Ken Rappoport

My house is a football house, but mostly an AFC football house. I’m a long time Patriots fan and Mrs. Doug bleeds KC Chiefs red. With a little knowledge of football history you would know that the AFC is comprised mostly of the teams from upstart American Football League that started playing in the 1960s.

Ken Rappoport weaves stories told by the players, owners, and coaches from the days of the American Football League in The Little League That Could: A History of the American Football show more League

It all began when Lamar Hunt watched the 1958 NFL title game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. He envisioned that football was the best sport for television and that it would become big because of television.

He wanted in.

He tried convincing the NFL to grant him an expansion franchise. He tried buying the Cardinals (then located in Chicago). Neither route to NFL ownership worked.

Unable to get in, he decided to start his own league. He first teamed up with Bud Adams who he had met while Adams while also trying, unsuccessfully, to buy the Cardinals. The other big money owner was Barron Hilton, scion of the hotel family (and eventually grandfather to Paris). Those three brought along five other franchises, including the underfunded Billy Sullivan and my beloved Boston Patriots.

I was expecting the book to be an encyclopedia retelling of the history of the AFL. It’s not. It’s told by the participants in the league. I had the feeling that I was sitting in a bar with these great personalities telling me their stories of glory. Rappoport does a great job capturing those stories and weaving them together into a coherent narrative.

The AFL survived the battle with the NFL because it was putting good football on the field and on television. They were successfully recruiting players away and driving up the cost of player contracts. The NFL underestimated the AFL and let quality players go to the little league, assuming it would collapse and the players would come back to the NFL. After initially underestimating the AFL, the NFL owners gave up the battle and agreed to merge the leagues.

The book is a great combination of the business side of the game and the playing side of the game. There are some great stories in the book. If you’re a football fan or a sports history buff you will enjoy reading this book.

The publisher was kind enough to send me a copy of the book to review. show less

As a member of the younger generation of football fans--22 years old--I missed the glory days of pre-1990s Cowboys football. The difference isn't trivial; the highly commercialized sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll era that was the mid-to-late-1990s changed football from its purer forms. Right?

Evidently, and according to Ken Rappoport, not so much. Though some aspects of the 1990s machine are different, the commercial nature of football really began with the high-flying American Football League show more of the 1960s. Between the wars for contracts and the open-field dynamic centered around gunslinging Brett Favre-types, the eventual second half of the National Football League was far ahead of its times. A fascinating account with first-hand sources and the triple bird's-eye, management's-eye and on-the-field narrative elements blended nicely, The Little League That Could is well worth the sport's fan's time and effort (and dollars). It is a different tale from the typical sports book, covering an era from all angles and aspects.

There is but one flaw and it is worth here briefly mentioning: the book contains what are called "sidebars" and they are placed in the middle of the chapters but there isn't a sufficient break to make their placement within the book easy to reconcile. In other words, they take up full pages, and are placed in the middle of the narrative--in the middle of sentences, in the middle of paragraphs and sections that need to be read together--and instead of taking the much easier and obvious route of placing them at those natural breaks (end of thoughts or even chapters), their placement makes the book more difficult than it has to be. Slightly. When does one read the sidebars?

As should be noted, that flaw is fairly minor. So check it out! show less

If, like me, you were a fan of the late, lamented AFL, this book will bring back some fond memories. if you are not old enough to have been a fan, but are curious about the "other" pro football league, this will prove a good primer.
Like the equally old and equally lamented ABA, this book shows the impact the "upstart" league had on the established, hide-bound and generally cranky older league with which it competed. Like the ABA, the AFL was mocked, denigrated and ignored by the smug. show more self-satisfied dinosaurs who had been used to doing things their way for decades. This book reveals how much impact the wide-open, high-scoring AFL had on the way the game was played, and how much the present style of play owes to the Titans (New York, not Tennessee), Chargers (Los Angeles, not San Diego) and Texans and their league-mates.
Also, and of much more social import, Rappoport points out how the AFL opened the door to players from smaller colleges, especially "Black" colleges. Right from the start, the AFL drafted twice as many players from these schools as the NFL. (There was collateral damage from this however- in much the same way Jackie Robinson coming to the Dodgers killed the Negro Leagues, the AFL's signing of [and the success of] players from schools such as Morgan State, Bethune-Cookman, Alcorn State and of course, Grambling, opened the door to such an extent that it basically killed the HBCU's as far as serving as a pipe-line to the pros was concerned- in 2010, only two players from those schools were drafted).
Having said that, I must add that I liked the book because I was a fan. Were I a historian or a maven, there is little in this book which would prove new to me. If not, the stories are fresh, the owners eccentric, and the players... well, the players were wild in a way that today's made-for-ESPN's narcissistic, over-paid, under-disciplined, cookie-cutter ego maniacs never could be. show less

As a longtime football fan, I enjoyed reading this retrospective look at the decade long history of the AFL. While not a chronological perspective or detailed football strategy, Mr. Rappoport weaves together a compelling oral history based on the recollections of the various players and coaches.

While several other football leagues had tried and failed (USFL and WFL) to compete with the NFL, the AFL came into existence at a key time with the right combination of talented owners and players. show more One aspect that help propel the league to greater heights was the emergence of TV and key agreements to broadcast games. Without the power of television, the league might not have survived. It's interesting to note now, in the area of multi-million dollar contracts, how low the salaries of most football players was in the 1960s. In fact, most had outside jobs in the off-season to make ends meets.

Additionally, the competition with the NFL was aided by hubrus, as the AFL went head to head for the best players and coaches. While some of the confrontations are well known, such as Joe Namath's famous comments prior to Super Bowl III, many of the inside stories related in the book revealed two leagues that were viciously competitive but also mutually dependent on the other.

Overall, the book is a great recounting of a bygone era of football and worth a read by any sports fan. show less