David Rosenthal

And he comes in.

This is pretty crazy.

I mean, this is a very volatile, charged situation with a lot of elder and opinionated folks around the league that he's going to have to deal with.

And within a year, he completely changes the NFL.

So the first thing he does when he comes in as commissioner is he...

ratifies an expansion plan for the NFL to meet the AFL.

Remember, one of the big reasons why Hunt and the AFL owners started the league in the first place is they wanted to bring pro football to more cities.

The NFL was dragging its feet.

Just like back with the AAFC now, they realized they got to go meet the enemy on the field where they are.

So the plan is to expand to both Dallas and Houston immediately to meet the AFL there in Texas.

Yep.

Right down the street.

Speaking of proximity and right down the street, the next move that Roselle makes, remember, he's from L.A.

He gets the importance of media, advertising, everything.

At this point in time, the league offices were in Philadelphia because Burt Bell was in Philadelphia and he had been the owner of the Eagles.

He's like, Philadelphia is not the place where we can run the modern NFL.

Oh yeah.

Famously the stacked scheduling.

He would do it with dominoes on his kitchen table.

So Rozelle's like, no, this is not going to work.