The Little League That Could
A History of the American Football League
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Wearing borrowed uniforms, practicing on obscure college campuses, and led by a former Marine Corps W.W. II fighter ace as commissioner, the American Football League (AFL) debuted in the Fall of 1960 to challenge the monopoly of the well-established National Football League. Within ten years it had won two Super Bowls and had forced a merger with its rival, splitting the NFL into the National and American Football Conferences. This colorful history of the AFL and its unforgettable cast of characters, from Billy Cannon to Joe Namath to its "Foolish Club" of team owners, arrives on the 50th anniversary of the AFL's first season to recount the startling success of an upstart league that prevailed against long odds.
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Rappoport (Miracles, Shockers, and Long Shots) examines the American Football League's debut in 1960 and its unlikely decade-long rise to challenge the National Football League's monopoly, but struggles to form a cohesive narrative around his David and Goliath tale. Within a decade, the combined league, which now included the Dallas Texans, Denver Broncos, and Oakland Raiders, had won two Super Bowls and forced a merger, in 1966, leading to the creation of the NFL's current two-conference system. As Rappoport (Gridiron Glory, with Barry Wilner) recounts, the AFL was a pioneer of the modern game, introducing the use of film study, and possessed a colorful cast of characters, like Billy Cannon, and owners (dubbed the "Foolish Club"). Rappoport clearly reveres his subject, but fan-boy tangents ("Dawson was the AFL's player of the year in 1962... and, by the way, took the Texans to the championship"), a tendency toward hyperbole and conversational language, and an embrace of clich s detract from a genuinely interesting (particularly to sports fans) historical tale.
