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The National Football League had dominated professional football from its origins after World War I.
Rival leagues had crumbled or merged with it, and when the American Football League began to play in 1960, it was the fourth of that name to challenge the NFL.
Unlike its namesakes, however, this AFL was able to command sufficient financial resources to survive ; one factor in this was becoming the first league to sign a television contract — previously, individual franchises had signed agreements with networks to televise games.
The junior league proved successful enough, in fact, to make attractive offers to players.
After the 1964 season, in fact, there had been a well-publicized bidding war which culminated with the signing, by the AFL's New York Jets, of University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath for an unprecedented contract.
Fearing that bidding wars over players would become the norm, greatly increasing labor costs, NFL owners, led by league Commissioner Pete Rozelle, obtained a merger with the AFL.
That merger agreement provided for a single draft, interleague play in the preseason, a championship game to follow each season, and the integration of the two leagues into one in a way to be agreed at a future date.
As the two leagues had an unequal number of teams ( under the merger agreement, the NFL expanded by one team to 16, and the AFL by one to 10 ), realignment was advocated by some owners, but was opposed.
Eventually, three NFL teams agreed to move to join the AFL franchises in what became the American Football Conference.

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