Ben Gilbert

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.

So they're sort of squeezed in the middle where, like, people don't care enough yet, but they also have a competitive threat.

And so Roselle is having to do some innovative things.

David, didn't he, like...

hire writers in-house at the NFL to craft the storylines and then send those to all the reporters who were too busy to actually go to NFL games because they didn't respect the NFL enough.

But maybe if we send them the stories, then they'll tweak them a little bit and publish them.

Yes.

So this is a perfect lead into what happens in 1961, right after Rozelle is on the job, that would change the face of football forever.

Their $1.3 million a year deal.

So finally, after wrangling and politicking with the ownership group... And the reason there's politicking is because Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore actually will end up losing money in the short term on this.

Because Roselle is pitching on, I'm going to go negotiate us a big group deal.

And they're all three saying, we already have very good deals locally.

We're very popular teams.

We're in great football cities.

No.