AFL Spring Meetings 1957

LEAGUE NARROWS DOWN EXPANSION CITIES
The first two teams that will be joining for the 1961 season seem to be all but guaranteed to be Los Angeles and San Francisco. The owners met with a handful of prospective ownership groups over the past year, and managed to narrow down the groups to a single owner from Los Angeles and two potential owners from San Francisco. The Los Angeles owner impressed the AFL owners, as hotel chain heir Barron Forbes made his case for ownership and won over all of the AFL owners. On the other hand, the AFL owners had to choose between two prospective bids for San Francisco. The first group was expected, as the duo that tried to buy the Knights this past offseason, former ACAA councilman and lawyer Allen Penoyer and lumber magnate Ernest Barlowe, got another, slightly more favorable chance to prove why they deserved a team. The other bid was a complete surprise: Victor Culpeper, a minority owner of the PAFC’s Kansas City Cowboys. Culpeper had wanted to bring a team to San Francisco one way or another, and bought a minority stake in the Cowboys in an attempt to move them westward. Realizing that the PAFC is more than likely going under at some point, he pivoted his focus to the more stable AFL for a team. The two parties are set to make another round of bids before the owners choose the winner, which will likely be completed before the end of next season. The league has also welcomed bids from 9 other metropolitan areas, with prospective owners from Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, and Seattle making bids. The owners are expected to narrow down their final choices by at least 1960, since two of these bids are expected to join for the 1962 season. At least from a media perspective, they believe that placing teams in Dallas and Denver would be beneficial to reduce air travel from the west coast.

NEUTRAL SITE CHAMPIONSHIP BID FAILS AMONGST TEAMS
Commissioner Hasenkamp made it no secret during last year’s meetings that he wanted to move the championship game to a neutral site to test the waters for the burgeoning league. There were already two preseason games scheduled to take place on the west coast for this season, as the Federals and Stallions were playing in Los Angeles and the Rivermen and Dragons played another in San Francisco. He had proposed two bids for this year’s meetings specifically relating to the league’s impending expansion: one for the championship game to be held in Los Angeles in 1958, and the other to continue to hold preseason games in potential markets. With how much he was talking to papers about his proposal, it would seem that this year’s title game would be the last to be held on a non-neutral site. However, the actual vote was the complete opposite. Only the Hogs, Federals, and Rivermen voted “yes”, and the motion failed 9-3. Most of the owners cited travel costs, not wanting to travel across the country on a short turnaround. The owners did agree on continuing preseason games in potential cities, with 4 games to be held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and Miami to begin the 1958 season. They did not decide to include games for the 1959 season for the time being, citing the uncertainty of success of the future preseason games.

HAWKS DEAL WITH DEATH OF OWNER BERT HESTER
The AFL suffered tragedy yet again, as Tri-Cities Hawks owner Bert Hester suffered a stroke in February and passed shortly after at the age of 73. Unlike the Detroit Knights’ messy situation when their owner died this past offseason, Hester had already named a successor to take over the Hawks in the inevitability of his passing. Team control of the Hawks passed onto his son, Bob Hester, and fans were not too particularly keen on this decision. While his father was extremely focused on the football part of his business, the younger Hester stayed closer to the family business in real estate. Even worse was that he had no interest in football. He assured that the Hawks would not be going anywhere, though he was upset at the financial situation his father left him in. Under his father’s tenure in the AFL, the Hawks had one of, if not the highest payroll out of any team in recent years with little success to back it up. In his first interview with the local press, the younger Hester seemed determined to lower the team’s payroll to be more on par with the type of market they play in. Hawks fans did not seem pleased with this sentiment, as they believed that he would get rid of all of the team’s good players just to turn a profit. Tri-Cities have been fading as one of the AFL’s marquee brands, and sending away the last remnants of their success might just put them on the fast track to rebuilding.

AFL WELCOMES ORGANIZED PLAYER UNION
After the player debacle that was going on within the PAFC, a few players on the Boston Dragons decided that forming a players union could be within their best interests. It was fairly obvious to an outside perspective that the AFL seemed to treat its players better than the PAFC, but forming a union could allow further benefits for players. DL Benjamin Nash and LB Gene Archer approached former St. Joseph’s player and lawyer David Ravistky to help represent them and advocate for other players. Ravistky began contacting several players to aid in the development of the new union, including New York RB Bernard Parks, OL Johnathan Benton and LB Lloyd Motta from Cleveland, Buffalo DB Joe Merritt, and most notably Washington QB Johnnie Sellers. During this time, Ravitsky had arranged two separate meetings to meet with owners and discuss player guarantees. The first was in Washington, D.C. between Federals owner Bernard McCullough and Dragons owner Robert McNamara in conjunction with their playoff game, and the second was in Cincinnati to meet with Rivermen owner Dennis Delaney and Stallions owner Arthur Dixon for their playoff game.

By the time the spring meetings rolled around, there was at least one player in the union for all 12 teams currently in the AFL. With some rapport under his belt, Ravistky was asked to pitch the union along with some of the players joining for their wants. The conditions wanted by the players were a league-wide minimum salary of $5000 for all experienced players, guaranteed pay for exhibition games, uniforms to be paid for and maintained at a club’s expense, guaranteed pay for players while injured, and for teams to end or modify the current reserve clause. Players wanted more freedom to sign with other teams, and disliked the clause that effectively tied their contracts to the team that initially signed them in perpetuity unless traded to another team or had their contract waived. After the owners convened, they agreed on all points except for one. It was nearly unanimous for all other points, with the Hawks being the lone dissenter, but all of the owners unilaterally agreed to keep the reserve clause as is. The owners acknowledged that they did not have a system to replace the current clause at this moment, but seemed to have some sense of urgency in attempting to create a system more favorable to players. While the players union didn’t get everything they wanted, they at least came out of the meetings with more favorable terms. The union christened themselves as the American Football Players Association (AFPA), and would eventually elect Boston LB Gene Archer as its first president.