Editing All-America Football Conference (section)

===Maneuvers and intrigue===

[[Dan Topping]], owner of the NFL's [[Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL)|Brooklyn Tigers]],<ref name="Dodgers">Known as the Dodgers from 1930 to 1943.</ref> wished to move his team from [[Ebbets Field]] to the much larger [[Yankee Stadium (1923)|Yankee Stadium]]. [[New York Giants]] owner [[Tim Mara]] used his territorial rights to block the move. He had good reason: the Yankees had displaced the Giants as New York's premier baseball team after moving into [[Yankee Stadium (1923)|The House That Ruth Built]], three rival football leagues had planted teams there hoping to duplicate that feat, and Topping (of [[Anaconda Copper]]) was significantly wealthier than Mara.

Topping responded by buying into the baseball Yankees and transferring his football club to the AAFC. Most of his players followed. His renamed New York Yankees were rewarded with $100,000 from each of the other seven AAFC teams while the AAFC's initial New York investor withdrew.<ref name="Officialhl-AAFC" /> (Note that the AAFC Brooklyn Dodgers were a separate entity never associated with Topping's team.)

Shortly after Topping defected, the NFL owners fired Commissioner Layden, replacing him with Pittsburgh Steelers co-owner [[Bert Bell]]. Bell had already made a major contribution to the league: the [[NFL draft]], begun in 1935, was his idea.

Meanwhile, [[Dan Reeves (NFL owner)|Dan Reeves]]' [[Cleveland Rams]] had consistently lost money, despite winning the 1945 NFL title. Compounding his problems, the local AAFC competition already looked strong: Arthur McBride was aggressively marketing the Browns, and coach Paul Brown was an Ohio icon. Accordingly, Reeves proposed to move the Rams to Los Angeles.

With two teams planned for California, the AAFC had national aspirations. The NFL's thinking was more modest: it rejected Reeves' move because of travel expenses. After the NFL refused to consider his second choice (Dallas), Reeves threatened to move his team to the AAFC. Having already lost Topping, the NFL reconsidered and approved the Los Angeles move.<ref name="MacCambridge16">MacCambridge, pg. 16</ref>

It was unprecedented for the NFL champion to move at all, let alone partly to avoid an unproven rival. On the other hand, the NFL would now face the AAFC as a national rather than regional league, and the AAFC would not have a West Coast monopoly.

Rather than hold a collegiate draft, Crowley encouraged his owners to sign as many good players as possible to compete with the NFL. However, this open market favored Paul Brown, who had built the most extensive recruitment network in all of football. He thus had a head start in signing top players coming out of the colleges and military. Years later, Crowley acknowledged this was a fatal mistake, as it planted the seeds for the Browns' near-total dominance of the league.<ref name="Total2">Total Football II, ''Ch. 2, The History of the National Football League'', by Jack Clary</ref>