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AFL opened doors to more players

The difference between the American Football League and the National Football League in the early 1960s was night and day.

Or black and white, it could be said and sometimes was.

"The attitude of the NFL then was very conservative," said Alliance native Charlie King, who with his brother, Tony, became the first black siblings during the modern era to play professional football on the same team after Buffalo took Charlie in the 1965 redshirt draft and Tony in 1966. "The NFL wanted to run the ball. The AFL brought in quarterbacks to throw the ball. They ran reverses, used motion before the snap.

"The NFL was 3 yards and a cloud of dust. ... It was great seeing the changes."

King said it wasn't strictly about black players changing the landscape. He noted the swagger brought by white quarterbacks Joe Namath and Daryle Lamonica, the latter his Bills' teammate.

Suddenly, there were two pro leagues to stock. One was more open to black men.

"The AFL gave athletes opportunities. In particular, black athletes," said Joe Horrigan, Pro Football Hall of Fame vice president of communications and exhibits. "The teams needed talent. They were open to all possibilities. The small colleges, it was an opportunity and a necessity for the league."

A good example of that thinking was Alliance's Tony King, a defensive back from Findlay College.

"I was bigger, stronger and hit harder" than his white contemporaries, Tony King said, talking about his rookie training camp. "That's when I knew I could (play with anyone)."

Bills owner Ralph Wilson Jr. didn't care what color his players were - only that they could play. Charlie King said AFL owners tended to select a certain brand of player more so than a player of a particular skin color.

"When Ralph Wilson and the others got the idea there was another pool of talent he could tap into, it wasn't just African-American players," he said. "It was about talent for this and talent for that position.

"They wanted to get speed, get talent. They wanted to be sensitive to the (white) veterans there. They wanted a good (racial mix) and a good blend of talent, and they did that.

That Wilson helped make history with the King brothers is not something the Bills owner was even aware of.

"When we told him later that me and Tony were the first African-Americans to be drafted by the same team in the same year, he said he didn't know that," Charlie King said.

In their inaugural season, the Bills signed receiver Elbert Dubenion as a free agent out of Bluffton College, a small school just southwest of Findlay. "Golden Wheels" as Dubenion was known, finished seventh on the AFL's career reception and yardage charts.

Likewise, defensive backs Booker Edgerson (Western Illinois) and George Byrd (Boston University) were mercurial players who combined for 63 picks in their Bills careers.

Cookie Gilchrist, a powerfully built fullback who never played college ball, was the AFL's first 1,000-yard rusher and MVP in 1962. He led Buffalo to its first AFL title in 1964 but was traded in the offseason after leading a boycott of the AFL's all-star game.

The AFL strategy worked because the league provided a thrilling on-field product. It was faster-paced than the NFL game, perfect for the new football fan about to make the viewing switch from black and white television to color.

Canton Repository