As a fighter ace who received the Medal of Honor after shooting down 26 Japanese planes over Guadalcanal during World War II, Joe Foss was accustomed to bold action. He was not afraid to think big, either.
So when Foss -- then the commissioner of the upstart American Football League -- sent a letter to his NFL counterpart, Pete Rozelle, in December 1963, it was not totally out of character for him to suggest a matchup between the leagues’ respective champions.
"The establishment of a World Series of professional football is necessary to the continued progress of our game if we're to be true sportsmen and not merely businessmen in sports," Foss wrote in his seven-paragraph letter. "Pro football has now attained the status where many regard it as our national sport. What could be more fitting then than for us to match baseball in having an annual classic between the leagues."
While Rozelle initially balked at Foss' proposal, that classic eventually became a reality -- and what a spectacle it has become. When the two-time reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs meet the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans, it could challenge the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 for the prestigious title of the most-watched event in television history.
Foss’s influence over the birth of the Super Bowl is undeniable. While he was not the only AFL official calling for a championship game against the more established NFL, the leagues were only two months from a merger and less than a year before Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers cruised to victory in the first Super Bowl by the time he stepped down as AFL commissioner in 1966.
It didn't matter the role -- acclaimed Marine Corps aviator, the head of a sports league or two-term governor of his native South Dakota -- Foss did not cower in the face of tough decisions. He first became captivated with flying after watching Charles Lindbergh at an airshow, and when Foss was a teenager, his father paid $1.50 for his son's first plane ride. Foss was hooked on becoming a pilot, so determined to fulfill his goal that he hitchhiked 300 miles in 1940 to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve and enroll in the Naval Aviation Cadet program.
As the executive officer of Marine Fighting Squadron 121, Marine Air Group 11, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, Foss never displayed his rare aerial skills more than above Guadalcanal. In the Allies' first major offensive against the Japanese during World War II, he also survived a close call: After he took out one Japanese Zero fighter in his first dogfight on Oct. 13, 1942, he was subsequently attacked by three enemy planes. With Foss dodging tracer bullets and his F4F Wildcat's engine burning badly, his life in the balance, he somehow managed to return to Henderson Field safely.
"I learned two important lessons that day," Foss later said. "... I had to stay alert to stay alive, and no one ever caught me asleep at the switch again or so intent on an attack that I failed to keep looking around."
The incident did not rattle Foss for long. He recovered to shoot down 22 more enemy aircraft during a prolific six-week period in the South Pacific that autumn, then followed by taking out three Japanese planes in January 1943. Covering 60 missions, his squadron -- nicknamed Foss' Flying Circus -- was credited with 72 confirmed kills, with an impressive 26 attributed to its fearless leader.
"The impulse and the act must be one," Foss wrote in "A Proud American: The Autobiography of Joe Foss." "Skilled fighter pilots have one thing in common: They are fast. The airplane becomes an extension of your body, like an arm or a leg. If somebody's coming at you with a red-hot poker, you instinctively get out of the way. You don't have to think about it. You just do it.
"In the air, whoever acts smartest and fastest is going to be the survivor."
After tying legendary World War I aviator Eddie Rickenbacker's record for confirmed kills in helping the Allies prevail at Guadalcanal -- where "his remarkable flying skill, inspiring leadership, and indomitable fighting spirit," as his Medal of Honor citation stated, were on full display -- Foss was presented with the U.S. military's top individual honor by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in May 1943.
Besides his time as a Marine, where he rose to the rank of major, Foss helped start the South Dakota Air National Guard. He was still in the Guard while spearheading the AFL, and despite pulling double duty, he found enough time to challenge the powers-that-be at the NFL. Foss' letter showed he knew what he was doing.
"Joe's intent was to get publicity and be cocky," Joe Horrigan of the Pro Football Hall of Fame said. "He was saying, 'We'll meet you anytime, anywhere.'"
Bringing about such innovations as the two-point conversion, embracing the forward pass as an offensive weapon and placing players' names on their jerseys, the AFL transformed professional football. All 10 of the league's franchises joined the NFL for the 1970 season, including one that started out as the Dallas Texans. The same year that Foss -- who died on New Year's Day in 2003 at the age of 87 -- sent out his prescient letter, the Texans relocated and became what we know them as today: the league's most talked-about and successful team of this decade, the Kansas City Chiefs.
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