Last Updated: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 08:26 PM   

 

Super Bowl I: Atlanta Falcons 19, Kansas City Chiefs 3 

USAFL 1969-2068   100 years of footballIt was a quiet afternoon game between two teams that had little going for them. Practically no one in the league even cared what the outcome would be. Every General Manager in the league was focused on the pending college draft that was to take place within hours.

It was called Super Bowl I. The USA Football League's inaugural championship. There was no Sundby Cup to be found. There was no vested interested in the game from anyone in the league. Both Atlanta and Kansas City were managed by the league offices as they were still waiting to complete the process of hiring GMs to step in an control the franchise.

For the first and only time in the league's history, not only would there be a computer team in the championship, but both teams were computer owned. So obviously, for that first season, the computer reigned supreme over the league.

The Falcons were led by an aging quarterback that won the MVP award that season, by the name of Willie Pike. Pike would play six more seasons in the league, all with Atlanta. It would be another 14 years before the Falcons would return to the league championship with a young GM by the name of Tim Arkwright. During Arkwright's 20yr career in the USAFL, he would lead his team to 9 championships. But this first game belonged to players like Pike, who threw 30 passes that day without an interception, and his teammate RB Dale Taylor who rushed for 61 yards and a touchdown. Names from a long forgotten past.

Names only Andrew Lewis, founder and commissioner of the USAFL, can recall.

For years everyone considered that first Super Bowl a non-event. A fluke of a joke. But with the hindsight of nearly 100 years, there is a certain charm in looking back to see how this all began.

Photo taken at the very moment the USAFL began it's first College DraftSure Jim Maurer (co-founder and brother-in-law to Andrew Lewis) and Andrew were still learning how to scout talent and manage a depth chart. Of course it was humiliating to know that the computer had bested our efforts and shut us out of the Super Bowl. But we had our minds set on the draft. Ah yes, the draft. The real reason we created this league.

For some reason, my wife thought it very peculiar that her brother and I were all excited about this fictional world we had created. We had spent the previous three days analyzing how we thought the draft would play out. By the time we settled down to get underway, she couldn't resist taking a quick photo of her beloved idiots playing their stupid game.

If we only knew then what was to become of that night. A century of drafts later ...... and the College Draft is still the biggest event on the USAFL calendar. And it will soon get even bigger once the 2.0 version of the Draft Console is published. But we couldn't even imagine what the USAFL would become back then. For us, it was all about ordering pizza, compiling all your paperwork that you spent the last week scouting with highlighters and silly calculations that you thought rivaled the Enigma machine.

For months the league would exist only in the neighborhoods of southeastern Pennsylvania until the 1980 season, the league's 12th. At that moment, Lewis made the now famous decision to place the league on the internet and allow the public to have access to it's membership.

The game would change forever .... and the first three men to walk into the league offices to apply for a GM position would lay the foundation that made the league what it is today.

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