American Football League - Fictional History

After utilizing their stadium partner’s identity for the past two years, the New York Lions finally got an identity for themselves. After piggy-backing off of the Dutch Lions and getting a run to the championship, owner Peter Stuyvesant wanted to take the Lions in a different direction. Instead of using a dutch lion, he took inspiration from the New York Public Library’s lions, to be fitting for “a team of regal stature in the country’s largest city”. The new primary logo will be the stoic head of one of the lion statues, replacing the heraldic dutch lion that was used in a similar capacity. The Lions also swapped out the tuscan-inspired interlocking N-Y for one that is more blocky, though it will be relegated to secondary use. Their typeset also changes slightly to fit in line with the new secondary. Their uniforms, however, will remain the same, not wanting to change them with a miracle title run this past year. Tri-Cities owner Bob Hester ran into the same issue that Cincinnati had ...

LEAGUE MOVES EXPANSION TO 1960 & 1961 The AFL’s expansion over the past two years can be considered a rousing success. Out of the 4 teams introduced, all but one have made the playoffs (with the Rattlesnakes only missing out by half a game) and all of them have won at least one game in the playoffs. Boston and St Louis look like they will be up there with the “Big Three” teams of Chicago, Cincinnati, and Washington. New York made a miracle run for the title this past year. Philadelphia has some of the largest attendance numbers the league has seen so far. With the sport of football on the up and up in recent years, the league announced that it will move up the second half of the “Manhattan Plan” by one year. Los Angeles and San Francisco are now slated to join for the 1960 season, with two other teams to join a year later in 1961. The two bids from San Francisco, the group that attempted to buy the Knights (Allen Penoyer & Ernest Barlowe) and the other headed by former Kansas C...

MIRACLE TITLE IN THE PAFC OVERSHADOWED BY CHAOS The PAFC has been trying to distance itself from the game-fixing scandal that had made the league seem less legitimate the year prior. League president Virgil Bradshaw had only given the minimal funds necessary to keep several teams afloat, but seemed more interested in propping up the teams he actually cared about. After he sent in union-busters to stop his league’s players from striking, a mass exodus of players left to the ASPFL and AFL for better pay. Only two teams (Baltimore and New Orleans) willingly increased pay before their players went on strike, while the remainder either refused and brought in scabs or relented after play stopped. Milwaukee and Minneapolis were bleeding money after settlements due to their players’ involvement in the match-fixing scandal, and were only able to make it through the first 3 weeks of the season before both ran out of money to pay for their players and their operating costs. Kansas City fared no b...