Pro Football: The Money Series

Tweaking the tail of a tiger is chancy sport, as the American Football League discovered last week. The A.F.L. had been feeling pretty big: this year’s attendance was 23% higher than 1964’s, that lovely TV loot was rolling in at the rate of $7,200,000 a year, and the caliber of play around the league had improved to the point where sportswriters were calling for a “World Series” between the A.F.L. and the older (by 40 years) National Football League. After five years of trying to forget that the A.F.L. even existed, the N.F.L. finally turned and fought back with the biggest weapons at its command: money and prestige. The results were pretty spectacular. Sighed one A.F.L. official: “We got our teeth kicked in.”

Tommy & the Deluge. The battleground was the annual college draft, and pro football’s version of Pork Chop Hill was Tommy Nobis, a 230-lb. All-America linebacker from Texas whose collar size (19½) alone was enough to make both leagues reach for their checkbooks. Tommy was drafted No. 1 by both the N.F.L.’s newly franchised Atlanta Falcons and the A.F.L.’s Houston Oilers. With no coach, no schedule, no training camp and no plays, the Falcons apparently had nothing to offer Nobis except money: by last week they had already sold 40,000 of their 45,000 season tickets for 1966—at $48 apiece. The Oilers’ Owner Bud Adams offered Nobis a $250,000 contract that would make him the highest paid defensive player in the history of pro football. Tommy posed for photographs with Oilman Adams. Then he flew off and signed an Atlanta contract—for $225,000 (or so went the story). “There is something more to this, I’ll bet,” Adams muttered. Undoubtedly. But Nobis insisted that he was motivated purely by professional pride. “If I had signed with the A.F.L.,” he explained, “I think I always would have wondered if I could have made it against the men of the N.F.L.”

After Nobis, the deluge. Illinois Fullback Jim Grabowski, the No. 1 choice of the A.F.L.’s newborn Miami Dolphins, signed (for $250,000) with the N.F.L.’s Green Bay Packers—not even bothering to entertain a bid from New York Jets Owner David (“Sonny”) Werblin, who persuaded the Dolphins to deed him the rights to Grabowski at the last minute. Then the A.F.L.’s San Diego Chargers lost their No. 1 draftee, mammoth (6 ft. 5 in., 255 Ibs.) Los Angeles State Tackle Don Davis, to the N.F.L.’s New York Giants. The Western Champion Chargers, in fact, lost every one of their top six draft choices —a hanging offense in time of war as far as Jets Owner Werblin was concerned. “What San Diego did was shameful,” sputtered Werblin. “They have a set ball club, so they drafted ten fellows who could have played with any of us and made no serious attempt to sign them. They’re afraid to strengthen the other A.F.L. teams.”

Big One to Come. By week’s end the N.F.L. had already signed 13 out of the 16 first-round draft choices and lost only one to the A.F.L.: Oklahoma Linebacker Carl McAdams, who signed with Werblin’s Jets. The A.F.L. was batting a sorry .500 on its top draft choices, with five out of ten signed and five lost to the N.F.L. Even so, one big battle was still to come over Texas Tech’s All-Everything Halfback Donny Anderson, who was drafted last year as a junior by the N.F.L.’s Green Bay Packers and the A.F.L.’s Houston Oilers. Anderson has a date in the Gator Bowl and cannot be bought until Dec. 31. The Packers reportedly are promising him a shot at Paul Hornung’s halfback job. Oilers Owner Adams, enraged by the defection of Tommy Nobis, is offering something more substantial. “We are not going to lose Anderson,” he vowed last week—and estimates of the extent of Adams’ determination range all the way to $800,000.