Best Merger Ever: The Back Story of the Super Bowl

Tue, 02/01/2011 - 13:47

Alvin Ray—you can call him Pete—was the dealmaker. 

His last name was Rozelle, and at the tender age of 33 he became the surprise choice for Commissioner of the National Football League.  This Alvin Ray Rozelle is the guy you need to thank on February 6, 2011, while you’re enjoying Super Bowl XLV.

Here’s how it happened.

Pete had a part-time job with the LA Rams publicity department where he caught the eye of a Rams executive by the name of Texas Edward Schramm.  When Schramm left the team in 1957, he recommended Pete as his replacement.  Then Bert Bell, the long time Commissioner of the NFL, died unexpectedly in 1959, and the NFL teams were deadlocked in trying to choose his replacement.  After 23 ballots, this dark horse candidate named Alvin Ray Rozelle from Southgate, California, wound up with the job.

Some say the team owners voted for young Pete thinking he would be their patsy.  But Rozelle proved otherwise.  He focused on growing the NFL, pushing Congress to waive the Sherman Antitrust Act and allow a merger of the American Football League and National Football League. The deal was agreed to in 1966, with Pete emerging as Commissioner of the combined organization.

The first Super Bowl took place on January 15, 1967, with the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs playing to a half empty stadium.  But when the Packers take the field against the Pittsburgh Steelers for the 45th annual edition of the Super Bowl next Sunday, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium will be crammed with well over 100,000 fans.  Another 100,000,000 will be watching the game on television.

In most years, Super Bowl Sunday is the most-watched TV broadcast in America.  It’s also the second-largest day for food consumption in the country, after Thanksgiving Day. 

Pete Rozelle went on to engineer Monday Night Football in 1970, which became the longest-running non-news program on prime time television.  He was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1985, and in 2000 Time magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.  He died of a brain tumor in 1996 at age 70.

The NFL grew from 12 to 28 teams during Rozelle’s nearly three decades as Commissioner.  What a deal…absolutely the best merger ever.