Post by TheShadow on Aug 18, 2009 15:10:49 GMT -5
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By Tom Weir, USA TODAY
Last in a series exploring the histories of all 10 AFL franchises as the NFL celebrates the league's 50th anniversary.
Any historical review of the American Football League should remember the Houston Oilers for three things: owner Bud Adams' wallet, the league's first dynasty and a relentless willingness to sling the ball.
Adams' oil money was the reason Lamar Hunt phoned in 1959 with the idea of starting the AFL to rival the NFL, a long-established league that nevertheless underserved many markets, including Texas. Hunt believed his Dallas Texans and Houston could forge a Texas rivalry that would help springboard the infant league into legitimacy.
Adams doesn't get the credit he deserves as the AFL's co-founder — and remains snubbed by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, even as his peer Ralph Wilson gained entry — but it should be noted that the league's formation was announced in the boardroom of his company.
The league's first eight owners were called the "The Foolish Club," because few believed it would make good on its goal of forcing a merger.
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"I said maybe we are," says Adams, who (like Hunt) had made a failed bid to buy the NFL's Chicago Cardinals. "I said we'll find out in a hurry how foolish we are."
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Some think it's a little foolish that Adams isn't a Hall of Famer, unlike Hunt and the Buffalo Bills' Wilson.
"They did it together, and I consider Bud every bit as instrumental as Lamar. He definitely ought to be in the Hall," says Charley Hennigan, who became a record-setting receiver on the Oilers teams that won the first two AFL championships in 1960-61 and lost the third title game in double overtime to the Texans. (The Oilers did not win another playoff game until 1978, and they never reached the Super Bowl while based in Houston.)
Hennigan, 74, embodies much of what the early AFL, and the Oilers, were all about.
He was 25, had served in the military and had a wife and two children when the 1960 training camp opened with about 200 candidates fighting for 33 roster spots.
Hennigan quit a Louisiana teaching job, telling an angry boss, "I've got to do it, because I love football."
He taped a pay stub from the $4,000-a-year teaching job into his helmet and, "I used that as a motivation tool, to know I'd burned my bridges." In Houston, he signed on for the grand sum of $7,500.
His prospects with the Oilers weren't good, considering he had been deemed too small for football while trying out at LSU. He also had washed out during a Canadian Football League audition. But he showed good speed when he returned to Louisiana and played for Northwest State, the same school that gave the 1960 Oilers Charlie Tolar, the 5-6 running back known as the "Human Bowling Ball."
Fortunately for Hennigan, he was friends with the biggest name reeled in by Houston — LSU's 1959 Heisman Trophy winner, Billy Cannon. In the AFL's first notable bidding war with the NFL, Adams had signed Cannon by doubling the offer he received from the Los Angeles Rams. The owner also ultimately added his wife's Cadillac to the deal.
"When we were trying out for the team, we ran 50-yard dashes instead of 40s, and Billy would let me win by a half step," Hennigan says of Cannon. "He's been a friend of mine for years and years."
Long term, Cannon's generosity paid off for the Oilers.
Hennigan set an AFL record with 101 catches in 1964, breaking the record of 100 Lionel Taylor set for the Denver Broncos in 1961.
Hennigan's mark stood until Hall of Famer Art Monk had 106 catches for the Washington Redskins in 1984.
But Hennigan gives equal weight to his 1961 season, when his 82 receptions for 1,746 yards included three 200-yard games.
The quarterback making all those throws was George Blanda, who had retired from the Chicago Bears after the 1958 season because he was being used almost solely as a kicker.
Blanda stayed with the Oilers through 1966, then played for the Oakland Raiders through 1975. He set the tone for Houston's air attack, leading the AFL in passing yards in 1961 and 1963.
His 36 touchdown passes in 1961 were the most by any AFL or NFL quarterback, remaining the single-season record until Dan Marino threw 48 in 1984.
"George weighed about 230, and both of his knees looked like railroad tracks from all the stitches," Hennigan says. "We had dinner together a lot, and he knew everything. He was like having another coach out there, on the field."
Hennigan says that era's emphasis on man-to-man coverage helped early AFL teams amass passing yardage. Another factor was that smart receivers could take advantage of fields that sometimes seemed like obstacle courses.
Each goalpost was anchored in two spots, instead of today's "Y" configuration, and the posts were on the goal line. Receivers could use those posts to get separation from defenders, the way a basketball player uses a pick, "and we'd go in and score," he says.
Also, "sometimes we would grab on to the goalpost, swing around and go back out to the corner," Hennigan says.
And in stadiums that were shared with baseball teams, "sometimes you'd have a pitcher's mound that you'd work. You'd take the defender over the mound and lose him, make him run uphill."
Houston's other prolific receiver in its championship seasons was Bill Groman. In the AFL's inaugural season, he led all receivers with 1,473 yards, and in 1961 his 17 touchdowns were the most by any pass-catcher.
Groman went on to be an NFL scout for 36 years, with several clubs, including the Oilers. But his AFL career was nearly cut short in 1960 when he was slow to recover from an injury, displeasing coach Lou Rymkus.
Groman says his rehab was curtailed because, "we only had one whirlpool, one of those old stainless-steel ones. By the time I'd get in, the thing was ice cold, because I had to wait my turn behind Cannon and Blanda."
Luckily for Groman, he had been recommended to the Oilers by an old friend of Rymkus, Bob Snyder, who had been a Pro Bowl quarterback for the Bears in the 1940s. "He convinced Lou to wait and give me a shot," Groman says.
That decision was validated by a Groman touchdown catch in the first AFL championship game, which Houston won 24-16 against the Los Angeles Chargers, who had Jack Kemp at quarterback. The eight-point spread in the waning moments was important, too, because the AFL had the two-point conversion then, unlike the NFL.
In the title game, Blanda milked his 16 completions for 301 yards, including an 88-yard touchdown pass to Cannon. Groman had three catches and Hennigan four.
Like Hennigan, Groman also had left a teaching job to take his shot at the pros, where he earned $8,000 his first season.
"The main thing I remember is just how much fun it was," says Groman, who had played at Division III Heidelberg in Ohio. "It wasn't so much a business then as it is now. It was like a family. None of us made big money, but it was good money."
The Oilers won their first championship at their home park in Houston, in front of a crowd of 32,183 at Jeppesen Stadium. Just as the Oilers moved on after the 1996 season and were ultimately rechristened the Tennessee Titans, so has Jeppesen been renamed Robertson Stadium.
Groman still lives in Houston and goes to the stadium to watch the University of Houston's football team and to remember his Oilers.
The first championship team, he says, was given small gold footballs with "1960" embossed on them, instead of championship rings. Adams corrected that when the team had its 20th reunion, when he gave the players rings.
Groman, 73, also has championship rings from 1961 with the Oilers, and from 1964 and 1965, with Buffalo. He also played for the Broncos in 1963.
"I think I've got more rings than anybody else from the AFL," he says, but he savors the memories as much as the awards. He remembers Adams going around to talk to his players on every team flight and says that every time Houston played Dallas, "Lamar Hunt would always come into our locker room after the game."
"We all wanted it to happen," Groman says, "and we were all happy to be there."
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