Michael Nyerges

mnyerges@enquirer.com

In a way, the Saints were the Bengals' first opponent, long before either took the field.

In the 1960s both New Orleans and Cincinnati competed for the National Football League's 16th franchise.

Today, the Bengals and Saints rarely meet, playing once every four years. So it's easy to forget their shared history as the final teams born in the NFL's most tumultuous and transformative decade.

The 1960s dawned under a cloud of uncertainty as the NFL owners gathered in Miami in January 1960.

Commissioner Bert Bell had died suddenly in October, and his successor was yet to be named.

The 12-team league faced disagreements among owners over expansion, and a war loomed for players, fans and team locations as the new American Football League was scheduled to kick off in the fall.

The AFL was founded by Lamar Hunt, the 26-year-old son of a Texas oil man, who wanted a team for his hometown of Dallas. Unable to break into the exclusive NFL, Hunt started his own league with other spurned NFL suitors.

The NFL had faced competing leagues before, the most recent being the All-America Football Conference from 1946-49, which failed in part due to the overwhelming success of one team.

The Cleveland Browns were owned by Arthur "Mickey" McBride, but head coach Paul Brown was in charge.

McBride gave Brown autonomy, and the team named for its coach dominated the AAFC, winning all four league championships.

The combination of a lack of competitive balance and the shaky financial foundations of some of the teams led to the league's demise.

Only three of the AAFC's teams were admitted into the NFL in 1950: Cleveland, San Francisco and Baltimore.

Hunt's AFL would have an advantage in taking on the NFL that the AAFC didn't — a television contract with ABC that divided revenue evenly among all eight teams. This provided the league with a degree of stability.

When NFL owners deadlocked on who would be elected the new commissioner, it was Brown who helped solve the dispute.

After turning down the job himself, Brown suggested that Pete Rozelle, the 33-year-old general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, be considered.

Rozelle was elected, and the owners agreed to expand by two.

The Dallas Rangers, later renamed the Cowboys, took the field in 1960 as the league's 13th team.

The 14th team, the Minnesota Vikings, kicked off in 1961.

That year in Louisiana, businessman Dave Dixon took control of New Orleans' quest for a team as Chairman of Mayor Chep Morrison's Major League Sports Committee.

Dixon began staging NFL exhibition games in New Orleans and cultivating relationships with Rozelle and Hunt.

In Ohio, Art Modell bought the Cleveland Browns. After two contentious seasons together, Modell fired Paul Brown in January, 1963.

In his 1979 autobiography "PB: The Paul Brown Story," Brown wrote, "I had never felt so helplessly alone in all my life as at that moment. My entire life had been chopped from beneath me, and everything I had worked to attain swept away."

Brown's son Mike, at the time a 27-year-old Cleveland lawyer, was intent on righting the wrong of his father's dismissal. Mike soon had a deal in hand to buy the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles. But the plan fell apart when one of the group's investors withdrew.

"I was very young. If I would have been experienced, I would have been able to fix that" Mike Brown said.

"We had the deal, and they had agreed, we had agreed on the price, everything. And it fell apart."

The sale of the Eagles to Brown would have solved a problem for Rozelle, who along with many NFL owners was not happy with the firing, and wanted Brown back in the league.

A second chance for Brown came when the AFL's Denver Broncos were for sale.

Mike Brown traveled to Colorado to explore a deal, but Paul Brown elected not to go forward.

"My father had come out of the All-America Football Conference. He had been involved in a league that failed. He had had his fingers burned" Brown said. "He didn't want to run the risk and I think that that was fully understandable."

New Orleans also flirted with the AFL. In late 1962, the Oakland Raiders explored a move to New Orleans, but ended up staying put. In 1963, Hunt was ready to concede Dallas to the Cowboys. He explored moving his Dallas Texans to New Orleans, but ended up choosing Kansas City.

Concerns about the AFL's survival reduced in 1964, when the league was buoyed by a new TV deal with NBC. The following year, both leagues planned to add two teams each.

But a battle ensued over Atlanta.

The AFL awarded the city a franchise, but couldn't get a commitment to play at the city's new stadium. Rozelle quickly swooped in and secured the stadium — and the NFL's 15th team. The Atlanta Falcons would take flight in 1966. Muscled out of Georgia, the AFL went south to Miami for its ninth team.

According to Dixon's autobiography "The Saints, the Superdome and the Scandal," at that point Rozelle assured Dixon New Orleans would soon be in the fold. "Keep your pants on, no need to run to the AFL; New Orleans will be next," Rozelle said.

Rozelle also encouraged Paul Brown that he would have a place with a new team.

Paul Brown met with Atlanta owner Rankin Smith.

"That didn't go well," Mike Brown said. "He (Paul Brown) wanted to control the operation and Rankin Smith really wasn't interested in an arrangement of that type. He was looking for a coach."

Mike Brown met with Miami owner Joe Robbie at the Cleveland airport. But Robbie also wasn't interested in the type of arrangement Brown sought.

Determined not to meet the same fate he had in Cleveland, Paul Brown wanted control if he was going to get back into pro football. Mike Brown pushed his father to pursue an NFL expansion team. The question became: where?

Mike Brown researched several cities, and found Cincinnati to be ideal.

Paul Brown shared the idea of pursuing a team for Cincinnati with his friend Bill Hackett, a London, Ohio, veterinarian and former player for Brown at Ohio State. Hackett was visiting Brown at his home in La Jolla, Calif., where Brown had moved after leaving the Browns.

Hackett was immediately interested, and told Brown he would go back to Ohio and talk to Governor Jim Rhodes.

"Hackett had no reluctance about knocking on Jim Rhodes's door. Most people would have been intimidated — certainly I would have been" Mike Brown said.

Rhodes became an enthusiastic supporter. In December 1965, he arranged a luncheon for prominent business leaders at the Sheraton-Gibson Hotel in Cincinnati, telling the invitees the purpose was to discuss a new stadium and a National Football League team for Cincinnati. Rhodes' guest speaker was Paul Brown.

The luncheon announced Paul Brown's pursuit of the NFL's 16th franchise, and it seemed clear that the competition with New Orleans was under way.

"Surveys show Cincinnati has a higher per capita income than New Orleans and has a bigger regional population" Paul Brown said at the event.

"The commissioner of the league told me to keep in a fluid state and be available for a franchise anywhere" Paul Brown added.

"We have a small working organization already. We have to find out about a place to play."

Rozelle encouraged Brown to pursue a team in Seattle, rather than Cincinnati.

Paul Brown had explored Seattle as a possible site for a team the year before.

Baseball's Cleveland Indians came close to relocating in 1964.

Paul Brown indicated in a 1965 interview with The Seattle Times that it was Indians' owner Gabe Paul that initially got him interested in Seattle.

"Gabe Paul wanted in there. In fact, it was he and other of my Cleveland baseball friends acquainted with your area who first interested me in Seattle" Brown said.

In the end, Brown owning a team in Seattle was never a serious possibility.

The Brown family preferred Cincinnati because of its Ohio roots, Ohio ties and the lack of a stadium in Seattle at the time.

"Rozelle pushed Seattle," Mike Brown said.

"I pushed my father to try to do it in Ohio. That's where we are from, that's where he had contacts, these were people we knew and understood" Mike Brown said.

"We knew that if we came here (Cincinnati) we could get a stadium that was NFL caliber."

The Sporting News reported that Rhodes "cracked heads" in political circles in Cincinnati to get city-county cohesion in financing for what would be Riverfront Stadium.

A few weeks after the luncheon, Rhodes lobbied owners at the NFL title game in Green Bay, stalking the sidelines with a sign that read "We want N.F.L. CINCINNATI 1967."

In May 1966, the Governor was part of the group representing Cincinnati when seven cities made presentations at the NFL owners meeting in Washington D.C. Cincinnati and New Orleans were considered the frontrunners of a group that also included Seattle, Houston, Portland, Phoenix and Boston.

The Enquirer reported that there was a strong feeling at the meetings that Paul Brown was the key to Cincinnati's hopes and was so well liked by the owners that he could wind up operating the 16th franchise wherever it landed.

But Brown refused to accept the possibility he could accept a relationship with another city. "I've devoted all my energies to Cincinnati," Brown said, "and that's where I think the franchise should go and I believe it will."

Brown's group wasn't alone in wanting to own the potential new team.

As the process unfolded, a handful of competing ownership groups surfaced. The most formidable was headed by John "Socko" Wiethe, a powerful Cincinnati politician and former player for the Cincinnati Bengals, a defunct professional team that played one season in 1937.

Wiethe's group planned to name its team the Cincinnati Romans and had recruited college coach Paul "Bear" Bryant to try to offset Paul Brown's star power.

But it was clear Brown had the support of many NFL owners.

"I'm for Brown no matter where he is. He gets my vote even if he's putting a franchise in Nome, Alaska," said Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney Sr.

The Enquirer reported that Brown's group viewed Cincinnati as the frontrunners, with New Orleans, Houston and Seattle as the main competition, and had hoped to come out of the meetings with the franchise.

"I think they want to delay the announcing of the franchise and hope to try to catch up with us," Brown said.

As it turned out, much larger things were going on behind the scenes that would influence the competition.

On June 8, 1966, the AFL and NFL announced a merger.

They would begin holding a common draft and playing a championship game after the 1966 season that would come to be known as the Super Bowl. The full merger would be complete in 1970 with one combined league under Rozelle as commissioner.

But the leagues needed a congressional antitrust exemption to merge, and Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary committee, had no intention of allowing it.

Through Dixon and his political advisor David Kleck, Rozelle enlisted the help of Representative Hale Boggs and Senator Russell Long, both of Louisiana.

Boggs had been Dixon's fraternity brother at Tulane University, and could use a boost in his popularity after supporting the 1964 civil rights bill.

Dixon sent Kleck to Washington to impress on Boggs that his support of the merger bill had to be tied to a commitment for an expansion franchise for New Orleans. Dixon worried that despite plans to expand and informal promises made, the combined AFL and NFL now had 24 total teams, and therefore no need to expand to even the number of teams up for scheduling purposes.

Boggs and Long got around Celler by attaching the legislation to a budget bill, and the vote for final approval was scheduled for October 21, 1966.

According to Dixon's autobiography, Kleck witnessed a discussion between Boggs and Rozelle in the capital rotunda before the vote.

"Hale, the NFL is very, very appreciative of what you are doing. I just can't thank you enough," Rozelle said.

Boggs responded "What do you mean you can't thank me enough? New Orleans gets an immediate franchise in the NFL. Isn't that our deal?"

Rozelle replied "I'm going to do everything I can to bring it about."

In a huff, Boggs turned and walked away, declaring that the vote was off.

Rozelle caught up to Boggs, turned him gently and said "It's a deal, you can count on it!"

A rankled Boggs replied "It better be, or you will regret it for the rest of your (expletive) life."

On November 1 — All Saints Day — Rozelle announced New Orleans as the NFL's 16th franchise.

The Saints took the field in 1967 under the ownership John Mecom Jr.

Had the NFL ever suggested to him that he hire Paul Brown to run the Saints?

Asked about it recently, Mecom expressed regret that he didn't pursue Brown.

"Coach Brown was probably the only person that the NFL didn't suggest I hire. And ironically I probably would have," Mecom said.

"We had a conversation one time about him coming to New Orleans. But he really wanted to get a franchise there (in Cincinnati) if possible"

With the NFL franchise having gone to New Orleans, Brown's group had to decide if they wanted to pursue the 10th AFL franchise.

"My father came to realize that there was no longer going to be the war between the AFL and the NFL, that there was a merger now, and we would not have the peril that he remembered from back with the All-America Conference. It was going to be one," Mike Brown said.

In May 1967, Cincinnati was awarded the AFL franchise, with Paul Brown's group officially getting the nod in September.

"We knew that once it was awarded here we were going to get it" Mike Brown said.

The Bengals took the field in the fall of 1968.

They would play two seasons in the AFL before the merger finalized, returning Paul Brown to the NFL and completing the league's explosion from 12 teams in 1959 to 26 in 1970.

"I would say though that my father stood strong," Mike Brown said. "And I think that he was the catalyst that got this here. Yet it was a jumbled process. It wasn't smooth, it wasn't easy. There were ups and downs. But I think it ended well."

Information for this story was gathered from America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation, by Michael MacCambridge; The Saints, the Superdome and the Scandal, by Dave Dixon; PB: The Paul Brown Story, by Paul Brown with Jack Clary; Paul Brown: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Football's Most Innovative Coach, by Andrew O'Toole; Ten-Gallon War, by John Eisenberg; Rozelle: Czar of the NFL, by Jeff Davis, Enquirer archives; The Cincinnati Post and Times-Star and Associated Press