Shift of Power Evident in the NFL

The NFL conference championships today at Cleveland Stadium and Giants Stadium appear, at least on the surface, to mark a turning point in the history of professional football.

When viewed from one angle, it seems as if the sport has come full circle from the days just preceding the NFL-AFL merger of 1970.

And from another angle, the NFL is sitting on the verge of an unknown future--one that could be altered by the off-the-field activities that must inevitably take place during the next few months.

Whether it is a lasting trend or not, the league has gone through a shifting of power which will manifest itself today in the two conference title games.

Today’s meetings will mark the first time since the merger that Miami, Pittsburgh, the Raiders and Dallas have all been absent from a conference title matchup.

None of those teams even made the playoffs this year and since 1970 at least two of them had been in postseason play every season.

The Washington Redskins, a touchdown underdog to the Giants in the NFC championship game, have made it this far on three previous occasions since the merger.

But the other three teams--Denver, Cleveland and the New York Giants--have a combined total of one conference championship appearance.

To get this far, the Browns had to beat the New York Jets, who have not been in a conference title game since the merger. And to advance to the divisional round, the Jets had to beat the Kansas City Chiefs, who had not been in the playoffs since 1971.

“The teams that get to the Super Bowl,” said the dean of NFL coaches, Tom Landry of Dallas, “seem to be the ones who build slowly over a number of years. San Francisco has a good organization and they built through the draft and finally got to the top. The Chicago Bears did the same thing. And now you see it in the New York Giants. They had a number of good drafts, they built up their team--especially on defense. And now they are seeing all that work pay off.”

Once again, the playoffs have demonstrated the necessity of having a high quality quarterback--one who instills leadership qualities to the rest of the team and makes the rest of the offense play better than it might otherwise.

Cleveland’s Bernie Kosar and Denver’s John Elway are perfect examples. Washington’s Jay Schroeder has come into his own this year, as has New York’s Phil Simms.

The San Francisco 49ers, it became clear, were not the same team without Joe Montana and the Chicago Bears could not win the big one this year without Jim McMahon. Dallas has not been to the Super Bowl since Roger Staubach retired and Pittsburgh disappeared quickly when Terry Bradshaw called it quits.

“That was part of the reason the AFC was on top for a while,” Landry said. “When those teams were down, they were able to draft top quarterbacks--like Bradshaw at Pittsburgh. Then, the NFC began to get some outstanding quarterbacks, like Montana.”

Next year the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints could be teams to watch and Indianapolis, if Gary Hogeboom can reach a high professional standard, could surprise.

But the status of the 1987 season will remain in doubt until league owners and the union can settle differences which currently are pointing to a likely repeat of the 1982 strike.

The NFL enjoyed a relatively successful year in 1986. Teams which had been down for years staged a comeback, the league survived its court test with the USFL and fans streamed into the stadiums in near record numbers.

But as the champions of the AFC and NFC are crowned Sunday and as the buildup to the Super Bowl begins, the doubts will automatically start to grow for the coming year.

If the NFL is, indeed, experiencing a turning point, its executives and players are anxious to find out just how big a turning point it will be.