The 1960 Houston Oilers would prevail in the inaugural AFL Championship Game as the original champions of the newly formed professional football league. A feat that they would repeat and a status they would retain at the conclusion of the 1961 season. Each Championship Game was a tough fought gridiron battle against the Chargers, who represented Los Angeles in the first contest, and their newfound home city of San Diego in 1961.

Yet even before they took the field for their initial regular season game in the Autumn of 1960, the Oilers organization had already engaged in a year long battle against the leadership of the National Football League, which had started as backroom debate and negotiations, but which eventually escalated into a full scale courtroom Cannon battle.

The struggle between the Oilers and the NFL was initially due to their very existence within an upstart league that threatened the financial stability of the handful of owners of the 12 NFL franchises. More specifically; the leadership role of Oilers’ founder and owner Bud Adams within the embryonic effort to transform the concept of the American Football League into a functioning gridiron reality was recognized as a clear and present danger to the unfettered operation of the established league.

Adams and Lamar Hunt; each son of wealthy Texas oilmen, were the nucleus and hub of the origin and development into being of the American Football League. Granted the concept of an alternative professional football league was Hunt’s idea, but his vision lacked any sense of potential until he approached Adams and they began working together to solicit compatriots towards the formation of a functioning league.

George Halas; the Owner and Head Coach of the Chicago Bears, was the patriarch and primary agent of the NFL. His influence as to the basic operation of the league itself was unmatched and uncontested. Whatever Halas planned and strategized for the NFL almost always transformed into league policy and practice. And it was in this capacity that Halas exerted his influence time and again throughout the year of 1959 in an effort to prevent the AFL from becoming a functioning reality.

Unfortunately for Halas; he did not take the developing new league seriously before a half dozen teams were already in the process of being funded and formed. But when he did move to counter the ongoing efforts to field the AFL as early as 1960; he realized that Hunt and Adams were the primary agents with which to contend. And so the crafty elder statesman of the NFL moved in to stop the development of the AFL by a variety of means.

Initially Halas attempted a conventional business approach. He offered Hunt and Adams each an NFL franchise in Dallas and Houston respectively in an effort to dissuade their efforts towards founding a new professional football league. The irony to that offer is that the only reason the two Texas oilmen were attempting to establish the AFL in the first place is that each had recently been denied potential expansion franchises by the NFL itself! The offer was enticing though; in that entry into the NFL had clearly been their initial agenda. Yet the pair declined Halas’ offer based upon the financial commitment of the other owners of the prospective AFL.

As the development of the rival league progressed, Halas then turned to a more aggressive tactic. During the 1959 NFL preseason, he publicly announced the intentions of the NFL to expand into two uncharted markets as early as 1960, and even went so far as to name Dallas and Houston as potential cities for the new franchises. The intent clearly was to encroach upon the recently established AFL territory of the two primary owners so as to weaken or even prevent the league from being formed at all.

To a certain extent, Halas’ scheme succeeded. Initially though the AFL was able to field teams in both Dallas and Houston, in spite of the NFL’s plan to expand into those markets. In the case of Dallas however, the afterthought expansion tactic did eventually drive Hunt’s team out of his home city, but not before the Dallas Texans claimed the 1962 AFL Championship. Even so, after the Texans departed for Kansas City in 1963; Dallas became strictly an NFL city and sole territory of the Dallas Cowboys.

Halas’ plans to establish an NFL team in Houston however failed to come to fruition due to an inability to secure a stadium suitable for utility. Although his double barreled territorial expansion plans were frustrated for the moment, the resilient NFL Patriarch was not to be outdone.

Determined to undermine the American Football League once and for all, Halas’ next strategic maneuver admittedly created havoc and an uproar throughout the AFL ownership on the very eve of the league’s inaugural players draft, which effectually had the potential to completely derail and destroy the year long effort to fulfill Hunt’s vision of an alternative professional football league. For even as the AFL owners were gathered in Minneapolis to conduct the league’s initial draft, rumors circulated that one of the owners themselves was planning to defect to the NFL. Ironically enough, the alleged defector was none other than Max Winter, owner of the AFL Minnesota franchise, as well as the league’s draft committee chairman, and who had arranged for the draft to take place in Minneapolis.

The ensuing drama notwithstanding; the draft was nonetheless carried out, even with the participation of the Minnesota franchise. Later, Minnesota returned their draft selections to the AFL when they did actually defect to the NFL, where they started play in 1961 as the Vikings.

Now although the AFL owners were able to regroup and maintain composure so as to conduct their initial draft even while under duress and potential uncertainty; there was still the matter of replacing the outgoing Minnesota franchise in order to function as an eight team league. The temporary setback was resolved when Oakland was secured as the once and for all eighth and final AFL franchise. A special draft was later implemented in order to fill the roster of the Oakland Raiders, who only received a few of the draft picks that had been allotted to Minnesota.

The players draft having been conducted, and Minnesota’s sudden and unexpected departure having been resolved, the primary focus became signing players. Regulations required that a player could not be signed by a professional club unless his college schedule was complete. Yet the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, concerned that their Number One draft choice Billy Cannon might sign with the AFL Houston Oilers; who had likewise drafted the star back out of LSU, secretly signed him in the weeks prior to his final game, which was the Sugar Bowl. When the Oilers learned that Cannon had illegally signed with the Rams, they beat the NFL club’s offer, and then signed him under the goal posts on national TV as soon as the Sugar Bowl ended. This brazen act was brilliant in that the TV coverage confirmed that the Oilers were the first team to legally sign the Heisman Trophy winner to a professional contract.

Yet the NFL sued; which means that the first inter league contest was in a courtroom rather than on the gridiron. Although the case was legally Rams v Cannon; in actuality the Billy Cannon court case was NFL v AFL. More specifically; Los Angeles Rams v Houston Oilers. Unsurprisingly, the judgment was in favor of the AFL and the Oilers. The public signing at the immediate conclusion of Cannon’s college career clearly validated the Oilers’ contract, and so the nation’s top collegiate star would play in the AFL.

The fact that Cannon did in fact play for the Oilers was a major blow to Halas’ efforts to undermine the up and coming AFL. Billy Cannon was not just any routine college star. He was a multitalented back whose versatility had helped him lead LSU to the National Title in 1958, and then earned him the Heisman Trophy in 1959. He was without reservation the biggest name entering the Pros out of the college class of 1959.The very fact then that Billy Cannon took the field in 1960 as a member of the AFL gave instant credibility to the new league. In essence, by signing the incredibly talented Billy Cannon, the AFL established that they could and would sign the same caliber of players with the equal quality of talent as that of the NFL.

George Halas’ worst fears were now confirmed. The AFL would not settle for being second best and they would compete directly with the NFL to sign the best talent that was available.

The signing of Billy Cannon not only gave instant credibility to the AFL as a league, but his production on the field of play was such that he proved to be an integral part of each of the Oilers’ back to back AFL Titles in 1960 and again in 1961. He scored key touchdowns in, and was the MVP of each of the initial AFL Title games. Additionally, he netted over 1,500 yards combined rushing and receiving in 1961, and thereby earned a spot on the 1961 All Star squad.

The Houston Oilers were indeed not only the initial back to back AFL Champions in 1960 and 1961, but they were likewise the earliest nemesis to the NFL in the ongoing battle between the two leagues which would eventually lead to the merger of the two leagues.

Neither the Houston Oilers or the American Football League as such have existed for decades, yet the influence of each is experienced every Sunday during the football season of the dual conference NFL and every February when the annual event known as the Super Bowl takes place.

Long live the memory of the AFL.

Sources:

“Billy Cannon: Everybody’s All-American, At Least For A While”; Sal Maiorana, medium.com. 2020

“Demystifying The Inaugural American Football League Draft”, David Griffin. 2018 raiders.exposure.com

remembertheafl.com; Ange Coniglio

“Remember The AFL: The Ultimate Fan Guide To The American Football League”; Dave Steidel. 2008

“Ten-Gallon War”; John Eisenberg. 2012