Ben Gilbert

The interesting thing, too, is that the leagues aren't respecting each other's drafts.

So it doesn't matter if you draft someone in your league.

I'm signing him to a contract in mine and that contract is valid in the United States.

I don't care what your draft says.

And it begins a super delicate dance of they're my sworn enemy.

But there's some owners who see the writing on the wall very early and say, we're going to have to combine these.

And it's probably not actually legal for us to combine them.

But we're going to kill each other if we both keep going.

So what do we do?

And so it begins this multi-tiered negotiation where certain people at the top don't know they're negotiating.

Meanwhile, certain owners are forming side deals with other people who own teams in the other league.

It's this fascinating spy game.

Also, how great is it that the first Cowboys owner is named Tex?

Which is hard because when you're not the designated representative, you can't say I'm coming to you with something I know will work.

You're saying, hey, enemy, I know you can't know for sure that I can get this done, but you have to trust me enough that I'm pretty sure I know my fellow owners enough that they would agree to this.

So if you and I can kind of get close to agreeing to something, then I can take it to them.

But this is all subject to them blowing it up.

All right, so now we've got this cast of characters to pay attention to.

On the NFL side, there's the commissioner, Pete Rozelle, and Dallas Cowboys GM, Tex Schramm.

And on the AFL side, there's new commissioner and Raiders owner, Al Davis, and the Chiefs owner, Lamar Hunt.