Bills--AFL Days

By Goose  |   Tuesday, December 08, 2009  |  Comments( 204 )

Buffalo Bills
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This is an article I had to share with both young and old Buffalo Bills fans. It is written by a man I greatly admire for his dedication to keeping the memories of the AFL alive. Ange was also the man that was responsible in forcing the NFL to change its playoff formula--he found a quirk where it was better to lose a game than to win to make the playoffs!!!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!!!


Last August 8, in Canton, Ohio, Ralph C. Wilson Jr. was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The next night, in the annual Pro Football Hall Of Fame Game, Wilson’s Buffalo Bills wore white uniforms and white helmets with red bison logos. They faced a team in Columbia blue and white, with blue helmets adorned by oil derricks, looking suspiciously like the Houston Oilers. It was the start of a season-long celebration of the American Football League by the National Football League.

Wilson’s Hall of Fame selection was greatly enhanced by his pioneering role in building the AFL, not only through his ownership of the Bills, but his financial support of the struggling Oakland Raiders and Boston Patriots. During 2009, which would have been the AFL’s 50th season, pro football has been honoring the league that introduced the scoreboard clock, names on jerseys, the two-point conversion and exciting offenses.

It is fitting that this included the Bills and Oilers; both franchises were a big part of that genesis of modern professional football. The Oilers won the league’s first two championships in 1960 and 1961, and the Bills made four straight playoff appearances in mid-decade, winning consecutive AFL titles in 1964 and 1965.

Seasoned Buffalo football fans remember Bills favorites like Jack Kemp, Cookie Gilchrist, Butch Byrd, George Saimes and Tom Sestak, or Oilers like George Blanda, Charlie Hennigan, Billy Cannon and the “human bowling ball,” Charlie Tolar.

They may recall a November 1964 game played under near-monsoon conditions in War Memorial Stadium, when Blanda defied the elements, throwing 68 passes and completing 37.

The Oilers took an early 10–7 lead and held it into the fourth period, but Pete Gogolak kicked a 17-yard field goal, halfback Bobby Smith ran three yards for a touchdown, and Gilchrist rumbled 60 yards to score another as the Bills won the game, 24–10.

Interestingly, Gogolak represented another AFL innovation to pro ball: he was the first-ever soccer-style kicker. Today there are no “conventional,” straight-on kickers in the sport.

Memories of that game and others have been awakened in long-time Bills and AFL fans this season, as 16 throwback games are being held on AFL Legacy Weekends, during which original AFL play against old AFL rivals, each wearing home or away AFL throwback uniforms.

These are nice gestures toward a league that forever changed the way the game is played. Before the AFL, pro football consisted of 12 teams in a 12-game season, with the majority of teams east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line.

No national television package existed, home teams kept 100-percent of the gate, and the time of play was kept not on the scoreboard, but by a stopwatch in the referee’s pocket. The fans in the stands had to guess the time remaining, as they had to guess the player’s names, because the men on the field were identified only by number.

Football at that time was “grind-it-out,” and “three yards and a cloud of dust.” Black players were a small minority. One team was lily-white, and several were nearly so.

The American Football League changed all that. It introduced the 14-game season to. In addition to expanding the pro football experience in New York City, it eventually placed teams in such football-deprived cities as Buffalo, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Denver, San Diego, Oakland, Cincinnati and Miami.

It established nationally televised double-headers, with all teams sharing in the TV revenue, and in the home gate, a move that stabilized the league and made small-market football possible.

Fans no longer had to guess about the game time, nor the players’ identities, as the scoreboard clock was official, and the players’ names were on their jerseys. The football played on the field was flashier, more risk-taking and more fun than the old brand.

The league actively recruited from small and predominantly black colleges, resulting in stars like Marlin Briscoe, pro football’s first modern black starting quarterback; Buck Buchanan, its first black number one draft choice; and Willie Lanier, its first black starting middle linebacker.

As a result of the presence of major-league competition, the NFL, which had disdained expansion, was forced to place new teams in Dallas, Minnesota and Atlanta. It later awarded a franchise to New Orleans to grease the skids for PL 89-800, the law that allowed it to achieve its wish and merge with the American Football League.

There should be nou doubt, The AFL was major-league professional ball. In 1960, its first year, half of the other league’s first-round draft choices signed with the AFL.

The greatest wide receiver of the sixties, and perhaps of all time, played in the AFL: San Diego Charger Lance Alworth. The first pro football player to make 100 receptions, Lionel Taylor, played for the AFL’s Denver Broncos. The first to break the 100-catch yardstick was Charlie Hennigan of the AFL’s Oilers.

The first pro to throw for more than 4,000 yards in a season was Joe Willie Namath of the New York Jets and the American Football League.

No fewer than 32 players or personalities from the AFL are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Former Buffalo Bill Billy Shaw is the only player enshrined who never played in the NFL.

And except for the unwarranted claim that the AFL was inferior to the other league, numerous other AFL stars would undoubtedly be enshrined, such as Johnny Robinson, Abner Haynes, Jim Tyrer, Jerry Mays, Gene Mingo, Lionel Taylor, Charlie Hennigan, Gino Cappelletti, Houston Antwine, Keith Lincoln, Paul Lowe, John Hadl, Larry Grantham, Winston Hill, Billy Cannon, Art Powell, Daryle Lamonica, and the Bills’ own Jack Kemp, Cookie Gilchrist, Ron McDole and Tom Sestak.

The guru of the AFL, Chargers’ head coach Sid Gillman, won an AFL title and raised the bar of competition in the league so that his competitors were forced to use innovative — and intrinsically entertaining — offensive schemes. Later coaches in Gilman’s “coaching tree” — men who were influenced by his mentorship — account for 20 Super Bowl championships between them.

To those who claim “Buffalo never won anything,” I say the Bills won two major league professional football championships: the AFL’s 1964 and 1965 titles.

Consider that American Football League records are now merged with those of the current league. A tackle made in the AFL carries the same weight as one made in the 1960s NFL; a yard gained in the AFL is the same as one gained in the NFL (three feet).

Therefore, the Bills’ 1964 and 1965 AFL championships are every bit as valid and significant as the NFL titles won by the Browns in 1964 and the Packers in 1965.

The Buffalo players from the AFL years were good enough for five of them to be selected to the Bills’ 50th Anniversary Team: George Saimes, Mike Stratton, Shaw, Butch Byrd and the late Tom Sestak.

Buffalo fans can be proud that their hometown team, its players and their worthy opponents in the American Football League revolutionized the sport that is today’s professional football.

For more on the AFL, visit Angelo Coniglio’s website, www.remembertheafl.com.

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