<P> NFL integration occurred only when the Cleveland Rams wanted to move to Los Angeles, and the venue, the Los Angeles Coliseum, required them to integrate their team . They then signed two black players, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode . Other NFL teams eventually followed suit, but Marshall refused to integrate the Redskins until forced to by the Kennedy administration as a pre-condition for using D.C. Stadium (now RFK Stadium). In spite of this open bias, Marshall was elected to the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963 . In 1946, the Cleveland Browns of a rival Professional Football league, the All - America Football Conference, signed two black players . By 1960, the NFL's new competitor, the American Football League, actively recruited players from smaller predominantly black colleges that had been largely ignored by the NFL, giving those schools' black players the opportunity to play professional football . Early AFL teams averaged more blacks than did their NFL counterparts . </P> <P> However, despite the NFL's previous segregationist policies, the clear competitive advantage of AFL teams with liberal signing policies affected the NFL's drafts . By 1969, a comparison of the two leagues' championship team photos showed the AFL's Chiefs with 23 black players out of 51 players (45%) pictured, while the NFL's Vikings had 11 blacks, of 42 players (26%) in the photo . Chiefs players have been quoted as saying that one motivating factor in their defeat of the Vikings in Super Bowl IV was their pride in their diverse squad . Recent surveys have shown that the current, post-merger NFL is approximately 67--71% non-white (this includes African Americans, Polynesians, non-white Hispanics, Asians, and people that are mixed race), significantly higher than the national average; certain positions, such as cornerback and running back, are almost entirely black . </P> <P> In 1946, after World War II, the struggling league had headquarters in Chicago . Commissioner Elmer Layden could not handle the pressure of the AFL set up in the same year . DeBenneville Bert Bell was hired to be the commissioner, and he accepted the office only on condition that the headquarters would move to Philadelphia . Bell had played for the Eagles, and for Penn before that . Till 1959, when he died of a heart attack at Steelers--Eagles game at Franklin Field, the headquarters of NFL were on Walnut Street in Philadelphia, and Bert Bell had transformed the NFL into a commercial and popular success . Within a short period of his death, the NFL offices were moved to Manhattan, where they remain to this day . The NFL held a monopoly on professional football in the United States for most of the 1950s, a rare occurrence for a league that had at least one competing league in every year since 1934 . By 1960, a group of potential professional football owners that would become known as the Foolish Club had become frustrated with their efforts to buy into the NFL (some were NFL franchise minority owners such as Harry Wismer and Ralph Wilson; others, such as Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, had tried but failed to buy NFL teams) and formed a new league, the American Football League . It was the eighth professional football league to use the name and the fourth to be universally considered a major - league competitor to the NFL . The AFL would prove to be the NFL's most formidable challenger to date . </P> <P> By the middle of the 1960s competition for players, including separate college drafts, was driving up player salaries . In 1965, in the most high - profile such contest and a major boost to the AFL, University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets rather than the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals for a then - record $427,000 . In 1966, the NFL's New York Giants broke an informal agreement and signed placekicker Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills . Then AFL Commissioner Al Davis embarked on a campaign to sign players away from the NFL, especially quarterbacks, but behind the scenes a number of NFL team owners began action to end the detrimental rivalry . </P>

Where was the first nfl football game played