No Fury Like a League Scorned

When Elmer Layden, then commissioner of the NFL and two decades earlier one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, left a meeting with representatives of the newly formed All-America Football Conference in 1945, he expressed nothing but scorn for the league that would begin play the next year.

Despite the fact Layden owed his job to the recommendation of the AAFC’s founder, Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward, and although his South Bend teammate, Jim Crowley, had been elected the AAFC’s president and commissioner, Layden remembered who signed his paycheck.

“Let them get a football and play a game,” he cracked about his new rivals, “and then maybe we’ll have something to talk about.”

Play a game the AAFC did--four seasons’ worth of games, actually--but when the upstart league’s run was over, the established NFL had pretty much beaten it into submission.

Six of the eight original AAFC teams went belly up, with only the Baltimore Colts (who entered the league in 1947) and the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers (both charter members) surviving.

Those three franchises moved into the NFL as the result of a Dec. 9, 1949, agreement that was called a merger but looked like a takeover. The real question was: How competitive would the Colts, Browns and 49ers be in the NFL?

Dismissing Baltimore was easy because the Colts had gone 1-11 in the AAFC’s final season. But the 49ers had played for the last AAFC title and compiled a 38-14-2 regular-season record in four years.

Still, the class of the defunct league was the Browns, winners of all four AAFC championships and 47-4-3 in league play. After beating the 49ers for the final AAFC crown, Cleveland coach Paul Brown refused to shy away from the challenge that the next season would bring.

“I’d like nothing better,’ he said in The Sporting News of Dec. 21, 1949, ‘than to play the National League champ as soon as possible.”

Brown had arrived at this key point in pro football history via an unusual route. He had been hired to coach Cleveland’s AAFC entry while in the Navy, on leave from Ohio State and coaching at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

Although Ward’s new league wouldn’t begin play until World War II ended, Cleveland signed Brown to a personal-services contract paying $1,000 per month. For this sum, Brown decided to juggle two jobs:

While coaching Great Lakes (which upset Notre Dame, 39-7), he began assembling his new team.

Brown lured Northwestern All-American quarterback Otto Graham, also in the Navy, to the Browns. He hired two national scouts. He declined to support a “no raiding” pact with the NFL. And he denounced a so-called gentlemen’s agreement to bar black players from the new league.

Eager to test their mettle in the NFL in 1950, these Browns had truly been the scourge of the AAFC.

They opened their first season, 1946, with seven victories and rolled to a 12-2 record before beating the New York Yankees for the title; the next year, the Browns were 12-1-1 in the regular season and again defeated the Yankees for the championship.

Only an undefeated season, it seemed, could provide additional satisfaction, and the Browns pulled off that feat in ’48. After Cleveland pounded Buffalo, 49-7, for its third title.

The Sporting News called the AAFC champion “the best football team in the game, probably the best ever.” And in their last AAFC go-round, the Browns finished 9-1-2 and defeated the 49ers for the championship.

Brown’s juggernaut was built around players who had attended college before entering military service--men who had reached a steely maturity during the war.

Dedicated and talented, these players readily accepted their coach’s philosophy: expect to win.

Graham fulfilled the promise Brown saw in him and became an outstanding quarterback, throwing deftly to ends Mac Speedie and Dante Lavelli.

Fullback Marion Motley anchored a thunderous running game, and tackle Lou “The Toe” Groza was an excellent kicker.

Each year, a host of Browns made the All-AAFC team.

The Browns had Cleveland’s football heart all to themselves. The Cleveland Rams, 1945 NFL champions but box-office busts, had moved to Los Angeles in 1946.

Nevertheless, the Browns’ attendance was falling off; only 22,550 attended the ’49 title game. Fans apparently hungered for the same heightened competition that Paul Brown did.

Layden’s successor as NFL commissioner, Bert Bell, couldn’t wait to give Brown the match he craved. Or maybe Bell, who once owned the Philadelphia Eagles, the 1949 NFL champions, couldn’t wait to give Brown and his team their comeuppance.

After all, Bell reasoned disdainfully, four titles in an inferior league probably didn’t mean much. At any rate, Bell scheduled the Eagles and Browns to jump-start the 1950 season in Philadelphia on Sept. 16, the Saturday night before the NFL’s regular opening round of Sunday games.

Eagles coach Earle “Greasy” Neale had denigrated the Browns the year before. ‘All they do is throw the ball,’ he said.

Paul Brown chose not to be so cavalier. Having sent assistant coach Blanton Collier to scout the 1949 NFL title game, Cleveland was prepared.

After the Browns spotted the Eagles an early field goal before 71,237 fans, Graham threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns. Relentlessly, the Browns proved their worth in a 35-10 romp.

Cleveland finished its first NFL regular season at 10-2 and won an Eastern Division playoff to advance to the NFL title game.

In a magnificent irony, the Browns’ opponents were the Rams, returning to Cleveland for the first time since departing for Los Angeles. The game was a classic, with Cleveland winning, 30-28, on a Groza field goal with 28 seconds to play.

The AAFC’s best had emphatically answered Layden’s snide challenge.