David Rosenthal

So a new professional league gets founded, the All-America Football Conference in 1944.

The AAFC.

And it's got some pretty serious firepower.

It's organized by one of the country's preeminent sports journalists based in Chicago.

It's backed by some high-power ownership groups, including the famous Hollywood actor Don Amici in Los Angeles, wealthy businessman in San Francisco.

New York, Chicago, Miami, and they have reached a deal with the legendary Ohio State coach, Paul Brown, when he's coming home from the war from his service, that he is not going to go back to the college game.

He's going to come coach the new AAFC Cleveland franchise, named after him, the Cleveland Browns.

yes and in a head-to-head war between those two franchises the writing is on the wall of who's going to win and it's not going to be the rams now dan reeves thought that the nfl should be on the west coast and should be truly national and he wanted to move the rams to los angeles but the nfl owners by the bylaws you had to have 100 unanimous approval of all the owners to move a team

So now the war's ending, the AAFC and the Browns are coming in, and then the dagger comes right before the 1946 NFL annual meetings in January.

Dan Topping, who owned the NFL's Brooklyn Dodgers and also the New York Yankees, the baseball team.

So like the highest profile, wealthiest owner in the NFL defects.

to the AAFC.

So there's a major crisis.

Yep.

First thing they do in the January 1946 annual meeting is they boot out the then commissioner.

So the owners, they're like, okay, to lead this fight, we can't have somebody from the outside.

We need to draft one of our own from the ownership group here in the inside, who's going to be able to marshal everybody together and lead a coordinated response to this existential threat.

They install Burt Bell, who is the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, as the new commissioner of the NFL.

And he's tasked immediately with drafting a competitive response to the AAFC.

And they decide it needs to be three things.