January 1, 1961: The 1st AFL Championship

January 1, 1961: The American Football League concludes its 1st season with its 1st Championship Game.

Like the NFL, the AFL divided itself into geographical divisions. Like the NFL's,  the AFL's divisions did not make complete sense. In the Eastern, in alphabetical order: The Boston Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, the Houston Oilers and the New York Jets. In the Western: The Dallas Texans, the Denver Broncos, the Los Angeles Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.

Keen observers will note that Dallas and Houston are in the same State, Texas, which kind of makes the "Texans" name for the Dallas team a bit silly. (It had been used before, though, in the NFL in 1952.) Granted, Texas is huge, with Interstate 10 running 877 miles between El Paso and Port Arthur; but, despite the 242-mile northwest-to-southeast distance between the teams' stadiums, Houston is only 92 miles east of Dallas.

Like the NFL, the AFL established a format in which Championship Games would be alternated each year between the Division winners. The first game was originally scheduled to be played in the 103,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But the Chargers had drawn less than 10,000 fans per home game. With the league fea-ring that ABC would pull its contract because of low ticket sales, the Chargers, the Oilers and the League met, and decided to move the game to the Oilers' home, Jeppesen Stadium.

Built in 1942 as a 14,500-seat high school football stadium, it was close enough to the University of Houston campus that UH could use it as a home field. In 1958, the school district renamed it for school board member Holger Jeppesen, who had vigorously lobbied for its construction.

When the Oilers arrived in 1960, team owner Kenneth Stanley Adams Jr., a.k.a. Bud Adams, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman -- his father, K.S. "Boots" Adams, ran Phillips Petroleum, and sponsored the Phillips 66ers, one of the top "amateur" basketball teams in America -- funded the stadium's expansion, and the AFL Championship Game drew a near-capacity crowd of 32,183.

Jeppesen Stadium in its final form,

as Robertson Stadium

However, it rained for 5 straight days before the game, and the field was a muddy mess. This played into the hands of the Oilers, who, with quarterback George Blanda and receiver Charley Hennigan, had done much to give the AFL its original reputation, as a pass-happy, high-offense, "basketball league," compared to the more conservative, more run-oriented, and some AFL fans saying "boring" NFL.

Ben Agajanian was 1 of only 2 players to play in the All-America Football Conference, the NFL and the AFL; the other was Hardy Brown. Agajanian, who preceded Tom Dempsey as an NFL kicker who had only half a foot and had to wear a special shoe, kicked 2 field goals in the 1st quarter, giving the Chargers a 6-0 lead.

In the 2nd quarter, Blanda threw a 17-yard touchdown pass to Dave Smith, giving the Oilers a 7-6 lead. Before the half was out, Agajanian and Blanda would each kick a field goal, making the score 10-9 Houston. In the 3rd quarter, Blanda threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to Bill Groman. The Chargers closed to within 17-16 on a 2-yard touchdown run by Paul Lowe.

But in the 4th quarter, Blanda threw a short pass to Billy Cannon, who had led Louisiana State University (LSU) to the National Championship in 1958, and had won the Heisman Trophy in 1959. Cannon took that pass, defied the mud, and ran 88 yards for a touchdown. That put the Oilers ahead, 24-16, and that would be the final score. The Houston Oilers were the 1st American Football League Champions.

Billy Cannon. The Oilers wore blue helmets

from 1960 to 1965, silver from 1966 to 1971,

blue again from 1972 to 1974, and white from 1975 to 1996.

The Oilers moved into the larger Rice Stadium in 1965, and the Astrodome in 1968, making them the 1st pro football team to play on artificial turf. The Chargers moved from Balboa Stadium (which, like Jeppesen Stadium, had been built for high school football and was too small) to San Diego Stadium in 1967. That facility would become home to baseball's expansion San Diego Padres in 1969, and was renamed Jack Murphy Stadium in 1981 and Qualcomm Stadium in 1997.

Corbin J. Robertson, former University of Houston Board of Regents member and Athletics Committee Chairman, funded the renovation of Jeppesen Stadium in 1970, and the University bought it, renaming it Robertson Stadium in his honor. In 1999, the playing field was named for another big donor, John O'Quinn Field. MLS' Houston Dynamo began play there in 2006. The stadium was demolished in 2012, and, the next year, a replacement opened on the site: John O'Quinn field at TDECU Stadium. UH still plays there, while the Dynamo have moved to a soccer-specific stadium.

The Chargers realized they couldn't compete with the NFL's Rams, and college football's USC and UCLA, for Los Angeles football fans' attention. So they moved down the Pacific Coast to San Diego. The Oilers beat the Chargers again in the 1961 AFL Championship Game.

Bud Adams with an Oilers helmet, a bust of himself,

and the 1st 2 AFL Championship trophies

In 1962, the Oilers nearly made it 3 straight, but lost the Championship Game to the Dallas Texans, who nonetheless moved to become the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chargers won the AFL Championship in 1963, beating the Boston Patriots, then lost the Championship Game to the Buffalo Bills in 1964, and again in 1965. The Oilers lost it to the Oakland Raiders in 1967.

Both teams then went into a down period. A 1973 episode of The Odd Couple featured Jack Klugman's character, sportswriter Oscar Madison, saying that the Oilers and the Chargers were going to play each other, and that they were the 2 worst teams in the post-1970s merged NFL. Both teams would get good again in the late 1970s, and be Playoff perennials for a few years, then tail off again in the mid-1980s, then get good again in the 1990s. The Chargers won the AFC Championship in 1994, but lost Super Bowl XXIX to the San Francisco 49ers.

But both teams' owners began to complain about their stadium leases. In 1997, Oilers founding owner Bud Adams moved them, and they became the Tennessee Titans. In 1999, they won the AFC Championship, but lost Super Bowl XXXIV to the St. Louis Rams, who had left Los Angeles in 1995. In spite of the complete change of location and identity, the Titans have a team hall of fame that combines the Oilers and the Titans, and they continue to keep the Oilers' retired uniform numbers out of circulation. The expansion Houston Texans began play in 2002, at what is now known as NRG Stadium.

In 2017, Chargers operating owner Dean Spanos moved his team back to Los Angeles -- as had the Rams, the year before, getting a big head-start on reclaiming L.A. football fandom. Although both teams now use SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the Rams' owner, Stan Kroenke, owns it, although he gives the Chargers decent scheduling selection.

The fact that the Oilers'/Titans' titles came before the advent of the Super Bowl means that they get discounted: Even before the distance of time became what it is now, NFL fans have come to regard any title won before the Super Bowl, NFL or AFL, as not a "real" championship. 

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January 1, 1961 was a Sunday. The game was scheduled for New Year's Day because the previous Sunday was Christmas Day, and they didn't want to go up against the NFL Championship Game. As it turned out, the NFL moved its Championship Game to the next day. At least the AFL didn't have to conflict with the annual New Year's Day college bowl games: As was usually done when New Year's Day fell on a Sunday, they moved their games to Monday, January 2.

The NBA scheduled 3 games:

* The Boston Celtics beat the Syracuse Nationals, 113-96 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.

* The Cincinnati Royals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 114-112 at the Cincinnati Gardens.

* And the Detroit Pistons beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 116-105 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Elgin Baylor led all scorers on the day, with 39 in defeat.

And, although it would be decades before the NHL began scheduling an outdoor "Winter Classic" on New Year's Day, its entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-1 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-0 at the Chicago Stadium.