David Rosenthal

It wasn't a national event.

Right.

This was the first nationwide, network-wide contract.

Yeah.

So ABC signs a league-wide five-year TV rights deal with the American Football League for $8.5 million over five years.

It was by far, far the single biggest sports rights TV deal in history at the time.

And that was before the league had played a single game.

So here we are now in January 1960, back to the NFL.

They don't have a commissioner.

They're upstart rivals, the AFL, who haven't played a game yet.

They have a multi-million dollar contract.

An eight and a half million dollar five-year TV deal with a national network that the NFL doesn't have.

This is a real existential crisis.

And unlike last time where they're like, okay, great.

We'll just draft one of our own Burt Bell owner, the Philadelphia Eagles to come in and lead us through this.

They can't agree on a new commissioner.

So it takes 11 days and 23 separate votes of the NFL ownership groups in a total knockdown drag out negotiation.

There's multiple camps backing multiple candidates and

Indeed.

By the end of the process, none of the original candidates are still in it.