The AFL and the NFL: Rivalry, Merger and the Common Draft

By 4Football Staff · September 30, 2026 · 10 min read

A rival league started in 1960, fought the NFL for players and television, then agreed to merge in 1966. Here is how the AFL-NFL war worked, what the merger changed and why the draft came first.

When people talk about the AFC and the NFC, they are usually talking about a split that does not feel like a split. Each conference has its own history, its own rivalries and its own playoff path, yet both belong to one league with one commissioner, one draft and one championship game. That arrangement is the end of a ten-year story that began with a rival league being formed in the late 1950s and ended with that league being folded into the one it had set out to challenge.

The American Football League, which played from 1960 to 1969, is one of the few rival leagues in American sports history that did not just survive but forced a merger on favorable terms. Understanding how that happened explains why the NFL looks the way it does today: why there are two conferences, why the Super Bowl exists, why the draft is a single event and why many of today's teams have the names and cities they do.

This article follows the story from the AFL's creation through the bidding war for players, the merger agreement of 1966, the first common draft in 1967 and the full merger in 1970. It also explains the limits of the usual summary, because both the "AFL beat the NFL" and "the NFL absorbed the AFL" versions are too simple.

Why a second league?

By the late 1950s, professional football was growing, but the NFL had only twelve teams. A number of large American cities had no team at all, and some wealthy businesspeople who wanted to own one could not buy in. The league was not eager to expand quickly.

One of those would-be owners was Lamar Hunt, a young Texan from a wealthy family. He tried to buy an existing NFL team, the Chicago Cardinals, with the plan of moving it to Dallas. That did not work out. He then explored the idea of starting a new league, and he found other wealthy individuals who were interested. The group was later nicknamed the "Foolish Club," a joking label that the owners themselves are said to have embraced, because everyone assumed that challenging the NFL was a bad investment.

The league was announced in 1959 and began play in 1960. The first eight teams are listed here, along with what became of them.

Details such as the exact timing of moves vary by team, so check a team's own history if you need a date. The Oakland franchise, for example, was added after the Minneapolis group that had planned to join accepted an offer from the NFL instead. That shows how the NFL immediately reacted to the threat.

The NFL's response

The established league did not ignore the new competitor. It responded in several ways.

1. Expansion into AFL territory. The NFL awarded a team to Dallas, which became the Cowboys, beginning in 1960, in the same city where Hunt planned to put his team. It also added a Minnesota franchise, which became the Vikings, in 1961, drawing a group that had been part of the AFL's early plans.
2. Leadership. The NFL named Pete Rozelle commissioner in 1960. Rozelle, a young executive who had worked for the Rams, would be central to the league's growth, and he was an effective negotiator in the later merger.
3. Competing for players. NFL teams tried to sign the best college players before the AFL could.
4. Television. The NFL pursued a league-wide approach to broadcasting, which led to the legal changes discussed below.

The AFL, for its part, secured a television contract with ABC in 1960, which gave it a national platform and some financial stability. Later it moved to NBC. The network money was critical, because a rival league without television could not have survived.

Television and the shared-revenue idea

The AFL's television contract deserves more attention than it usually gets, because it shaped how the league behaved. The AFL's teams shared their network money, which meant a small-market club such as Buffalo or Denver received the same television income as a club in a big city. That made it possible for the weakest franchises to keep operating.

The NFL had traditionally allowed teams to make their own local broadcast deals, which favored the big markets. In the early 1960s the league moved toward selling its games as a package and splitting the proceeds, a step that depended on Congress passing the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 so that pooling rights would not be challenged under antitrust law. The idea that every team shares in national television revenue, which is a foundation of the modern league, therefore owes something to both leagues. The longer story is in the article on the rise of television and the NFL.

How the two leagues differed

Each league had its own style and its own choices, though the differences should not be overstated. The following table lists the features most often mentioned.

The two-point conversion is a good example of AFL influence. The AFL adopted it in 1960, and the NFL did not do so until 1994, a story told in the article on how the two-point conversion came to the NFL. The point about talent is also widely made by historians: the new league needed players, and it was willing to look at places the established league had paid less attention to. That claim is a general one, and it applies more strongly to some teams than others.

The bidding war

The central struggle of the 1960s was over players. Both leagues drafted college stars, and a player picked by both could choose between them. That gave the players leverage for the first time. Contract offers rose, and some negotiations became public contests.

One early example involved running back Billy Cannon, who signed with one league's team and then had a dispute over which contract was valid; the matter went to court. The details are complicated, but the case showed how intense the competition was.

A larger symbol came in 1965, when quarterback Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets of the AFL. His contract was reported to be far larger than anything previously given to a rookie, and it signaled that the AFL could afford to compete for the best talent. The exact figures reported at the time varied, so it is best to say simply that the contract was unprecedented and widely discussed.

By 1966, owners on both sides were worried about costs. A turning point was the case of kicker Pete Gogolak, who had played for the AFL's Buffalo Bills and then signed with the NFL's New York Giants. Until then, teams in each league had tended to leave the other league's veterans alone, and the Giants' signing of Gogolak was widely seen as breaking that unwritten rule. AFL leaders responded by considering aggressive approaches to NFL quarterbacks. Accounts of that period stress that both sides saw the situation as dangerous, because it threatened to drive salaries higher and higher.

The merger of 1966

On June 8, 1966, the two leagues announced an agreement to merge. The deal had been negotiated in secret talks between officials from both sides, including Lamar Hunt of the AFL and Tex Schramm of the Dallas Cowboys. When it was announced, many observers were surprised.

The main terms, as usually summarized, were as follows.

• One league, eventually. The two would operate as a single league, under Rozelle as commissioner, by 1970.
• A championship game. Beginning with the 1966 season, the champions of the two leagues would meet in a title game.
• A common draft. Starting in 1967, the two leagues would hold a single draft of college players, ending the competition for rookies.
• Expansion. The combined league would add new franchises; in the years that followed, New Orleans began play in 1967 and Cincinnati in 1968.
• Payments. The AFL teams would pay compensation to NFL teams in certain markets, notably New York and San Francisco/Oakland.
• Preseason games. The two leagues would begin playing preseason games against each other in 1967.

The Congress question

A merger of two competing sports leagues raised an antitrust question. Combining them could reduce competition for players and for fans. The league leaders needed an exemption from Congress, which was granted in the fall of 1966 through a provision attached to an unrelated tax bill. The story is often told along with the fact that the NFL awarded an expansion franchise to New Orleans soon after, in a city represented by two influential members of Congress. Historians usually describe this as a political bargain, though the specific motives are argued about. What is clear is that the merger needed legal clearance and received it.

The common draft

The first common draft was held in March 1967. It was a significant change. Before it, teams in the two leagues competed for the same college players, and a player's choice was influenced by whichever league offered more money. After it, each rookie was assigned to one team by the draft, and he could negotiate only with that team or sit out. The first overall selection in 1967 was defensive lineman Bubba Smith, taken by the Baltimore Colts.

The effects were mixed. Owners liked the common draft because it lowered costs and brought predictability. Players lost the leverage they had gained during the war, which is one reason the era after the merger saw more tension between players and owners. The history of the draft before and after the merger is covered in the article on the history of the NFL draft, and you can see the modern version on our draft page.

The Super Bowl era

The first AFL-NFL championship game was played in January 1967, following the 1966 season. The NFL's Green Bay Packers beat the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs. The Packers won again the next year, against the Oakland Raiders. Many observers believed the older league was still superior.

That changed in the third game. In January 1969, the New York Jets of the AFL, led by Namath, beat the NFL's Baltimore Colts, a result that surprised many people and is remembered as one of the greatest upsets in the sport. A year later, the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL beat the Minnesota Vikings, evening the series at two wins each. The origins of the game and its name are covered in the article on the first Super Bowl.

These results mattered because they showed that the AFL had caught up in quality. After four games, the question of which league was better had no clear answer, which made a complete merger easier to accept.

1970: one league, two conferences

The full merger took effect for the 1970 season. The combined league had two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The ten former AFL teams all went to the AFC. To balance the numbers, three NFL teams, the Cleveland Browns, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts, moved to the AFC as well. This is why the conference lines do not match the old league lines exactly.

The NFL name and structure carried forward, but the AFL's influence persisted. The two-point conversion, the pass-heavy approach and the AFL's attention to smaller colleges all left traces. The teams that began in the AFL are still part of the league, and you can find them on our teams page and in the standings.

Common misunderstandings

• "The NFL swallowed the AFL." The terms were more balanced than that. The AFL teams joined as full partners, and the combined league adopted aspects of the AFL's approach.
• "The AFL won." Neither league can be said to have won outright. The NFL kept its name and much of its structure, and the AFL gained the existence of its teams and a say in the future.
• "Players benefited from the merger." In the short term, the end of the bidding war reduced their leverage. That is part of why later labor disputes arose.
• "The Super Bowl was named in 1966." The early games were officially titled differently, and the Super Bowl name became widely used over the first few years.

The short version

• The AFL was founded in 1959 by a group of wealthy owners, including Lamar Hunt, and began play in 1960 with eight teams.
• The NFL responded with expansion into Dallas and Minnesota, a new commissioner in Pete Rozelle and competition for players.
• A bidding war for college stars, with Joe Namath's 1965 signing as the best-known example, pushed salaries up until the leagues agreed to merge on June 8, 1966.
• The merger created a common draft starting in 1967, a championship game that became the Super Bowl and a full merger in 1970 with the AFC and NFC.
• Jets and Chiefs wins in the third and fourth Super Bowls showed that the AFL had reached parity.
• The story is often simplified; both leagues shaped the result, and some details of the negotiations and legal clearance are still debated by historians.