A search tells me that this was in Defenderdawg's roundup on Friday, but I suspect that there are some folks who might have missed that and would enjoy this.
Excerpt:
Ward preached peaceful coexistence and hoped for a "World Series of Football." NFL commissioner Elmer Layden responded in a typical NFL-commissioner way, saying the new league must "first get a ball, then make a schedule, and then play a game." Packers coach Curly Lambeau was slightly less dismissive, noting that any new league would "suffer growing pains just as we did for many years" and predicting that NFL teams would be three-deep with the best football talent.
But not everyone in NFL circles agreed. Dan Topping was one of the NFL's wealthiest owners, but the grandson of New York's most powerful tin-industry magnate was trapped in the Brooklyn hinterlands, his Dodgers playing in Ebbets Field instead of glamorous Yankee Stadium. John Mara, whose Giants played at the Polo Grounds, did not want his nearest neighbor encroaching any further. So Topping purchased the Yankees—the "real" baseball Yankees—for $2.8 million, then approached the AAFC with a roster, an incredible stadium and the most marketable name in professional sports. |
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The merger of the the leagues (only the teams as a whole, but many of the AAFC players were spread throughout the NFL rosters) immediately improved the quality of play and began pro football's golden decade.
During the AFL standoff the situation and attitude of many NFL owners was similar, keep putting off the merger and wait out the rival league until their finances run out. The fact that the AFL had network TV money coming in helped them survive, which was something the AAFC lacked.