Launch In
1946, a new professional football league was launched to do battle with the long-established National Football League (NFL). This new league, the
All-America Football Conference (AAFC), included eight teams—an Eastern Division with three teams based in the state of
New York and another in
Miami, and a Western Division with teams in
Cleveland,
Chicago,
San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The AAFC's
southern California franchise, which was to compete directly with the newly-relocated Rams of the NFL, was known as the Los Angeles Dons. The leader of the ownership group was
Benjamin Lindheimer, a California businessman and longtime football fan. Other owners included Hollywood notables
Louis B. Mayer,
Bob Hope,
Bing Crosby, and actor
Don Ameche. He was the head coach of the NFL's
Washington Redskins in
1944 and
1945 before jumping over to the rival AAFC for its debut 1946 season. Although never filling the mammoth facility, the club made a show of offering vast numbers of tickets for sale at reasonable prices, including 40,000 reserved seats for each home contest priced at $2.50, 15,000 general admission seats costing $1.50, and 8,000 children's tickets priced at just sixty cents. The Dons took a first quarter lead on a 55-yard pass from
quarterback "Chuckin' Charlie" O'Rourke to
Bernie Nygren and never looked back, triumphing 20–14 over the visitors from New York. The Dons opened the inaugural season with three wins and a tie before a rough spell; they finished in third place in the AAFC's Western Division with a record of 7–5–2, out of the playoffs.
Development For most of their existence, the Dons compiled an average record, and never qualified for the AAFC playoffs. This was mainly because they were in the same division as the league's two most powerful teams, the
Cleveland Browns and
San Francisco 49ers. Unlike the Browns, 49ers, and
Baltimore Colts, the Dons were not one of the AAFC teams that remained intact when the AAFC merged with the NFL in : they merged with the crosstown
Rams of the older league after the
1949 season.
Legacy One Dons player,
William Radovich, formerly of the NFL's
Detroit Lions, filed
a lawsuit against the NFL after being
blacklisted from playing or working in it afterwards. It led to the
Supreme Court ruling, in the case of
Radovich v. National Football League, that professional football, unlike baseball, was subject to
antitrust laws. ==Pro Football Hall of Famers==