When did the AFL agree to merge with the NFL?

In the 1960s, two professional football leagues battled for America's attention span and wallet – throwing money at players like quarterbacks throwing Hail Marys. The bidding wars got so intense that team owners started checking their couches for spare millions. When did the NFL and AFL finally decide to stop emptying their pockets and create the most powerful sports league in history?

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The answer is: 1966

It was professional football's highest-stakes poker game: two leagues, 16 cities, and enough lawyers to fill every seat in the Orange Bowl. The only question was who would fold first.

Over scotch at New York's Warwick Hotel, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and AFL Commissioner Lamar Hunt hammered out the details of what would become professional sports' greatest consolidation of power. Congress, apparently taking a break from the Cold War, decided that letting two football leagues become one was a matter of national importance.

During the four-year transition period, the leagues maintained separate regular season schedules but agreed to a common draft and an annual championship game – which would later become the Super Bowl. The first two Super Bowls saw the NFL's Green Bay Packers dominate, leading some to question the AFL's competitiveness. But Joe Namath and the New York Jets flipped that script in Super Bowl III, proving the AFL belonged at the big kids' table.

The merger officially kicked in for the 1970 season, with three AFL teams – the Colts, Browns, and Steelers – joining the NFL's new AFC conference to balance the leagues. This created the modern NFL structure: two conferences of 13 teams each, setting up decades of inter-conference rivalries.

The financial impact was immediate. No more bidding wars meant owners could stop hemorrhaging money on rookie contracts. Television deals skyrocketed as networks now had one negotiating partner instead of two. And fans got what they really wanted: a chance to definitively prove which team was the best in professional football.

Today's NFL, with its $100+ billion television deals and global reach, started with two rival leagues realizing they could make more money as friends than enemies. Was it better for the sport? That's debatable. But as any good quarterback knows, sometimes the best play you can make is to call a timeout and negotiate.