1950 National Season E-Book

Re-live the fun and excitement of the 1950 National League Professional Football Season with GridIron Wars!

The 1950 NFL season was the 31st regular season of the National Football League. The merger with the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) expanded the league to 13 teams. Meanwhile, television brought a new era to the game. The Los Angeles Rams became the first NFL team to have all of its games - both home and away - televised. The Washington Redskins became the second team to put their games on TV. Other teams arranged to have selected games televised.

The NFL and the AAFC merged prior to the season. Three AAFC teams — Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts — joined the NFL intact. The players of the former AAFC New York Yankees team were divided up between the New York Giants and the New York Bulldogs (who changed their name to New York Yanks), and a portion of the AAFC Buffalo Bills was absorbed into the Browns organization. A special draft was then held by the league's 13 teams to allocate the rest of the AAFC players.

The 13 teams were realigned into the American and National conferences. The merged league briefly flirted with the name "National-American Football League", but restored the name "National Football League" a few months later.

The merger allowed the former 4-time AAFC champion Browns, the 49ers, and the Colts to survive. Without the agreement, those teams along with the entire AAFC would have folded due to financial difficulties. Instead, the Browns went on to defeat the Rams in the NFL Championship Game.

Also, the 1950 season saw the first effort by the league to play games outside the United States when the New York Giants traveled north to face the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (later to become a part of the Canadian Football League) in an exhibition match on August 12. The Giants and Rough Riders would repeat the feat in 1951; the Giants handily won both games.

Under the alignment, both conferences had a New York and a Chicago team. The "American Conference" (formerly the Eastern Division) had six teams including the Giants and the Cardinals, and the "National Conference" (the old Western Division) had seven teams including the Yanks and the Bears, as well as the Baltimore Colts. Except for Baltimore, each team played a home-and-away game against the other five teams in their conference, and two games outside the conference, in a 12 game schedule. Baltimore, a "swing team", played one game against each of the other 12 NFL clubs. Over a 13 week season, one team was idle each week while the other 12 met in the six scheduled games.