Ex-AFL Star Kemp Retains High Profile : Football: Former MVP quarterback for the Buffalo Bills is secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Jack Kemp, the highest ranking AFL graduate, works in a downtown office building that is a brisk limousine ride from the White House, and even farther from many other federal buildings.

From his office on the 10th floor, Kemp, still lean and fit, commands only a far view of the Potomac River. But he keeps a close watch over this and other cities as the Bush Administration’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

It has been 30 years since he was an AFL original. A quarterback, Kemp joined the San Diego Chargers at the beginning of their first season, which they played in Los Angeles.

“The (AFL) made a huge impact on my family, on my career and on me,” he said recently, noting that his two sons are quarterbacks, Jeff with the Seattle Seahawks and Jimmy as a redshirt freshman at Wake Forest.

As a veteran of all 10 years of the AFL, Kemp, who made all-league three times, was that league’s only quarterback starter on both its first and last days--in ’60 and ’69.

In his peak season, ‘65, after leading the Bills to their second consecutive AFL championship, he was voted the AFL’s most valuable player.

That was 12 months before the first Super Bowl.

“The AFL was fun, and it was a career steppingstone for me,” Kemp said. “Two months after my last game (in the AFL Pro Bowl), I announced for Congress.”

From 1962 until he ran for the Presidency 26 years later, Kemp represented Buffalo either on the field or in Congress, and his campaign committee is confident that he will succeed Bush in ’96.

Thus, he remains indebted to AFL founder Lamar Hunt, whose league made him a household name.

“My first three pro years were in the NFL (in the 1950s), when I played behind Bobby Layne, Tobin Rote, Chuck Conerly, Y.A. Tittle, Earl Morrall and John Brodie,” Kemp said. “So I did a lot of sitting around.

“The great achievement of the AFL was the opportunity it made for hundreds of additional football players to play pro, including me. There were only 12 NFL teams in 1959. The AFL opened up (the NFL’s) closed society and doubled the number of pro clubs and players.”

As its other achievement, the AFL markedly improved the NFL’s caliber of football, in Kemp’s view.

“We threw the ball a lot in the AFL, and that made for more scoring,” he said. “Sid Gillman and Al Davis changed the NFL by what they did in the AFL. When the merger came, the AFL was the stronger league.”

It was stronger, in part, because the Bills found a Hall of Fame running back in the 1969 common draft.

“I missed the entire 1968 season after (teammate) Ron McDole fell on my knee in a preseason drill,” Kemp said.

“And that year, the Bills finished (1-12-1).”

That was the worst record in either league, enabling the Bills to draft the nation’s No.1 player: USC’s O.J. Simpson.

“O.J. has never forgiven me,” Kemp said.