The 1946 AAFC season was the first season of the All-America Football Conference, a new professional league established to challenge the market dominance of the established National Football League. The league included eight teams, broken up into Eastern and Western divisions, which played a 14-game official schedule, culminating in a league championship game.
The season is significant for its shattering of the color line in the ranks of professional American football, when black athletes Marion Motley and Bill Willis took to the field for the AAFC's Cleveland Browns on September 9, 1946.[1] Both of these stars would later be voted to membership in the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
- ^ Gary Webster, The League That Didn't Exist: A History of the All-America Football Conference, 1946-1949. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2019; pp. 1-2.