the Detroit Knights was left in doubt when longtime owner August Riddle died in the middle of the previous season. With little to no success during his late years and the team perpetually in a state of chaos, staying in Detroit was not a guarantee. Added to that was the Detroit Robins baseball club flirting with relocation, with their last inkling of success happening in 1944 with a World Series loss to Philadelphia. Riddle’s son, Florian was adamant about keeping the Knights in Detroit, though the rest of Riddle’s family was less than keen on keeping the team. They saw how the Knights were draining their own value through August’s ownership, and just wanted to recuperate their losses and move on. Without the consent of the AFL, the Riddle family began looking for prospective buyers to take the Knights off their hands. They kept it under wraps from the one member of the family who actually cared about the team, August’s youngest son Florian. They managed to keep the sale behind closed doors, where they sold the Knights to a group led by former ACAA councilman and lawyer Allen Penoyer and lumber magnate Ernest Barlowe, who would be relocating them to their hometown of San Francisco. The Knights were all set to be moved for the upcoming season, but Florian Riddle and Detroit mayor Albert Cobo attempted to stop the move before it was brought to the owners for a vote. The two brought in minor ownership stakes for the Knights pending they did not move, and were to argue to the owners on why they should not move. With a solid amount of money backing them, the owners voted 10-2 to reject the sale to San Francisco, keeping the Knights in Detroit. Florian Riddle’s ownership group promised that they would be looking into stadium renovations, which would either mean upgrades to the existing Kaiser Field or finding somewhere else in the Detroit metro to build a stadium. “My father showed me how much this team meant to him” Riddle said to a cheering crowd of Knights fans, “and I wish to keep the legacy of the Detroit Knights alive as long as we can.” Riddle promised to completely overhaul the Knights in the upcoming years, from the uniforms to the front office, doing whatever it will take to bring them back to their glory years in the 30’s and 40’s.

AFL SIGNS REGULAR SEASON TV DEAL WITH CBS
The DuMont Network would be shutting down after nearly 10 years on the air in August, just before the 1956 season was to begin. With the network already on the decline, CBS acquired the rights to broadcast select regular season AFL games. NBC brought the AFL to many more screens that DuMont would have ever brought, and CBS wanted in on the seemingly lucrative world of professional football. CBS noted that some teams would be getting priority in who would be getting broadcasted, where executives specifically named Chicago, Cincinnati, and Washington. They hoped broadcasting these teams would help grow the game like the AFL would want, though is at the expense of teams that are not as “marketable”. Now with two networks broadcasting the league, the AFL is expected to leapfrog both the PAFC and potentially the NBL as the country’s most prestigious and popular league.

HASENKAMP REASSURES MANHATTAN PLAN
The state of the football world was in great flux surrounding the AFL, and commissioner Donovan Hasenkamp wanted to be sure that the third part of his great “Manhattan Plan” would go smoothly. He noticed how recklessly the PAFC was expanding its horizons, and wanted to take a more calculated approach. 4 new teams were originally slated to join between the 1960 and 1961 seasons, but he pushed back both dates by a year to 1961 and 1962 to find 4 best possible owners to lead these teams.The prime suspect for this date pushback comes from the rejected Detroit Knights to San Francisco move, which most owners agreed among other things that the stadium that the Knights would have played in did not meet the standards of a traditional football field, as it was the primary stadium for the San Francisco Zephyrs baseball team. Hasenkamp assured that San Francisco would get one of those expansion slots if any ownership group could get a new stadium that would cater to football.  As an alternative way to expand into these prospective markets, Hasenkamp announced that some preseason exhibition games will be held beginning in 1957 to test the waters. Los Angeles and San Francisco were the only two cities named for the next year, with the 4 top teams from the upcoming 1956 season to play 2 games between the two cities. Hasenkamp planned to go south for the 1958 preseason exhibitions, wanting to play in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and New Orleans. The prospect of a neutral site championship game was also brought up, with Los Angeles the likely front-runner to host. The league has not made an official decision for the future, but it seems the plan to host the championship game out west may happen as soon as next year. As it stands now, 1956 may be the last year a team can have home field advantage for the championship.

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