The Wide World of American Football: 1957-58 Edition

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 better, having suspended operations a year prior due to tornado damage to their stadium. Their last hope of staying afloat was the Kansas City Hearts baseball club allowing them equal access to their stadium after it gets rebuilt instead of paying the Hearts to be there. With how few fans the middling Cowboys attracted since their founding, the Hearts told them to find another stadium in the city. No one wanted to lose money on the already broke Cowboys, and the team would end up folding by the end of the season. The league was now the smallest it had been at 8 teams since the AFL had split off in 1950, leaving the then-MWFC with just 7 remaining teams. 

Within all the chaos that the PAFC had been enduring, things seemed like they were more of the same for the first half of the year. The Chicago Stars had assembled one of the most competitive teams they had fielded in nearly a decade, and remained undefeated with just 3 weeks left in the year. They lost a close game against Richmond, who they expected to play in the World Series of Football just a few weeks later. The Stars easily handed Houston a loss on the road, and just had to beat Omaha back in Chicago to get back into the championship game. The only problem was that the Bulls suddenly were competitive after not winning a single game last year. After losing their first two games of the season, they fired their head coach and replaced him with their special teams coordinator since no one else wanted to coach in the interim. Somehow, the Bulls would win 6 straight games and put themselves into title contention, and a win against Chicago would send them there. No one on the Stars took the Bulls seriously, and it showed when the Bulls surged to an early two touchdown lead. The Stars couldn’t just coast off of starpower like they had been the past 5 years, and played like their jobs were on the line (this was partially spurred on by coach Bradshaw berating his players during halftime, stating that they would not be starting next year if they lost this game). Chicago eventually took the lead and not much time left for Omaha to get the lead back. With an aging quarterback and several penalties going in their favor, the Bulls were on the 10 yard line with only enough time for one more play. He fired over the middle into heavy traffic, and his receiver came down with the ball for the game-winning score. The Chicago Stars would not play in the World Series of Football for the first time since 1947. Omaha continued to play close with their next opponent, trading score after score with the Richmond Patriots before the Bulls put together one of their classic late-game drives to set up a field goal for the win. The kick sailed clean through the uprights as time expired, and the Omaha Bulls pulled off one of the biggest single-season turnarounds in professional sports to win their first title. 

A miracle run to a championship should mean that the PAFC’s viewership would increase, but that was far from the case. Because Chicago’s regularity in the championship game, part of the PAFC’s limited radio and TV contract stipulated that it would only be broadcasted nationally if the Stars took part. Bradshaw had thought that people wanted to watch the league for his team specifically, and it seemed more of a showcase of the Stars’ talent than a professional league. Added to the fact that he was bitter over the last-second loss, Bradshaw decided to schedule an exhibition match at the same time at the championship game against an all-star team across the PAFC, demanding it be broadcast over the actual championship game. Bradshaw got enough sway to get his “All-PAFC Challenge” to be broadcasted in more of the PAFC’s markets than the actual championship game for the league. Even worse was when the Stars handedly beat the all-star team (which only included players Birmingham, Indianapolis, and Houston), Bradshaw proclaimed that his Stars were the real champions of the league, even though the actual championship game was just finishing. The only place that actually saw any portion of the game was in Omaha, since Richmond stations did not air the game due to it technically being a home game for the Patriots. Despite being one of the best games the PAFC has seen in quite some time, it was quickly swept under the rug by the league in favor of prioritizing the Chicago Stars. Surprisingly, only Omaha was opposed to what Bradshaw did, calling what he did a “flagrant abuse of power” and threatening to leave the league if what he did continued. It’s a miracle that the PAFC has continued on as long as it has, but as long as Bradshaw finds people with enough money to dump into his failing league then it will continue to move along one way or another.

PAFC STILL INTENT ON EXPANSION DESPITE LOSSES
It has become clear that the MWFC/PAFC is now long past its heyday after the second World War. Only three of the teams that existed before the split are still around in some capacity (Chicago, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne/Birmingham). The four other teams that stuck around after the AFL all folded, and only 3 out of the 8 expansion teams have lasted more than 3 seasons. The downturn the PAFC has taken has not deterred league president Virgil Bradshaw, who is insisting on expanding the league’s outreach to stay competitive against the AFL. Two more teams will join for the 1958 season, with only one of them going as planned. New Orleans owner Rudolph Branthwaite Sr. had reached out to fellow bowl promoter W.C. Cherry to put a team in Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl. The team will appropriately be named the Gators after the stadium they play in and the numerous alligators that have been spotted in Duval County. The other expansion team has not been easy to prop up. This spot was supposed to go to a team in either San Francisco or Oakland, but the PAFC could not come to an agreement with any stadium to start in 1958. Scrambling to make the league stay at an even amount of teams, Bradshaw paid out of his own pocket to start up a team in the “hotbed of college football” - Norman, Oklahoma. Bradshaw is still counting on the collegiate crowd to carry over into the professional circuit, even though that experiment has not seen the results he wanted. This hastily constructed team will be called the Oklahoma City Drillers, named after the prominent oil industry in the city. The bare-bones team was not the first thing on people’s minds, as many expected the PAFC to quickly recuperate its key markets of Milwaukee and the Twin Cities after both of their teams unexpectedly folded mid-season. Bradshaw had no intention of replacing those teams, even stating “[those cities] don’t deserve another team after what they tried to pull off against my league.” It has been noted that neither of the Milwaukee or Minneapolis owners were directly involved in the match-fixing scandal that he claims to be true, with court rulings being dismissed and both making statements of their non-involvement. The PAFC’s expansion plan continues on after this year, hopefully adding a Bay Area team and another city to match the AFL in terms of size by either 1959 or 1960. The favorite for the other city seems to be a different Dallas ownership group from the AFL, hoping to beat them to the punch in establishing a following.

NEWARK WINS FIRST TITLE ON BACKS OF PAFC EXILES
The Long Island Lancers on paper seemed like they were miles ahead of the rest of the ASPFL and were destined to repeat as champions. They played like favorites early on in the season, but faltered late in the year to fall just a half game over .500, good enough to finish in 5th. New Haven finished a spot ahead of Long Island, meaning there would be a new matchup in the title game for this year. The Hartford Colts were the team to run away with the competition with the vacuum left over by the Lancers, with a powerful defense led by DL’s Jerry Smith and Thomas Atkins and DB Marc Schmitz. They would play one of either Newark, New Haven, or Springfield in the title game, who all entered the final week with the same record and very little separating them. Each of these teams would win their final game, though Newark’s pummeling of Burlington put them ahead of both the Lions and Knights to go to their first championship since joining the league a few years ago. The Tigers had somewhat predictably finished in the middle of the standings the past two seasons, but made two signings this past offseason that changed their trajectory for the better. Both QB Billy Ray Boesseler and RB Jon Dawson were benchwarmers for the Chicago Stars, and despite being some of the better players on the team were told by their head coach that neither of them would ever amount to anything as a player. They both joined the mass exodus of PAFC players into the AFL and ASPFL, where they both signed with the only team that would take either of them. Boesseler’s cannon of an arm and Dawson’s bruising running style were enough to take the middling team to relevance and prove that they did belong in professional football. Both were awarded co-MVP’s for a first across all leagues in professional sports. In the championship game, Newark got out to a multi-score lead but Hartford’s defense eventually slowed them down to catch back up in the second half. The Colts tied the game up late in the fourth quarter, but the Tigers marched downfield to kick what would be the game-winning field goal for a final score of 27-24. Dawson appears primed to join the big-league Lions next year as an excellent pairing to rookie RB Felix Philipow, but Boesseler will need to fight for a starting position if he is unable to beat out current starter Freddie Hughes for the role. If he is unable to, then some teams would give up more than they should to get him to be their potentially long-term starting quarterback.