No SB til '70 merger what-if

[rhickok1109]

by SixtiesFan » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:02 pm
"So the old-line NFL Bears roomed Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers together out of ;rooming convenience?'"

You should know that was a rarity.
Look at NFL team photos of the era and count.
Plus, 1969 was the tenth season of the AFL so the Bears had ten years to study and learn. Other NFL teams did not.

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"Players at that time were still segregated by race for hotel-room assignments. At the suggestion of the Bears' captain
the policy was changed and each player was reassigned by position, so that wide receivers would room together, quarterbacks would room together, etc. Running back was the only position on the 1969 Bears with one black and one white player, Sayers and Piccolo, respectively."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Piccolo

The Packers first black player, Bob Mann, joined the team in 1950, and roomed with a white player named Ray DiPierro for two years. After DiPierro was cut, Mann roomed with another white player, Dick Afflis, who later became a professional wrestler known as "Dick the Bruiser." Mann and Afflis even roomed together in 1954, when Veryl Switzer joined the team as its second player. Switzer roomed with Al Carmichael.

[oldecapecod11]

by rhickok1109 » Thu Feb 04, 2016 12:42 pm
"The Packers first black player, Bob Mann, joined the team in 1950, and roomed with a white player named Ray DiPierro for two years. After DiPierro was cut, Mann roomed with another white player, Dick Afflis, who later became a professional wrestler known as "Dick the Bruiser." Mann and Afflis even roomed together in 1954, when Veryl Switzer joined the team as its second player. Switzer roomed with Al Carmichael."

Why should that be surprising? There was no hard and fast rule but Green Bay certainly was ahead of the times in 1950.
Nor is it surprising to learn about Al Carmichael.
He was a Boston boy noted for catching significant passes - the winning TD v. the University of (for all the world) Wisconsin
in the Rose Bowl and, later, the first TD in AFL history v. his home town Patriots.
Now, talk about coincidence... as we read and write - tracking a small parcel to a classmate in Gardena, California
who is a teacher retired from - you guessed it - Gardena High School.
Give ya one guess where Al went to high school?

[rhickok1109]

by SixtiesFan » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:02 pm
"So the old-line NFL Bears roomed Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers together out of ;rooming convenience?'"

You should know that was a rarity.
Look at NFL team photos of the era and count.
Plus, 1969 was the tenth season of the AFL so the Bears had ten years to study and learn. Other NFL teams did not.

---

"Players at that time were still segregated by race for hotel-room assignments. At the suggestion of the Bears' captain
the policy was changed and each player was reassigned by position, so that wide receivers would room together, quarterbacks would room together, etc. Running back was the only position on the 1969 Bears with one black and one white player, Sayers and Piccolo, respectively."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Piccolo

Speaking of the AFL-NFL, how many on this Forum regularly watched pro football on TV in the early 1960's? For the most part the NFL was better to watch, better players (Brown, Unitas, Tittle, Mitchell, Jurgensen, etc) at the skill positions for one thing. I liked the AFL's Oilers and Chargers, who were NFL quality from the start and played each other in the first two AFL Championship games.

I covered the Boston Patriots (as they were then) in 1960 and the level of play was really bad and remained so for at least two or three more years.

The AFL tended to focus on crowd-pleasers, the so-called skill positions. That was where they spent most of their money. One reason the league was known for being pass-happy was that there were very few good, or even average, defensive backs. As a result, most teams played zone defenses almost exclusively because they didn't have DBs who could cover anybody. And zone defenses in that area were pretty simplistic. Any reasonably good QB could dissect a zone quite easily.

There were also not many very good linemen on either side of the ball.

I think one one of the big effects of the merger was the combined draft because AFL teams no longer needed to squander money on QBs, RBs, and WRs to keep them out of the NFL. Now they could focus on areas of need and that was the beginning of the climb toward something approaching parity.