If you are a subscriber to Showtime, you're in for a treat.
Showtime is celebrating the 50th season of the AFL with a marvelous five-part documentary, "Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League."
The first installment, "The New Frontier", premieres at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Like most NFL Films productions, it's can't miss TV.
As you would expect, Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs is the central figure of the first episode. The show chronicles his frustration at not being able to buy an NFL franchise or acquire one through expansion and how he and Bud Adams of Houston started the AFL.
The program weaves through the social, cultural, political and economic events of the 1960s which made the time right for the AFL to succeed.
There are archived interviews with Hunt, coach Hank Stram, Len Dawson and others who talk about the trials and tribulations of the new league's humble beginnings, and how its wide-open and fan friendly style of play competed with the stodgy NFL.
Just as the Baltimore Colts' overtime win over the New York Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship game was a seminal moment in pro football history, the Showtime special shows how the Texans' nationally televised, double-overtime win over Houston in the "Kick to the Clock" AFL title game in 1962, was critical to the new league's success.
And it led to Hunt's decision to move his franchise to Kansas City.
Chiefs fans will enjoy the very opening sequence that shows No. 16 of the 1962 Dallas Texans, quarterback Len Dawson rolling out to pass and the final scene showing the Chiefs' Otis Taylor high-stepping down the sidelines with the game-clinching touchdown catch in Super Bowl IV.
Fittingly, the show also addresses the great Chiefs-Raiders rivalry, just a few days before the two franchises meet for the 101st time this Sunday.
What was very interesting is that an NFL production (Showtime's 'History of the American Football League') actually exposed the NFL's feet of clay: Tex Schramm of the Cowboys admitting that the AFL's early Dallas Texans would have won any contest with the NFL's Cowboys; the acknowledgement that the AFL, and not the NFL, introduced TV revenue sharing, national TV network broadcasts of games and on-field mikes; and the revelation that the established league sent drunken scouts to recruit Abner Haynes, whereupon his father told him he was *not* going to play for an NFL team. Thank you, Reverend Haynes, for letting the *AFL* showcase such a talent.
http://www.remembertheafl.com
Remember the AFL!