Alvin “Pete” Rozelle
In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson (you know, the president that according to conspiracy theorists staged a coup during the JFK presidency) signed into law an exemption to the antitrust statutes that allowed the merger of the American Football League and the National Football League. The two leagues would keep the NFL name and logo and be split into two conferences.
The Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers (three of the original 16 NFL teams) agreed to join the 10 AFL teams in the new American Football Conference. The other 13 teams remained in the NFC. However, the owners could not agree how to allocate teams by division and so finally, the divisions were aligned by putting the team names into a hat and drawn by Pete Rozelle’s secretary. (Of course, this doesn’t explain how even after expansion and realignment, the St. Louis Rams play in the NFC West.)
In 1959: Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers set a then-NBA record by scoring 64 points in a game against the Boston Celtics. Baylor’s record stood for another year until he broke it himself with 71 points against the New York Knicks. Throughout his career, spent entirely on the Lakers (they moved to Los Angeles in 1960), Baylor averaged 27.4 points, was an eleven-time all star and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977. Baylor is also a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, and many have considered him to be Michael Jordan before there was Jordan. Baylor has even turned around the Clippers as a GM (although for years he was considered the worst GM in all of sports) by winning NBA Executive of the Year in 2006. (nba.com)
In 1981: Leave it to ESPN to help ruin things a little more. The fledgling all-sports network turned World Ruler/Destroyer gambled that redneck, uh, we mean sports fans would be interested in watching NASCAR races from beginning to end when it aired the entire All-American 400. Of course it worked and both are multi-billion dollar empires. People for some reason can’t stand hockey, but they can sit and watch traffic for four hours? (espn.com, Bill Maher for the classic “traffic” joke)
