Rozelle

  go after every nfl quarterback and superstar he could convince

  and give them a fifty- thousand- dollar signing bonus upon sign-

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  ing a postdated contract to the date of their free agency, another fifty thousand for the first season, and yet another fifty thousand

  for the second.

  Davis did not let many in on the plan. Mickey Herskowitz found

  out about it like this:

  Davis calls me into his office and flatly asks, “Who do you know over

  in the nfl? I mean really know.” I told him that John David Crowe

  and I had been close since he played for Texas A&M. He was estab-

  lished as a star and now was with the Cardinals.

  And Davis said, “Good, he’s your man. Call him and tell him we

  will give him fifty grand to sign, another fifty for the first year, and a third fifty for the second.”

  I called John David at his home in Arkansas, and I laid the deal

  out for him and he got very excited. I told him to sit tight. He is still sitting because two days later, a funny thing happened.

  Davis walked into my office, and he laid a piece of paper on my

  desk and told me to sign it. He laid the same paper on the desks of

  everyone in pr that he had brought in. It was a two- year contract. He said it was for our protection and to sign it with no questions asked.

  Looking back it was kind of typical. He was protecting us against a

  merger, but he wouldn’t say so. Al always loved mystery and intrigue.

  It was a side of Davis rarely written about. He knew a merger was

  coming. He was protecting those hires who had given up steady

  jobs to join him, ensuring that when the two leagues merged, his

  employees were guaranteed jobs with the new entity. It was a side

  of him all the more surprising in retrospect when you consider the

  number of others who were later fired by him when he returned

  to Oakland for offenses real, imagined, or exaggerated.

  But the 50- 50- 50 plan still rolled on. He knew some signees

  would cost much more. Don Klosterman and Scotty Stirling, who

  had replaced Davis as general manger when he left Oakland to

  become the afl commissioner, would be designated as the ones

  who would be the point men in the pursuit of the heaviest hitters.

  It was Klosterman who would make football’s first millionaire

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  out of John Brodie, the 49er quarterback who had never won a title.

  In the end there were others who were eager to sign and play for

  any afl team for the right money: the Bears’ Rudy Bukich, Cleve-

  land’s Jim Ninowski, Washington’s Sonny Jurgensen, Detroit’s Milt

  Plum, the Vikings’ Fran Tarkenton, and the Rams’ Roman Gabriel.

  I knew this last because on a visit to the Raiders’ office, Stir-

  ling showed me Gabriel’s contract, just where Davis had left it.

  Technically, Brodie never formally signed, but he ultimately got

  his money after the merger because of a hastily written memo on

  a hotel bar cocktail napkin signed by Klosterman that would have

  killed the afl in court.

  As the merger drew nearer, Davis believed he had won. He

  believed his league would be the stronger one, and he believed he

  would emerge as commissioner of the newly united fraternity as

  soon as it happened.

  And what was happening back at Pete’s Place while all this was

  going on? Well, nobody had to leave a wake- up call for him. He

  knew exactly where he was headed and exactly what he had to do

  to get there. Later on, after the merger, Rozelle told me:

  I know Al was upset. I know it was out of pride and human nature

  because I am sure he means it when he says he honestly felt he had

  us beaten.

  But he didn’t . . . not even close . . . believe me. He could have signed almost anyone he wanted, and it wouldn’t have mattered because we

  were about to do the same thing to them— and, unlike them, we had

  all the money we needed. We were not out to steal the few stars they

  had. Beyond Namath, who even knew who they were? We were going

  to go after their soft underbelly.

  We were going to go straight through their rosters and denude them.

  But having so little in star power, didn’t it make sense that the

  afl had far less to lose because the nfl had so many stars it could

  steal?

  “No,” Rozelle insisted, “because here was all you had to do, and

  we were ready to do it.”

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  You simply go out and create chaos. You talk to so many players of all levels and skills that you trigger a bloodbath. And then every rookie

  that Bill Sullivan [Boston] talked to— and he was desperately con-

  cerned about money because he didn’t have any— well, Billy would

  have to wonder if you had talked to him already and for how much.

  And the player, of course, was going to leave the impression that

  we had whether it was true or not, because it gave him bargaining

  leverage.

  We could have broken them without even thinking about quality.

  We would have gone after the quantity that they didn’t have instead,

  and there would have been nothing with which they could fight back.

  We didn’t have to chase an E. J. Holub, the great Kansas City line-

  backer, for example. We could have signed a slew of lesser players,

  and they would have come because almost all the teams they played

  for were staggering financially.

  If we hadn’t achieved the merger through talks, we would have

  won anyway.

  Clearly, public relations was not Mr. Rozelle’s only forte.

  Meanwhile, the secret Schramm- Hunt merger talks proceeded

  cautiously. In the beginning, they met in a parking lot at the

  old Dallas airport, appropriately called Love Field. There in the

  shadow of the Texas Ranger statue (an ironic twist because the

  Cowboys actually were named Rangers for the first two weeks of

  their existence), Schramm spoke to Hunt of the virtues of a 100-

  yard society where law and order and a common draft prevailed.

  Why were the meetings held in Schramm’s car? “Why was

  that?” I asked when Schramm and Rozelle and I had breakfast

  together the morning after the merger press conference. “Why

  not a hotel room?”

  “Listen,” Schramm said, “if anyone was going to be bugged for

  the record, it wasn’t going to be me. After we got past that, we

  took to visiting late at night in each other’s homes.”

  Schramm would report periodically to Rozelle, who would not

  share the information with other owners until he felt it was a done

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  133

  deal. The bombshell Schramm had dropped in Modell’s suite the day of the Gogolak signing was rapidly becoming more than a

  notion.

  Unlike Rozelle and Schramm, Hunt knew the time had come

  when he had to enlist allies and immediately set about forming

  an ad hoc committee, whose members would be the only owners

  consulted. After all, the afl was winning the battle for fans and

  attention in the two markets of most importance to it— New York

&n
bsp; and the Bay Area as represented by Oakland.

  The San Francisco 49ers were last at 6- 6- 2 in the nfl West.

  The Giants were last in the nfl East at 1- 12- 1. Clearly, the old

  guard was losing badly in those two areas. Given these facts it

  might seem strange to the devoted historian that neither the Jets’

  Sonny Werblin nor the Raiders’ Wayne Valley was on the afl’s

  secret committee. On the committee? Hell, they weren’t even told

  what was going on. And with good reason from Hunt’s standpoint.

  The terms of the final peace treaty were still in negotiations,

  but they would call for eighteen million dollars in “war crimes”

  reparations to be paid to the nfl. Given advance notice Werblin

  surely would have asked why he should pay that kind of money to

  a franchise that hadn’t laid a glove on him. Ditto for Wayne Valley,

  who had brought new pride and dignity to Oakland and was instru-

  mental in getting the city a new stadium that put that warehouse

  disguised as Kezar Stadium, where the 49ers played, to shame.

  Clearly, the 49ers and the Giants had become toothless tigers

  against their immediate geographical enemies. Valley and Werb-

  lin were justified in the bitterness they expressed when they were

  merged against their will. They were the ones— that is, the only

  ones— to meet the enemy head- on . . . They alone had carried the

  direct burden for their lodge brothers . . . and now they would be

  asked to pay money to the two franchises whose rear ends they

  firmly believed they were kicking the hell out of.

  When the agreement was finally reached, this last would become

  the stickiest diplomatic mess Rozelle had ever been asked to scrub

  clean. And the way he handled it hurt Werblin and Valley to their

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  very core. He was rewarding the two franchises the afl had begun to dominate.

  Werblin, at the time, was checking into a hospital for minor sur-

  gery. Had the ad hoc committee told him what they were doing,

  the Borough of Manhattan would have been treated to the sight

  of Mr. Show Biz in a hospital gown racing down Park Avenue with

  two orderlies in hot pursuit. So the ad hoc committee met secretly.

  “It was bad luck for Al because,” Herskowitz says, “Werblin was

  in the hospital. He never would have let them keep Al out of the

  loop. Al knew something was going on, but they never held any of

  their meetings in the office. I think Al believed he was winning.

  He believed they were nervous about his signings, and so the afl

  could win on its terms and he would be the commissioner.

  “This was like a heavyweight fight, and Al saw no reason we

  should lose it. I never said anything, but I was pretty sure we

  wouldn’t win because they still had the big guns.”

  For his part, Davis knew the merger was near, although he was

  deliberately kept out of the negotiations. What he did not know was

  how much the sub rosa ad hoc committee was willing to concede.

  Rozelle, meanwhile, by keeping matters pretty much between

  him and Schramm, had been able to distance himself enough so that

  had the deal fallen through, it would be bouncing off Schramm’s

  shoulders and not his, leaving him to put Operation Soft Under-

  belly into practice.

  At three on the morning of June 7, the telephone rang in Rozelle’s

  apartment. It was Schramm, whose fatigue was evident in his voice.

  He had just gotten off the phone with Hunt, who, ironically, was

  holed up in a New York hotel just a few blocks away from Rozelle.

  “It’s all set,” Schramm croaked.

  “I’ll call you,” Rozelle said.

  “Can I go to bed now?” Schramm said.

  “Yes, but don’t make a habit of it,” Rozelle replied.

  Rozelle showered, dressed, and checked the airline schedule;

  called his aide de camp, Jim Kensil; and then called Schramm back.

  “Do you know it’s 6:00 a.m. here?” Schramm grunted.

  Ain’t Gonna Study No War No More

  135

  “Time difference,” Rozelle said, “and daylight saving time as well. It’s 8:00 a.m. up here, sleepy head. Call Hunt back and tell

  him we will meet him, in Washington.”

  Rozelle caught the noon shuttle out of LaGuardia to make sure

  he would not tip off the world by traveling with Hunt. As an extra

  precaution he wore sunglasses. Schramm had told Hunt to check

  into the Sheraton Carlton Hotel, just behind the White House,

  where Murchison, the oilman, kept a suite for his lobbyists under

  an assumed name. He was to stay in his room until they got there

  so as not to attract attention.

  Schramm and Rozelle met at what was then Washington National

  Airport and took a cab to the hotel. When they pulled up, to their

  terror, there was Hunt on the sidewalk, waving to them.

  “Hi, Pete. Hi, Tex,” Hunt shouted.

  They grabbed him. It is conceivable that over the distance

  between the front door and the elevator, Lamar’s feet may not

  have touched the ground. They spent the rest of the day in clois-

  tered communion.

  The next morning the trio went over to the offices of Coving-

  ton and Burling, the law firm that represents the nfl and, thanks

  to the complexities of the sports business in the modern world,

  has had an enormous practice in all kinds of things related to the

  Justice Department.

  Next, Kensil, who had flown in with Rozelle, presented them

  with a long list of questions he anticipated would be asked at the

  merger press conference— and most of them were. They put Hunt

  through a dress rehearsal. Kensil said Lamar did just fine. What

  he didn’t say was that he would have preferred to have the show

  get a ten- day trial in New Haven.

  When they were done, Hunt left for New York to join Sullivan

  and Wilson. Schramm left in search of the nearest bed.

  That night rumors had begun trickling over the ap and upi wires.

  When they did, Ray Walsh, the president of the New York Foot-

  ball Giants, flatly said to anyone who asked, “There is no merger.

  The talks have broken down.”

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  In midafternoon Herskowitz called me at my desk at the Newark Star- Ledger. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you find out what the hell is happening? Nobody in this

  office has a clue.”

  “I just got off the phone,” I told him. “Don’t send out for ice,

  friend. You are booked on the Titanic.”

  The press conference was called for late afternoon in the War-

  wick Hotel. There are some things in this business that you never

  forget . . . the sun rising off the Congo River behind Ali’s villa

  in Zaire . . . the frosty collective breath of fifty thousand Packers

  fans at the game they call the Ice Bowl . . . the look on the faces of the flora and fauna of sports journalism when they were told that

  General William D. Eckert had been named the commissioner of

  baseball and they struggled not to yell out, “Who?”

  And then there was the strange motif spilling across the wall


  of the Essex Room at the Warwick on the afternoon that Pete

  Rozelle walked away with the B’nai Hunt Brotherhood Award.

  The wall itself was a dandy end- to- end mural of an English gar-

  den . . . a sprightly blending of hedgerows and green grass that

  made you want to go out and roll Easter eggs, which was perfect

  because within the hour, we would learn how badly the afl, itself,

  got rolled.

  Clearly, it was the money. After all, neither side really won the

  battle of who could sign who and who could steal who. And for

  the afl to pay more than $18 million, as it turned out, just to get

  a little love did not sit well with Werblin and Valley in view of

  the fact that each felt it was winning against the old guard in its

  own territory.

  They also had agreed to cede another $7.5 million from the sale

  price the afl was getting for its expansion franchise in Cincinnati.

  Davis, who was not there, was rightly furious. It was as though

  the progress he had made in signing nfl stars was meaningless.

  Now, instead of being the meaningless commissioner of the afl

  until the final merger in 1970, he opted out, taking his 10 percent

  Ain’t Gonna Study No War No More

  137

  Raiders ownership, vowing to be heard from again— a promise he made good on again and again from his new West Coast base.

  The conference began on time. They filed into the room, the

  worried officials from nbc who had the afl rights and the smil-

  ing gentlemen from cbs, who still had the rights to the old guard,

  part of the disenchanted office staff from the afl and the gloating

  winners from nfl headquarters . . . You expected to hear a guy

  in a tuxedo advising the multitude: “Bride’s family to the left . . .

  Groom’s family to the right.”

  On a powder- blue couch, directly facing enough television cam-

  eras to film the Original Exodus, Schramm of the nfl, Hunt of

  the afl, and Rozelle, now of the world, sat side by side, bathed in

  an invisible cloak of brotherhood.

  Rozelle sat in the middle and held a portable microphone that

  he occasionally loaned to Hunt. He wore a dark- blue suit and occa-

  sionally leaned forward, which can happen with a man who just

  swallowed nine new franchises in a single bite.

  The American Football League had migrated from Harry Wis-

  mer’s kitchen to Pete Rozelle’s dining room. They had the good