Alternate History Sports

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3/29/2024 6:26 pm  #181


Re: The American Football League

YES! My Rivermen haven't broken my heart for once and actually won the championship! Looking forward to the offseason (Especially as to learn of the fate of the Detroit Knights and the identities for the expansion teams in Philly and St. Louis)!

 

3/29/2024 6:27 pm  #182


Re: The American Football League

(sigh).

Congrats Rivermen. (Darn refs)


 

4/02/2024 8:50 am  #183


Re: The American Football League

Great to see the Rivermen and Edgar Abney win a title.

 

4/12/2024 7:17 pm  #184


Re: The American Football League

The Wide World of American Football: 1955-56 Edition

PAFC ENDURES CHAOS, EXPANDS SOUTHWARD
The PAFC endured one of its most chaotic seasons and offseasons since the split with the AFL in 1950. Several teams facing financial issues had the looming threat of either folding or relocating to a different city if they could not improve their attendance. The Louisville Colts and Columbus Aviators were the two teams that were affected the most, each not having a single successful season in their short time in the league. Louisville did not have a single winning season since their introduction to the league in 1952 as a hasty replacement for the departing AFL teams, and Columbus was entered in due to the AFL abandoning the city due to attendance but only had 1 “good” season in their 3 short years. With both teams faltering for another year, it was only a matter of time after the PAFC season concluded for both teams to announce that they would be seeking new ownership. The Boston Rebels had been the worst team in the Championship the past two years, placing second-to-last and last, not including their time near the basement in the NEFL. With their attendance and play already suffering, their finances were going down into the gutter. Left with no other option, the Rebels sold Commonwealth Field to the city of Boston at the beginning of the 1955 season in an attempt to remain in the city for the immediate future. Boston Christian College would end up buying the decrepit field in December, announcing plans to completely renovate the stadium beginning the next year. Those plans also included expelling the Rebels from playing at the stadium effective immediately, citing their horrendous play and the awful conditions at the field. The Rebels now have to quickly negotiate a new place to play, as the only other major stadium in Boston is where the Dragons and the NBL’s Boston Whales play in: Lansdowne Field. With the lack of available playing fields and not wanting to play second fiddle to the new team in town, owner Frank Goldstein reluctantly began looking for a new home outside of Boston. The announcement of a potential relocation was met with almost no reaction, with Bostonians shifting their fanfare to the Dragons. The most tragic event happened early in the year, and it was regarding the perennial power Fort Wayne Generals. Owner W. Lloyd Scott was returning from Kansas City to talk about stabilizing the Cowboys with owner Harold Burns. Scott then boarded a return flight to Chicago to head back to his hometown of Fort Wayne, but tragedy struck when the plane collided with a sign on the landing and crashed, killing Scott. Scott never had any children, and the few minority owners still left had trouble running the team they never thought they would lead, resulting in the Generals’ first below .500 season in over a decade. Scott’s death was revered across the football world, with the AFL extending a rare olive branch in the aftermath. He had built up his hometown team to a perennial contender while also being a prominent donor to the University of Indiana, also located in Fort Wayne. And with no suitor willing to step up and take control of the team and keep them in Fort Wayne, the Generals were all but done in Indiana.

With so many teams in flux, it was only a matter of time before the dominos would fall for the rearrangement of teams to begin. When no owner made themselves known in Fort Wayne, Bradshaw immediately allowed one of his old business partners Gerald Carlisle, the owner of multiple steel mills, to buy the Generals and move them to his hometown of Birmingham. The new team would lose its Generals name and rechristen themselves as the Birmingham Steelers, named after the industry that brought the Magic City to where it is now. Bradshaw wanted to continue his “Southern Expansion” plan, and saw the rapidly growing city and rapidly growing city as a valuable asset to keep the PAFC alive. Bradshaw also encouraged any remaining owners that were struggling to look south for a fresh start. The Louisville Colts also found new ownership, with Grand Ole Opry benefactor Buck Hopkins buying the team and moving them south a couple of hours to Nashville to become the Nashville Volunteers. Columbus Aviators owner Peter Isaacs could not find anyone willing to buy the team, and thus folded the team after only 3 seasons of play. Boston Rebels owner Frank Goldstein was somehow even less successful than Columbus, not even getting a single offer to buy the Rebels or move them. All proposals he sent to the PAFC were swiftly ignored, as he had ruffled the wrong feathers and all signs were pointing him to leave. He attempted sending one last attempt to keep the Rebels alive, asking for reapplication to the now-ASPFL. He went to the league headquarters in Boston, but was met by commissioner Robert McNamara, who said “We advise that you look for another league, though we would not wish that fate on their commissioner.” With their owner completely humiliated, the Boston Rebels folded after 32 seasons, leaving with nothing more than a whimper. In a hasty attempt to keep the league at an even 10 teams, Bradshaw quickly looked for somewhere to put a 10th team, even just for the time being while the Championship looked for prospective owners in the south. The only city that wasn’t already occupied by a professional football team and wanted to join the PAFC was Omaha. A small ownership group of meatpacking owners was granted an expansion team that was to be named the Omaha Packers. However, they did not have enough time to get permission to use the Packers name, as the baseball Packers were just coming off a World Series title in 1953 and weren’t so willing to allow some random group of people not associated with the club to use the name. The new football team was instead named the Bulls, though kept the same maroon and white color scheme the baseball team had.

Even through all of this, President Bradshaw was as adamant as ever that the PAFC was still the top football league in the nation. “The Championship is above and beyond where the AFL is, where it has been, or where it will be,” he said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. “We have the finest players and none of the lousy rules that make that lousy league the way it is.” The “World Series of Football” ended with a whimper, with the supposed “team of America” Chicago Stars demolishing the Indianapolis Flames 45-7 to win their 5th title in 8 years, adding to the doubt that the PAFC is the better league. Even with proclaiming that his league is better, Bradshaw still felt a need to expand to stay on par with the AFL. He announced his intent to get to 16 teams within the next decade, shocking many who believed that the Championship is in an inescapable death spiral. Team owners were in contentious debate over how fast the Championship should expand and where to, with Virgil Bradshaw and the “old guard” wanting to expand rapidly and continue into the south, while his son Julian and some of the younger owners preferring to beat the AFL out west to have any chance of surviving. Bradshaw had already succeeded in moving a team to a “southern stronghold”, and wants to continue expanding to places like Houston and New Orleans. The younger group, on the other hand, sees potential in the growing markets out west in California, and believe landing a team out there is almost guaranteed to succeed. There was no consensus gained from this year, so it may take a couple of years before any new teams can be awarded. 16 may be a lofty number if no one can seem to agree on which direction the PAFC must take, and if the league takes too long then it may truly be the end of what was once the nation’s best football league.

TLDR:
Louisville Colts move to Nashville, TN to become the Nashville Volunteers
Columbus Aviators fold after 3 seasons
Boston Rebels sell their stadium to pay off debts, their stadium gets bought out by Boston Christian, who then kicks them out due to bad performance. Rebels attempt a last-ditch effort to join the ASPFL but are rejected and humiliated. Boston Rebels fold after 2 seasons in the PAFC and 32 years of play
Fort Wayne owner dies in a plane crash. No one buys the Generals, and Virgil Bradshaw sells the team to a Birmingham, AL-based owner, who relocates them and become the Birmingham Steelers
PAFC quickly adds a team in Omaha, NE (Bulls) to keep the league at an even 10 teams
President Bradshaw plans to expand to 16 teams within next decade despite decline in league quality
Owners are split where to expand, either continuing south or going west. Expansion talks have stalled as a result


FIRST ASPFL SEASON DEEMED A SUCCESS, PROVIDENCE WINS INAUGURAL TITLE

1955 ASPFL Standings
Providence (TRI) - 8-3-0
Long Island (BOS) - 8-3-0
Portland (WAS) - 6-4-1
Albany (N/A) - 6-4-1
Rochester (BUF) - 6-5-0
Newark (NY) - 5-6-0
Hartford (CIN) - 5-6-0
New Haven (PHI) - 5-6-0
Concord (CLE) - 4-6-1
Worcester (CHI) 4-7-0
Springfield (DET) - 4-7-0
Burlington (PIT) - 4-6-1

Before the 1955 AFL season began, the “inaugural” season of the Atlantic Semi-Professional Football League (ASPFL) kicked off in late July between the Newark Tigers and the Long Island Lancers, where the Lancers would take care of the Tigers for the first win of the year. The NEFL endured a multitude of changes of its own during its transition to a minor league, capped off by a fairly chaotic offseason attempting to reform. Boston and New London relocated to Long Island and Rochester respectively, Newark joined from the NYPL, and the Albany Titans were welcomed as an expansion franchise.  A lot of future AFL talent came down to the ASPFL as part of the developmental league, with many late round or undrafted players getting a chance to show off their talents to their parent club or any other team willing to give up capital for them. No player helped lead his team more so than Providence’s Sam Eagleburger, who tore up secondaries under center en route to the league’s most outstanding player award after getting drafted in the late 5th round by Tri-Cities. The defending champions in the Long Island Lancers (formerly the Boston Bards) were the other team to keep up with the Bears, with QB Salvatore Saab leading the team to a championship berth with an 8-3 record, the same as Providence. The title game was expected to be a close matchup between two up-and-coming QB’s, but the Bears blew the Lancers out of the water. Eagleburger torched the secondary for 4 touchdowns for Providence to cruise to a 30-10 victory and the title. The championship trophy was kept the same as the NEFL, so the Bears got to hoist their 8th Morgan Trophy.  While the NEFL had its troubles, the ASPFL under AFL assistance seems to be set up for success, allowing players to get a second chance at the game and to elevate players to potentially play in the AFL.

WESTWARD, HO?
The world of professional sports has mostly been a regional one, with the major leagues effectively boxing themselves in with, usually going no further than Washington, D.C. southward and no further west than Kansas City.  Due to the sparse population west of the Mississippi, there has not been much of a demand for teams in the west. However, one major league has persisted out west and has come into competition with another major league: baseball’s Pacific Professional League. The National Baseball League had long been trying to expand its reach beyond the East and Midwest, and had been interested in cooperation with the PPL. The two leagues had some exhibition games between one another, including a postseason series that pitted the two league champions against one another. There were talks to merge the 8-team PPL with the 16-team NBL, but those discussions quickly died off after the NBL was only after the larger market teams in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Even with that setback, the partial merger was made complete when the NBL agreed to absorb the Los Angeles Reds, Los Angeles Olympians, Oakland Acorns, and San Francisco Zephyrs into its league, while scaling back the scale of the PPL to a AAA league. This move was slightly controversial, as the NBL took in teams in the better markets as opposed to taking the best teams, the most significant of which was the Portland Rosebuds. They had won the second-most titles since the league’s inception, and made the Pacific Series 5 out of the past 6 years, winning only a single title in the process while losing to the Acorns 4 times and the Reds a single time. The Rosebuds were not pleased getting left out of the now only professional baseball league due to their success in the other pro league, though the NBL cited travel costs to Portland the main reason why they were excluded. Even with the controversy, many saw the move out west as the first push out to the West for any major league. With some teams struggling in the top flight of baseball, moving westward might become viable to keep teams alive. How this movement will affect other professional sports leagues in the rest of the country is to be determined

C&C Appreciated!



Founder of the EFL and the AFL
     Thread Starter
 

4/12/2024 8:41 pm  #185


Re: The American Football League

providence won a football title? are you sure you didn't read something wrong?

 

4/13/2024 8:38 am  #186


Re: The American Football League

Great to see Saab have a breakout season. Hopefully he can eventually make the jump to the AFL.

 

4/22/2024 4:31 pm  #187


Re: The American Football League

AFL Spring Meetings 1956

Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford Hotel would be the home of both the league meetings and the upcoming draft to welcome the next slate of expansion teams into the league. The football world around the AFL has been rapidly changing, and the owners were ready to adapt to the new landscape around them. Commissioner Hasenkamp officially welcomed Philadelphia and St. Louis as the league’s two newest teams, and the meetings began with haste.

PHILADELPHIA, ST. LOUIS WELCOMED TO LEAGUE
The Philadelphia and St. Louis football clubs were officially welcomed as the 11th and 12th teams, both announcing their full identities at a later date. With the two entering the league, it now needed to align itself again like last year. Unlike past years’ struggles with aligning teams, these two teams will slot in without any issue, with Philadelphia joining the East Division and St. Louis the West. Just like the year prior, this season’s expansion draft will see both teams selecting 3 players from each team, except from Boston and New York where they will each select 2 players apiece. The protected player process will remain the same as last year, where teams are able to protect 12 players and 4 extra players under the age of 24. Philadelphia won the coin toss for either the first pick in the expansion draft or the rookie draft, and they would choose the latter, gaining the first overall pick in the upcoming draft. The league will continue to play a 12 game schedule, modifying the schedule so that teams play 2 games against each other team in their division and 2 other games against 2 teams in the other division based on where they finished the year before. The playoff format introduced last year will also remain the same, with the top 3 teams in each division making the postseason.

DETROIT HERE TO STAY
The fate of the Detroit Knights was left in doubt when longtime owner August Riddle died in the middle of the previous season. With little to no success during his late years and the team perpetually in a state of chaos, staying in Detroit was not a guarantee. Added to that was the Detroit Robins baseball club flirting with relocation, with their last inkling of success happening in 1944 with a World Series loss to Philadelphia. Riddle’s son, Florian was adamant about keeping the Knights in Detroit, though the rest of Riddle’s family was less than keen on keeping the team. They saw how the Knights were draining their own value through August’s ownership, and just wanted to recuperate their losses and move on. Without the consent of the AFL, the Riddle family began looking for prospective buyers to take the Knights off their hands. They kept it under wraps from the one member of the family who actually cared about the team, August’s youngest son Florian. They managed to keep the sale behind closed doors, where they sold the Knights to a group led by former ACAA councilman and lawyer Allen Penoyer and lumber magnate Ernest Barlowe, who would be relocating them to their hometown of San Francisco. The Knights were all set to be moved for the upcoming season, but Florian Riddle and Detroit mayor Albert Cobo attempted to stop the move before it was brought to the owners for a vote. The two brought in minor ownership stakes for the Knights pending they did not move, and were to argue to the owners on why they should not move. With a solid amount of money backing them, the owners voted 10-2 to reject the sale to San Francisco, keeping the Knights in Detroit. Florian Riddle’s ownership group promised that they would be looking into stadium renovations, which would either mean upgrades to the existing Kaiser Field or finding somewhere else in the Detroit metro to build a stadium. “My father showed me how much this team meant to him” Riddle said to a cheering crowd of Knights fans, “and I wish to keep the legacy of the Detroit Knights alive as long as we can.” Riddle promised to completely overhaul the Knights in the upcoming years, from the uniforms to the front office, doing whatever it will take to bring them back to their glory years in the 30’s and 40’s.

AFL SIGNS REGULAR SEASON TV DEAL WITH CBS
The DuMont Network would be shutting down after nearly 10 years on the air in August, just before the 1956 season was to begin. With the network already on the decline, CBS acquired the rights to broadcast select regular season AFL games. NBC brought the AFL to many more screens that DuMont would have ever brought, and CBS wanted in on the seemingly lucrative world of professional football. CBS noted that some teams would be getting priority in who would be getting broadcasted, where executives specifically named Chicago, Cincinnati, and Washington. They hoped broadcasting these teams would help grow the game like the AFL would want, though is at the expense of teams that are not as “marketable”. Now with two networks broadcasting the league, the AFL is expected to leapfrog both the PAFC and potentially the NBL as the country’s most prestigious and popular league.

HASENKAMP REASSURES MANHATTAN PLAN
The state of the football world was in great flux surrounding the AFL, and commissioner Donovan Hasenkamp wanted to be sure that the third part of his great “Manhattan Plan” would go smoothly. He noticed how recklessly the PAFC was expanding its horizons, and wanted to take a more calculated approach. 4 new teams were originally slated to join between the 1960 and 1961 seasons, but he pushed back both dates by a year to 1961 and 1962 to find 4 best possible owners to lead these teams.The prime suspect for this date pushback comes from the rejected Detroit Knights to San Francisco move, which most owners agreed among other things that the stadium that the Knights would have played in did not meet the standards of a traditional football field, as it was the primary stadium for the San Francisco Zephyrs baseball team. Hasenkamp assured that San Francisco would get one of those expansion slots if any ownership group could get a new stadium that would cater to football.  As an alternative way to expand into these prospective markets, Hasenkamp announced that some preseason exhibition games will be held beginning in 1957 to test the waters. Los Angeles and San Francisco were the only two cities named for the next year, with the 4 top teams from the upcoming 1956 season to play 2 games between the two cities. Hasenkamp planned to go south for the 1958 preseason exhibitions, wanting to play in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and New Orleans. The prospect of a neutral site championship game was also brought up, with Los Angeles the likely front-runner to host. The league has not made an official decision for the future, but it seems the plan to host the championship game out west may happen as soon as next year. As it stands now, 1956 may be the last year a team can have home field advantage for the championship.

C&C Appreciated!

Last edited by DireBear (4/22/2024 4:31 pm)



Founder of the EFL and the AFL
     Thread Starter
 

4/23/2024 6:32 pm  #188


Re: The American Football League

Finally was able to catch up on the latest in the AFL. Quite the chaos this year outside of the AFL. I enjoy the angles that are being taken with some of these ownership issues, a very interesting read. I was shocked to hear that San Fran was the potential landing spot for Detroit, but I guess the desire to move out west is certainly there.

Excited to see Philly and St. Louis join the league and what is next for the league.


 

4/30/2024 5:25 pm  #189


Re: The American Football League

1956 Design Changes

INTRODUCING THE PHILADELPHIA RATTLESNAKES
Almost immediately after the announcement of the return of football to the City of Brotherly Love, new owner Sy Thompson put out a name-the-team contest in The Philadelphia Inquirer, stating a preference for patriotic themed names. The only name that was excluded was the Federals, a former name for one of the football teams in the city, now being used by Washington. Among the names that were seriously considered were the Liberty Bells, Rattlesnakes, Keystones, Stars, Patriots, Cannons, and Americans. The Americans, Stars, and Patriots were almost immediately ruled out due to Washington owner Bernard McCullough putting a moratorium on any blue/red/white identities to not be so close to the Federals. Thompson would then meet members of the press at the Warwick Hotel to unveil the new team to the world: the Philadelphia Rattlesnakes. The name comes from the Gadsden flag, an early symbol of the Revolutionary War, and the timber rattlesnake being one of the old national symbols of the U.S., since being surpassed by the bald eagle. Thompson still would make his team blue and gold after the city’s flag and the Philadelphia Federals team he once owned, but had to make them distinct enough from the Rivermen.He decided that the new team would be primarily old gold and navy, which differ slightly from the colors of the Gadsden flag. The primary logo for the team is the rattlesnake from the flag in the modified colors, with a wordmark similar to that of the Philadelphia Pennies baseball club.


They will wear primarily gold uniforms at home, with blue and white stripes similar to that of Chicago Christian, while the away whites will swap the white in the striping for gold. The ‘Snakes will also wear a single pair of white paints with gold and blue stripes down the side, and a pair of navy socks to balance out the gold-heavy uniforms. The Rattlesnakes will make Liberty Field their home, the largest stadium in Philadelphia able to seat 78,000.

INTRODUCING THE ST LOUIS STALLIONS
Unlike their expansion brethren, St. Louis owner Arthur Dixon knew exactly what to name the team. Dixon is a high-ranking executive within Anheuser-Busch, and a good friend of St Louis Brewers owner and lead executive Gussie Busch. The last team that was in town, the St. Louis Arrows, was fairly successful in bringing in fans but the financials were never right, with PAFC president Virgil Bradshaw controversially merging them with the Kansas City team and leaving the city without a pro football team. Busch immediately stepped up to bring the sport back into town, and gave Dixon the funds needed to get an expansion team in the AFL. Busch gave only three requirements, that for Dixon to fully run the team, the team had to represent his company in some way, and that they played in Busch Stadium along with the Brewers. Dixon would then announce to the press the name of the new St. Louis team: the St. Louis Stallions. The team would be named after the Clydesdale horses that would travel around the country as a promotion for Busch. They would also choose red and gold for the color scheme of Anheuser-Busch and the Brewers baseball team, with a leaping stallion as their primary logo. Their secondary includes a more detailed version of the primary, with the stallion jumping over a goalpost. The city name in the logo is spelled “Saint Louis” instead of “St. Louis” because Dixon thought it looked better than the abbreviated name.

The uniforms are a shade of red somewhere in between Detroit and Tri-Cities, with Dixon describing the color as “a fine shade of wine”. Their striping is consistent from the helmet down to the socks, a decision Dixon stated was intentional because of how many times he noticed teams had too many different pairs. A pair of gold pants was for both the home and the road, but Dixon and Busch much preferred wearing the white ones at home and the gold ones on the road. When asked why not the gold pants by reporters, Dixon joked by stating “The Brewers already use too much gold. This team uses the right amount.”

In other uniform changes, the Detroit Knights will be wearing a black armband on their left sleeve this season as a memorial to former owner August Riddle.

Only 2 years after redesigning their own uniforms, the Tri-Cities Hawks would swap out their pair of black pants for their home and away jerseys. They will go back to their old arrangement, wearing white pants at home and red pants on the road. They will change their road socks to white from red as a result.

C&C Appreciated as always! If you want to submit any more prospects now's the time to do so! I basically need every position other than WR/DL/TE.



Founder of the EFL and the AFL
     Thread Starter
 

4/30/2024 6:25 pm  #190


Re: The American Football League

Both new teams look great! Really like the logos for both, they look really cool and appropriate for that era! Hopefully they’ll be on the helmets soon.


 

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