Eight Greats from the American Football League

Born in December 1952, I would have been six years old when the American Football League was established and seven when play commenced. Young and highly impressionable, I was taken by this colorful new sports organization. The games, announced on ABC-TV by guys like Charlie Jones, Paul Christman and Curt Gowdy, seemed somehow more exciting than those of the long-established National Football League. That’s not to say I ignored the NFL, since Dallas had franchises in both for three seasons (1960–1962). I liked the Cowboys very much, but I truly loved the Texans. In ’62, when they won the AFL title with a double-overtime defeat of the Houston Oilers, I was a member of the Dallas Texans Huddle Club; for a nominal charge, I got a seat in the knothole section of the Cotton Bowl for every home game, a membership card and a T-shirt. I was baffled and heartbroken when they left for Kansas City.

I recall here eight AFL players, not because they were the best for the teams on which they competed—although each was indisputably excellent—but because they spent most or all of their careers with those teams. Another criterion is that they must have been with the league from the start, which means the 1960 season. For example, I might have gone with Keith Lincoln of the San Diego Chargers, but he only became a pro in 1961, after they have moved up the coast to LA. Since I have written elsewhere about Abner Haynes and Billy Cannon, they are not my chosen representatives for the Texans/Chiefs and Oilers, respectively. I will start with what was then the AFL’s Western Division (Chargers, Denver Broncos, Texans/Chiefs and Oakland Raiders) and then the Eastern Division (Buffalo Bills, Oilers, New York Titans [briefly and audaciously known as the “Titans of New York”]/Jets and Boston Patriots).

A native of Louisiana who grew up in Los Angeles, Paul Lowe was undrafted out of Oregon State in 1959. But with this new league shaping up, he signed a free agent deal with the Los Angeles Chargers. The first time he touched the ball as a pro came in the team’s opening exhibition game (a 27-7 defeat of the Titans at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum) in which he returned a kickoff for a 105-yard touchdown. A swift and darting runner, he averaged 4.9 yards per carry. Lowe was on championship teams in 1963 with the Chargers and again in 1969 when the Chiefs won Super Bowl 4. Still alive at 89, he suffers from chronic ringing in his ears and “moderate dementia.”

A two-way star at Baylor in the late 1950s, Austin “Goose” Gonsoulin was drafted by the Texans. It surprises me that he was almost immediately traded to Denver. Especially in that first year, AFL teams hoped to draw fans by having local guys on their teams; the 1960 Texans and Oilers were heavy with former Southwest Conference stars, even some who had been away from football for a while. At any rate, Gonsoulin landed in Denver and proved himself a fine safety, tough and durable. Big for his position at 6′ 3″ and 210 pounds, he is the league’s all-time leader in interceptions with 40. Five times all-AFL, Gonsoulin had the misfortune to play on Broncos teams that ranged from mediocre to awful. He retired after one final season with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.

Another DB on my list is Johnny Robinson. Like Lowe, he came from a small town in Louisiana. Again like Lowe, he is still in the land of the living, although I am not certain of his health. Aa an LSU Tiger, he shared the backfield with Cannon. Both were first-round picks—Cannon with the Oilers, Robinson with the Texans. Hank Stram had him playing flanker and running back his first two seasons in Dallas before moving him to safety. Name another offensive player with 57 interceptions and 741 interception return yards, or another defensive player who carried the ball 150 times and caught 77 passes. Robinson, who spent 12 seasons with this franchise, played in 164 games for the Texans/Chiefs and started 156 of them.

As with me, wide receiver Art Powell was born in Dallas. But he and his family fled to the West Coast not long thereafter. With speed, size and a knack for making big plays all over the field, he was a stud at San Jose State. Among the Titans’ few bright lights from 1960 to 1962, he was traded to Oakland where coach Al Davis put him to good use—73 catches for 16 TD’s and 1,394 yards; the team’s record improved from 1-13 to 10-4 in 1963. Besides his qualities as an athlete, Powell was adamant about getting fair treatment for himself and other black players. He, Haynes, Cookie Gilchrist, Earl Faison, Butch Byrd and others refused to play under racist conditions in New Orleans before the 1965 AFL All-Star game which was hurriedly shifted to Houston.

Now, here is a guy whose play just thrilled me—Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion. While Lowe and Powell were born in the South and went west, his Georgia-based family moved to Columbus, Ohio. Why he got no attention from Ohio State, I do not know. After all, he was fast, had great hands and could sparkle in the backfield or as a wide receiver. He played at tiny Bluffton College from 1955 to 1958, leaving DBs and linebackers in his dust. As a senior running back, he averaged nine yards per carry! Dubenion was 27 years old when he began his pro career, but he lost no time in making an impact with the Bills. They won AFL championships in 1964 and 1965, by which time sports writers (some of them at least) were saying the junior league had some excellent players and teams; a merger with the NFL was not far off by then.

Bob Talamini, a native of Louisville, attended the University of Kentucky. He was a third-team all-SEC offensive lineman in his senior season of 1959—competent, but no gridiron star. Well, the Oilers took Talamini in the second round of the inaugural AFL draft, and he proved to be a winner. With him anchoring the offensive line, Houston won the first two league championships. He opened holes for such runners as Cannon, Charley Tolar, Sid Blanks and Hoyle Granger. Talamini was released after the 1967 season, signed with the New York Jets and triumphed in Super Bowl 3. Several of the Jets players called him “the missing piece” because when Talamini arrived in Gotham, the ground and passing games really flourished. QB Joe Namath said, “Bob was a gift from the football gods. If it wasn’t for having Bob Talamini, we don’t win the championship.”

He had spent one season in the NFL (New York Giants) and one in Canada (Hamilton Tiger-Cats) before becoming the original Titan. Don Maynard, a fleet 180-pound receiver out of Texas Western, sure made his mark in the AFL, and well into the post-merger days. He racked up a pro record of 633 catches (long since surpassed) and 88 touchdowns, many coming from Namath. Despite being injured in Super Bowl 3, he played and opened things up for his teammate on the other side, George Sauer. Maynard died two years ago of dementia—whether football-related, I am not sure.

Quarterback Vito “Babe” Parilli came out of an industrial town near Pittsburgh and played college ball at Kentucky where he finished third in Heisman Trophy voting in his senior year of 1951. He was a pro football vagabond long before getting to the AFL, having played with the Green Bay Packers twice, the Cleveland Browns and the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders. Parilli, a second-teamer with the Raiders in 1960, was part of a five-man trade that sent him to the Boston Patriots in ’61. He was a reliable and colorful player for that franchise over the next seven seasons; some of his records stood until the coming of Tom Brady. Parilli helped the Pats win the Eastern Division in 1963, but they got whacked in the title game, losing 51-10 to San Diego.

(The aforementioned Keith Lincoln had a career day against Boston, with 329 yards rushing and receiving and two scores. I will add that the ’63 Chargers, coached by Sid Gillman, were the first pro football team to systematically lift weights and—more important—take steroids, which were entirely legal at the time. The linemen all resembled Popeye.)

Other AFL names that still resonate with me include Bill Mathis of the Titans/Jets, Leslie “Speedy” Duncan of the Chargers, future senator and presidential candidate Jack Kemp of the Chargers and Bills, Smokey Stover of the Texans/Chiefs, 5′ 5″, 200-pound Charley Tolar of the Oilers, Cotton Davidson of the Texans and Raiders, Frank Tripucka of the Broncos, Jim Norton of the Oilers, Fred Arbanas of the Texans/Chiefs (attacked by two thugs in Kansas City in 1964, Arbanas lost sight in one eye but played six more years without any appreciable decline in performance), Ron Mix of the Chargers and Raiders, Gino Cappelletti of the Patriots, Clem Daniels of the Texans and Raiders, Cookie Gilchrist of the Bills and Broncos, George Blanda of the Oilers and Raiders, Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd of the Chargers, Oilers and Chiefs, Billy Shaw of the Bills, Lenny Dawson of the Texans/Chiefs, Willie Brown of the Broncos and Raiders, Jim Otto of the Raiders (remembered as much for his 28 knee surgeries as for his pigskin proclivities), Earl Faison of the Chargers and expansion Miami Dolphins, Butch Byrd of the Bills and Broncos, Tom Flores of the Raiders, Bills and Chiefs, Jacky Lee of the Oilers, Broncos and Chiefs and Dave Grayson of the Texans/Chiefs and Raiders.