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The American Football League, the NFL and the Media

In the 1960s, Tex Maule and the magazine he was associated with, Sports Illustrated, were exemplary of the way many sports reporters forgot what should be the first rule of their profession: "maintain impartiality".

Maule was known to his contemporaries as "an NFL guy", and rather than report the pro football scene objectively, he resorted to ridiculing and belittling the efforts of the American Football League and its players.  The reasons for this treatment are not clear, but may have reflected what seems to be a common fault of the profession, all tied to that lack of impartiality: writers sometimes associate so closely with the teams and leagues they cover, that they evidently feel that they are representatives of those leagues and teams.  They feel loyalty and partisanship for "their" teams, and express dislike for opponents or competitors.  (Some would characterize them as "homers".)

Even the AFL's brightest stars and greatest moments did not escape Maule's vitriol.   When he wrote the story of Super Bowl III, Maule later admitted he had trouble with it because he felt the Jets had been "more lucky than good" in defeating the Colts.     Maule's irrational contempt for the AFL was known to all, especially his co-workers.  Fellow SI feature writer Robert H. Boyle says that after the Jets' win, Maule did not show up at the office for several weeks!   Other media people knew Maule's bias as well, as shown by the comments of AFL Hall of Famer Curt Gowdy during the NBC-TV broadcast of the game.

For a good portion of the 1960s, Sports Illustrated often reinforced their bias with articles on the NFL which were accompanied by striking full-color action photos, while any AFL stories that managed to survive the editors' scissors usually had two types of photos: none, or black-and-white.  In 1991, SI even flaunted the policy in their "Replay" feature. 

For this slanted reporting, Maule and Sports Illustrated, as representatives of the print media who refused to give the AFL its due, are installed as typical members of the "American Football League Hall of Infamy".  "Dishonorable Mentions" include William N. Wallace of the New York Times and Jerry Green of the Detroit Free Press, and all the other "NFL apologists" whose awe of the established league crippled their ability to report with impartiality.

Bud Adams

CBS-TV

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