Statistics from the All-America Football Conference, a pro football league that existed from 1946 to 1949 until some of its teams were folded into the NFL, will count toward the NFL’s official records.
League owners voted today to approve a proposal that would make AAFC statistics an official part of NFL history, according to NFL.com.
The AAFC now joins the American Football League as rival leagues that have been fully embraced as part of the NFL’s history. The AFL and NFL merged for the 1970 seasons and all 1960-69 AFL stats are considered official NFL stats.
The Cleveland Browns won the AAFC championship in all four years of the league’s existence before joining the NFL in 1950 and winning another championship that year. The San Francisco 49ers also played in the AAFC from 1946 to 1949 before joining the NFL in 1950. A team called the Baltimore Colts went from the AAFC to the NFL as well, although that team folded after the 1950 season and the second Baltimore Colts franchise, which started play in 1953 and is now the Indianapolis Colts, was really a separate franchise with the same name.
Longtime Browns head coach Paul Brown will get 47 additional regular season wins and nine additional postseason wins on his coaching record, which will move him into seventh place in NFL history with 222 overall wins.
Browns fullback Marion Motley will now be considered the NFL’s all-time leader in yards per carry for a running back. Motley’s combined AAFC and NFL total was 828 carries for 4,720 yards, an average of 5.7 yards per carry.
Several other Hall of Famers will now have AAFC stats added to their legacies, including Browns quarterback Otto Graham, 49ers running back Joe Perry, and the great runner/receiver Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch, who played three years for the Chicago Rockets of the AAFC before joining the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL.
For historians of professional football, the decision to open up the record book to the AAFC is significant, and makes the league’s official records a fuller picture of the history of the sport.
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