AAFC was the NFL-rival league and was a hated entity
The Cleveland Browns are tied with the New York Football Giants for the third most pro football titles with eight. The Green Bay Packers have 13 championships while the Chicago Bears have captured nine.
Four of Cleveland’s championships were in the “All-America Football Conference” (AAFC), which was an NFL-rival league that competed from 1946 to 1949.
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This league developed because several wealthy men wanted to invest in a “National Football League” (NFL) team and had asked the owners to offer an expansion club or two, and were rebuffed. So, these men began their own league in eight cities.
Because this new league raided NFL rosters for players and coaches, signed many blue-chip college players, and basically drove up player salaries to new heights, the NFL owners waged war against their new foe. After three teams merged into the NFL in 1950, the NFL refused to recognize any stats or records from their rival.
Not one single passing yard, or tackle, or any wins or losses from the AAFC have been added to the NFL annuals as retribution by the NFL owners from that 1950s era.
Until now.
The NFL record book is about to be changed to include all of the AAFC’s statistics, awards, win-loss records, and history.
Pretty cool change to NFL records: the AAFC is finally represented. The great coach, Paul Brown, is the big winner. Story here from the NFL’s Annual Meeting.
https://t.co/Y021fXzJk9— Judy Battista (@judybattista) April 1, 2025
The NFL Competition Committee recently compiled a report that was presented to the NFL owners at their Annual League Meeting held in Palm Beach. The report stated that all AAFC information would finally become incorporated into the NFL’s official records.
The largest winners of this decision will be Browns head coach Paul Brown, along with various Browns’ players. Cleveland captured the league title in all four years of the AAFC’s existence, so their stats are impressive and hefty.
For former players and coaches involved in the AAFC, this news is huge.
A new league begins
Around 1944, it was apparent that World War II would be coming to a close soon. Many athletes who had been under contract with NFL teams found their deal had expired while serving in the war effort. Hundreds of college players had joined the military during their sophomore, junior, and senior years of college. When the war ended, their college playing opportunities were gone.
Several wealthy men approached the NFL owners for an expansion team but were told the league was quite content with its current size. They were also told that no existing NFL franchises were for sale.
The fact was, the NFL owners’ group was a tight-knit bunch and didn’t want any outsiders with new-fangled ideas and problems. Instead, these new prospective owners gravitated towards each other, found other wealthy partners, and decided to embark on their own league using these military men who were looking for a place to play.
Two of these prospective owners wanted to place teams in California, which the NFL turned down because of geographic location and would be a financial fiasco because of the travel costs and time. At the time, the NFL was just 10 teams, all situated in the Eastern and Midwest, which were all a train ride away from each other.
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These men then started the “All-America Football Conference” with teams in new cities such as Buffalo, Brooklyn, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Other teams were placed in NFL cities like Chicago and Cleveland. The eighth team, the New York Yankees, jumped from the NFL to the AAFC.
Suddenly, in the pro football universe, there were 18 teams instead of just 10 to find employment.
The maiden AAFC season was slated for 1945 but was pushed back to 1946. At this time, air travel was finally available, so having teams inserted across the country, like South Florida or the West Coast, wasn’t such an impediment as taking day-long train outings.
Most of the AAFC owners were very wealthy. They offered players and coaches more money than their NFL counterparts and signed away quite a few veteran players. This forced NFL owners to increase their contract offerings over the AAFC’s four-year existence. NFL teams annually would run on a shoestring budget as it was, so being forced to pay their players quite a bit more became a hatred bred into the NFL owners.
Like baseball, the AAFC envisioned itself as the American League to the NFL’s National League, with one day having a championship game between the two entities. The NFL owners wanted nothing to do with the AAFC, and worked hard to make it go away.
In the AAFC seasons ahead, Cleveland would outmatch its opponents week after week. They were far superior in every aspect of the game. At one stretch that included portions of three seasons, the Browns had a 28-0-1 streak. In 1948, Cleveland went 14-0-0, thus becoming the second pro football team in history to end their season unbeaten and untied.
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The Browns won the 1946, 1947, 1948, and 1949 AAFC titles. During the run of the league, Cleveland went 51-4-3. They dominated so much that fans stopped coming to games when the schedule was against the Browns. Even their home crowd dwindled each season, going from an average of 46,000 in 1946 to just over 31,000 in 1949.
Cleveland’s dominance would eventually become the breakdown of the league. The press began writing articles about how the Browns were destroying the AAFC. Fans became disinterested, feeling that they knew before the games were even played that Cleveland would win.
As player salaries increased, the NFL gave in and began merger talks in order to stop the bleeding. The AAFC wanted four clubs to merge while the NFL was adamant about just two: Cleveland and San Francisco. In the end, it was three teams.
A bigger NFL, but an eraser for the AAFC
In 1950, the Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts from the AAFC merged into the NFL. The remainder of the AAFC’s teams were folded and their players claimed through a special dispersal draft.
Because the NFL absorbed several AAFC teams, it made sense that the league’s history and stats would now belong to the NFL and be included in their record book. But the NFL owners were still upset of the damage that the AAFC had incurred against the established league, and although the NFL had finally found a way to get rid of their rival by taking away their very core and dissolving the remainder of their league’s teams, they were still pissed.
Few teams in either league made any profit during the duration of the AAFC’s existence. Consider the revenue sources from those days. The majority of the money made was through ticket sales, from which the home team only made 60%. There were concessions, but how many 25-cent hot dogs, 10-cent Coca-Colas, and 5-cent popcorn bags were sold that created a tidy profit?
There wasn’t any television money, or skyboxes, or even parking revenue because most stadiums were situated downtown between city blocks without parking lots. Even the stadium advertising signs did not bring football teams any funds since those were sold and erected by the baseball team for which the stadium was built, and simply left there when the football season began.
The NFL owners displayed their disdain for the other league by not accepting the AAFC’s very existence of their record-keeping. After all, the NFL would never get back to the days of paying a player $4,500 a season now that the salary range was around $12,000. No sir, the AAFC didn’t do the NFL any favors. And the owners had only one aspect in which they could continually make them pay.
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If none of the AAFC’s stats, records, win-loss totals, historical aspects, awards, and endowments weren’t accepted into the fold, it would be like they never occurred.
And for 65 years, that is what happened.
Now, you may wonder what the big deal is, and why the NFL doesn’t just absorb all statistics regardless. The reason? They don’t have to. They are the “National Football League,” a private corporation. They aren’t the pro football police or the pro football overseers. They only keep up and maintain records that occur within their own seasons.
There have been quite a few professional football leagues over a century of the sport of American Football. But not all of them have been NFL-rival leagues such as the “Arena Football League,” the “United Football League,” “Arena Football One,” and the “Alliance of American Football,” to name a few. Two leagues, the “Continental Football League” and the “World League of American Football” (later renamed “NFL Europe”), were NFL farm systems.
There have been five leagues that called themselves the “American Football League,” and all five were rival leagues that went after NFL talent on the field and in the front office. The “World Football League” from 1974-1975 signed away quite a few current NFL players to rather large futures contracts. The first “United States Football League” not only went after NFL players, but also signed many blue-chip college players such as Herschel Walker and Steve Young. The first version of the “XFL” had visions of being an NFL-rival league, but that never materialized.
When the NFL and the fifth and final version of the AFL merged into one league in 1970, the NFL accepted all 10 AFL clubs along with the entirety of their records, including statistics. But bringing in all written and recorded aspects of the AFL was part of the negotiations between the two leagues. The AFL realized they had 10 years of stats and win-loss records and league champions to consider.
A lot of the leagues mentioned have come and gone, along with their stats and records. But because none of their clubs became an actual part of the NFL like the AFL5 and AAFC did, their information stays within that league for eternity, and not within the NFL record books.
The NFL record book is about to change in a major way with the addition of the AAFC records. For one, Coach Brown will now have 51 wins added to his resume. He will go from 21st place on the All-Time coaches list to #7.
Browns’ fullback Marion Motley will slide into fourth place on the NFL’s career rushing averages with a 5.7 yards-per-carry average. QB Otto Graham will add 10,085 passing yards and 86 TD passes to his career stats. WR Mac Speedie will now have an additional 24 touchdown catches along with 3,554 yards added.
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Not to mention all the other great players that participated in the AAFC such as quarterbacks Y.A. Tittle, George Blanda, and Frankie Albert, running backs Motley, Joe Perry, Glenn Dobbs as well as George Taliaferro, offensive line Art Donovan plus Abe Gibron, receivers Dub Jones, Speedie, and Dante Lavelli, defensive linemen Arnie Weinmeister and Bill Willis, defensive back Tom Landry coupled with Ace Parker, and kickers Lou Groza and Ben Agajanian.
The “All-America Football Conference” has finally conclusively gained acceptance.