We have been down this path before, plenty. What LIV Golf is doing has its roots in the beginning of the previous century, when first the American League and then the Federal League decided to make a go of challenging the National League’s baseball superiority. Funny thing: The weapon of choice for declaring war hasn’t changed at all.
“Money is the root of this all,” Nicholas Young, the NL’s president, declared as he watched a spate of his players and umpires jump to the AL in 1901. The AL survived. The Federal League didn’t. Sports always has a Darwinian dependence.
It was the 1960s and ’70s that saw rival leagues make serious runs at the establishment. The ABA and its red, white and blue ball and wide-open style aimed its sights at the NBA beginning in 1967. The WHA took on the NHL beginning in 1972. The NFL was the target of three separate rivals between 1960 and 1986, the AFL, WFL and USFL.
“Every time a new league would form the first reaction was, ‘This is terrible, this is the end of the world as we know it,’ ” Lamar Hunt told me in 1998. “And then people would see our games, see our teams, and realize: It was just more of a good thing. It wasn’t the devil.”
Hunt was the founder of the AFL, and he and the other charter members of that league were quickly dubbed “The Foolish Club” for even thinking of taking on the NFL. But 62 years later, 10 of the NFL’s 32 teams have their roots in the AFL. That includes maybe the league’s signature team right now, the Kansas City Chiefs, which Hunt owned until his death in 2006.
From left, then-Chiefs GM Carl Peterson, owner Lamar Hunt and head coach Herm Edwards speak before a game in 2006. G. Newman Lowrance/WireImage.com
“I have always said, all you need to survive as a competing league are three things,” Hunt said. “First, you need a bunch of smart people running it. Second, you need a little bit of luck; a good bounce here and there never hurt anyone.”
He smiled.
“And having lots of cash on hand,” he said. “That helps a lot.”
The AFL had that on its side. After Hunt lost $1 million in the league’s first year (playing in Dallas, as the Texans, competing directly with the NFL’s Cowboys) someone asked his oil tycoon father, H.L., about that. “At that rate,” the old man said, “he’ll be in trouble in 142 years.”
The LIV has cash on hand. The guaranteed money thrown around this week in advance of its debut event in London made MLB’s free-agent hot-stove period seem like a garage sale. There are loud words and hard feelings on both ends — venom that goes well beyond the basic human-rights issue of being in bed with the Saudis.
JC Ritchie plays his second shot on the 16th hole during the LIV Golf Invitational at The Centurion Club. Getty Images“When we came along,” Hunt said, “we recalibrated a lot of things. Not just salary, either. But opportunity.”
Hunt’s favorite example was his own quarterback, Len Dawson, who went from taxi squad to Canton thanks to the AFL. So did Don Maynard. The ABA allowed Connie Hawkins a place to play when he was banned everywhere else (wrongly, after being accused of point-shaving). The WHA afforded Gordie Howe, at age 45, the chance to play alongside his sons, Mark and Marty.
Maybe it’s not quite so poetic, the notion that Phil Mickelson can now command nine figures of guaranteed money. But LIV is following the blueprint closely. It always starts with the money. After that, it’s on the product to deliver.
Twenty-four years ago Lamar Hunt said, “Let me ask you a question: Do you think the AFL destroyed pro football?”
Twenty-four years from now, we will surely be asking the same of LIV. And the odds are, the answer will be much the same.
