Ben Gilbert

So in some ways, it's a tough position to be in because all the most qualified people are out.

So you kind of have to pick someone that nobody hates, but probably won't be very good.

Better to be lucky than good.

And create the NFL that we know today.

Yes.

Coming out of the PR background was the perfect positioning for him because he knew that every foot that we have to put forward has to be really polished.

We gotta stop doing things that are confusing or...

cannibalizing each other or send mixed messaging or perhaps put a bad taste in Americans' mouth.

And we need to figure out the very best media strategy, the very best strategy to make it so all the newspapers and all the TV stations talk about us all the time.

The NFL and our teams and our players need to be on the lips of Americans as much as possible.

Oh, and meet Lamar Hunt head to head right on his own turf.

I mean, he's leading the AFL effort.

And the idea of you're just going to open up shop and say, we're going to give away the franchise to a new owner of the Cowboys right here in your backyard.

And Burt ran it in a very idiosyncratic way too.

I mean, he had obviously no computer system, but like it was post-it notes and phone calls is how the NFL ran.

Like just not a professional organization.

The only way anybody's going to write about us and give us space on the sports page is if we make their job easy and put the stats right in their hands every day.

We should also say the end of the 50s, beginning of the 60s, you know, baseball's still a dominant sport in the U.S.

The dominant football franchises are college football franchises.

The NFL's still an underdog, and now they're being challenged by this new upstart.