David Rosenthal

I am giving you leverage.

Yes.

I may be a thug, but I am your thug in this case.

So within a couple days, it's all over.

On Wednesday, June 8th, 1966, the merger agreement gets announced in a press release.

Unlike with the AAFC, this is a true merger.

All of the AFL teams will join all of the NFL teams.

Together, they promise to add at least four totally new teams and cities.

They announce that because of the separate TV contracts on the AFL and the NFL side, they will not begin a joint season immediately.

They'll let the new AFL TV contract play out, which will go through the 1969 season.

The first fully combined season will be in 1970.

But in the interim, they will start hosting a new pro football world championship game between the winners of the two leagues starting in the 1966 season.

And boy, that would be a super event for television.

Some other points to the deal.

There will be a single common college draft starting immediately.

No more of these separate drafts, no more babysitting, no more ridiculous contracts, which the players hate this, of course.

Roselle will remain the commissioner and Al Davis is going to go back to running the Raiders.

which Davis is fine with.

That's all he really wanted anyway.

Not announced, but included, this, I believe, only came out much, much later.