1968 League Meetings Summary

1968 League Meetings Summary

Following the long week of deliberation, Ryan Jameson came forth for his annual State of the League address to reveal the changes that are being put into place for the league’s new season. Here were the main points from the address.

NAAF TO EXPAND TO 14 TEAMS IN 1969

To the surprise of no one, Minneapolis was announced as the first of the two new expansion cities. The city was strongly considered to join the league back in 1965, however, Pittsburgh was awarded the team instead. Minneapolis remained on the NAAF’s radar, and despite the GLFL awarding the city a team the NAAF still came back. The team will be owned by Kris Matheson, who has shown an immense passion for football, exhausting almost every strategy to get a team. He helped get the GLFL team in the city, however, that also came with the city’s baseball owner, Harold Smith, getting the team behind his back. Matheson originally had a part with the team but was cut out following his attempts to build a new stadium, which Smith was not a fan of. Matheson is thrilled to have this opportunity and promised that he will do whatever it takes to give the fans of the team a competitive and successful team to watch. The team will be playing out of a brand new stadium at the University of Minneapolis which the NAAF helped in funding. The stadium is close to completion and they hope the university will be able to play games at their new building soon.

As for the second team, there were long conversations that occurred throughout the week that helped the league take the 6 candidates down to 2 finalists. 

Portland, ME - The first cut was Portland. Overall, the interest for a team was just not that strong and Quebec certainly had a stronger position as an Eastern expansion city at this point.

Des Moines, IA - Des Moines was the next team on the chopping block. The potential ownership’s lack of commitment to the team, as well as uncertainty over the group handling the early struggles and growth of a new team, did not make them as desirable of a location as the other options. 

Grand Rapids, MI - Grand Rapids’ latest bid for an NAAF team was certainly much better than their first back in the mid-50s, but it was not good enough to earn a new team. The uncertainty of if the city will be able to get a new stadium built and being in the heart of GLFL territory were the main points that went against the bid.

Quebec City, QC - Quebec survived to the final 3 bids, primarily because of an argument put forward about the league’s divisional alignment. Mainly, adding an eastern team alongside Minneapolis would help keep the divisions even without displacing any of the current teams. However, the prospects of the Western options won out and Quebec City would be waiting once again.

The final two cities were Omaha, NE and Kansas City, MO. Omaha seemed to have quite an early lead going into the decision day. Having a stadium ready to go and flexibility to potentially start play in the 1968 season gave the NAAF confidence and comfort over the relatively safe pick. However, that advantage became obsolete when Kris Matheson came forward to mention that he would prefer to have his Minneapolis team begin play in 1969 to make sure that everything is in place and ready to go on day 1, instead of rushing it all to completion. Omaha’s big advantage seemed to diminish as Kansas City was now more seriously considered. It became very quickly evident that Kansas City had the advantage now. Firstly, the city is almost 3-times the size of Omaha. Also, they have a proof of concept with the city already having a baseball team, which Omaha did not. Darren Lindell, co-owner of the London Tigers, would go on to put the nail in the coffin, making the point that the larger market would overall benefit the league financially. Mainly, a larger market means more money, and other teams will not have to contribute as much to revenue sharing with the smaller teams in the league. Lindell’s point would win over most of the owners and made it almost a unanimous decision that Kansas City would get the league’s 14th team. 

Jacob Cross will be the owner of the new Kansas City team. Cross is a businessman who has shot into the spotlight within agribusiness over the last few years. His ventures have led him to partner with Powell Mills to help bring the team to Kansas City. The two will help to build a new stadium on the outskirts of the city which is expected to be one of the biggest stadiums football has seen. Cross is excited to have another new opportunity which has come his way over the past decade and will do his best to give Kansas City a great team. 

Jameson did not touch too much on the plans, but it is expected that both teams will likely join the West Division with the Toronto Steelheads likely moving over to the East Division to join Ottawa and Montreal. There are also talks about the playoffs potentially expanding to 8 teams along with the expansion, but that is yet to be decided.

BYE WEEKS ARE HERE

There was a unanimous decision to add a bye week to the season, however, the decision on how the league would implement the bye week had everyone a little more split. The rolling bye weeks had a strong lead early, however, it would be the mid-season half-break that would win the vote in the end. The key reasons were, that it was the fairest system while still having football action for all 13 weeks of the season and it was the easier model to schedule. This means week 7 of the usual schedule will simply be split into two weeks with half of the teams getting a bye one week and the other half getting a bye the next week. 

EXTENSION CLAUSE UP TO $1,000

Another strong decision was made about the NAAF Players’ Extension Clause. The vote was heavily in favour of the league upping the minimum raise amount for players that are extended prior to hitting free agency to $1,000, which is up from $500. This means unless a player waives the clause, a new contract must come with a $1,000 annual salary raise if it is signed prior to the first day of free agency. 

THE COIN TOSS REMAINS

Probably the most divisive topic over the whole week was over whether the NAAF would remove the coin toss at the start of games for the 1968 season. In the end, the traditionalists seemed very against the idea and made sure the league kept the tradition. However, there were some supporters of the change, especially those making the argument to give a little added bonus to the home team while also being almost more fair considering each team would get the first choice for half of their games rather than just a level of random chance. However, it was no use as the coin toss will remain a normal tradition in the league.

ROSTER EXPANSION

Late in the week, there was a last-minute proposal that had come forward in order to allow for the league’s rosters to expand from 40 to 42 players. It’s not a big jump but teams are hoping to have a 3rd Tight End on the roster, with the rising injuries at the position. To keep the roster at a round number they added a flex spot that can be at any position at least for this season.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

The remaining announcements were basic league announcements for this season:
 - The salary cap for the 1968 season would be increased from $615,000 to $625,000. 
 - With the addition of the bye week, week 13 will occur during the week that the Division Semi-Finals normally occur, thus, the playoffs and McCallister Cup will be pushed a week later than normal.
 - The league will also have the first official Hall of Fame vote this offseason and will announce the class ahead of week 1.

ELSEWHERE…

ACFL

VAN FOSSEN OUT AS COMMISSIONER

Last offseason, the rest of the ACFL owners were close to removing Stephen Van Fossen as the commissioner of the league. However, Van Fossen talked his way out of it with a shiny new plan to continue to march into NAAF territory and expand the league to 14 teams over the next few seasons. Unfortunately for Van Fossen, the plan did not get off to a good start. He had targeted Hamilton, ON and Hartford, CT as the key markets for his plan. Unfortunately, he underestimated the sheer lack of desire from either city to bring on a team. Both cities likely needed new stadiums to be able to support teams long-term. Hamilton specifically had no interest in the American game, and neither city was very confident in the ACFL's potential for success, especially with how the Boston Shamrocks have performed since joining the league. Now, when Van Fossen had initially presented his last-minute idea, he had pushed the idea that he already had potential suitors for teams set in both cities, but it turns out it was a load of bullcrap. Once the other owners had realized that Van Fossen was completely out of his mind, they officially removed him as the league’s commissioner. 

Now their next step, of course, was to appoint a replacement. That decision was certainly an easy one as well. Don Soriano, the owner of the Philadelphia Rebels, was selected as the latest commissioner of the ACFL. Soriano has only been the owner of the Rebels for the last 5 seasons. He had come into control of the team the same year Van Fossen was made commissioner. Early on, the two seemed to get along, however, Soriano was the one that eventually started to question Van Fossen and became the primary advocate for his removal. The two created a divide in the ACFL. Initially, there were more owners on the side of the longtime owner of Van Fossen, but as the problems started to mount, more and more of the owners started to flip and back Soriano. Van Fossen’s last-ditch plan was the final nail in the coffin. Frankly, Soriano may have already known it would fail, which might be why he let Van Fossen go ahead with the plan despite advocating so harshly to remove him. In the end, everything played right into his hands.

Soriano seems to bring stability to the role, having what appears to be a more level head and less of a hyper-focus on the battle with the NAAF. So far, Soriano has made statements about focusing on the existing teams and league rather than another, which likely means the ACFL will cooldown on their attack of the Northeast and potentially retract teams from the area. However, Soriano has not made any changes as of yet and will likely take the season to figure out how to move forward with the ACFL.

GLFL

RESPONSE TO NAAF EXPANSION

With the NAAF’s latest expansion announcement, the GLFL certainly had some eyes on them regarding the decision. After all, the addition of Minneapolis means a direct competition between the Black Bears and the NAAF’s new team and Kansas City had always been looked at as one of the next steps in the GLFL’s growth. League commissioner and Chicago All-Pros owner, Larry Winfield, reassured that the NAAF’s decision was not of concern and would not affect how the GLFL moved forward. Cleveland Captains owner, Jack Attwood had said that he was concerned about the situation and wanted to make sure the league wasn’t falling just sitting by and waiting to get taken over. Winfield’s response was to have Attwood meet with him so he could reassure him that everything is going to be just fine. The older, experienced owner, Winfield, also pointed to the ACFL as an example of what he doesn’t want the GLFL to become. Winfield’s personable approach seemed to work and the situation died down as the league set in for the remainder of their own football season.