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American Football League
American gridiron football organization
Also known as: AFL
American Football League (AFL), American major professional gridiron football league that was founded in 1959 and began play in 1960 as a rival of the National Football League (NFL). The American Football League (AFL) competed for the attention of fans and challenged the prominence of the NFL in the 1960s, eventually leading to the first Super Bowl (an end-of-season championship game between the AFL and NFL champions) in 1967 and a merger of the two leagues in 1970. With the increasing popularity of the NFL in the late 1950s, wealthy Texas businessman Lamar Hunt, the son of oil tycoon H.L. ...(100 of 1018 words)