The League That Didn't Exist

This book tells the story of the All-America Football Conference, which was the only challenger to the NFL (except for the American Football League of the 1960s) to survive more than two seasons in competition with the established league. It takes a brief look at all of the NFL’s challengers (and would-be challengers) from 1926-1945, and then explains how the All-America Conference overcame obstacles that proved too difficult for others and opened the season of 1946 with teams on the east coast, in the Midwest, on the west coast, and in the deep South, making it a truly “All-American” enterprise. The story of each season, and off-season, is told in detail. The AAFC ultimately failed to achieve its goal of a peaceful co-existence with the NFL, and to this day the establishment prefers to ignore its memory. But two of the AAFC’s teams, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, which we absorbed by the NFL in 1950, are still in business. The AAFC left behind four exciting seasons of football, some memorable games, and many great players, whose legacies shouldn’t be buried beneath the sands of time.