1962 AFL draft mystery

[ehaight]

While trying to research signing dates of some Raiders players in 1962 and 1963 I ran into info about the 1962 AFL draft that doesn't match up with what's out there in the pro football encyclopedic world. Pro Football Reference simply lists 34 rounds without a draft date or further details. The Pro Football Hall of Fame site says the first 25 rounds took place on December 2, 1961 with rounds 26-34 happening on December 16, 1961. The 1996 edition of Total Football identifies the same dates and further explains that the final nine rounds were future picks and that the extra rounds were added to give AFL teams more leverage vs the NFL to sign those players. That doesn't match up with contemporary accounts, though.

The first 25 picks did, in fact, take place on December 2, as confirmed by numerous newspaper accounts. Nothing appeared in the papers in mid-December about additional picks. However, on February 23, 1962, a raft of stories said the league had added three rounds of redshirt picks, with the names corresponding to rounds 26-28 of the current-day account of the draft. Some sources said it had been a secret draft, but the league quickly disavowed any secret intent.

That left six rounds still unaccounted for and here's where the mystery comes in. There is no mention of additional picks after February 23, but a story in the Oakland Tribune on November 30, 1961 provides some interesting info. The AFL *had* conducted a "sneak draft" a week before the official December 2 date and when the story leaked, commissioner Joe Foss voided the selections. In the November 30 story, the uncredited author said the Raiders would still likely get Roman Gabriel with the first overall pick. Farther down the story, the Raiders were said to be trying to sign seven previous redshirts, two of which had been included in the 1961 draft (Clark Miller and Chuck Lamson), and five of which correspond to the names currently listed as the 29th through 33rd round picks that were supposed to have been selected on December 16 more than two weeks after the story was printed (Leon Donahue, Pete Nicklas, Bob Elliott, Bob Richards, and Eugene White). Further digging finds stories saying that one or another of those players had been picked in a redshirt draft in the spring of 1961.

Bill Worrell, Oakland's "34th" pick in the 1962 draft was harder to track down, but he had quit school after having been selected by the 49ers as a redshirt in the 1961 NFL draft and had quit Niners camp in August 1961. A San Francisco Examiner story on August 4 detailing Worrell's departure said that the Raiders held his AFL signing rights.

I poked around at some of the other teams' listed late picks and found similar information, where I could find any info at all, as information about AFL player signings and signing rights was still pretty spotty at that point.

The upshot of all this is that the encyclopedias are almost certainly incorrect and that, if anything, the league's 29th through 34th rounds now assigned to the 1962 draft should, at the very least, be appended to the 1961 draft instead, if not designated as a completely separate selection meeting. I'd certainly be interested to know what the sources were for the information in Total Football and the Hall of Fame.

Ultimately, I was unable to find any news stories from the spring of 1961 reporting an AFL redshirt draft, but it sure seems like there was one and that the players where those now listed in the late rounds of the 1962 draft. Does anyone have more information on the topic?

[GameBeforeTheMoney]

Nice research.

I would look up the names of draft picks on Pro Football Transactions. This site has a lot of information on signing and trading dates that are difficult to find elsewhere. Next, I would find a newspaper the day after a signing - or even up to a week to 10 days after the signing and see if you can find more info about the actual draft. With a little bit of time, I'm guessing you could find quite a bit. Keep us posted.

https://www.prosportstransactions.com/f ... /index.htm

[GameBeforeTheMoney]

Oh, also release/trade dates can be helpful as well. For example, often, when a player is released, an article might describe when/how the player was originally acquired.

[GameBeforeTheMoney]

Sorry for three straight replies, but I thought of one last major source of info for you - media guides. Those can be found on the Internet Archive and members have posted links to it in other threads. You can often find details about the players in the bio sections. Also, there are usually draft sections in those guides also.

[Jay Z]

Jacque MacKinnon, listed D33 in the 1962 AFL draft for San Diego, played for the 1961 Chargers and signed with them May 17.

Duane Allen, listed D33 in the 1962 AFL draft for Denver, played for the 1961 Rams.

Everisto Nino, listed D31 in the 1962 AFL draft for Dallas, was signed by the 1961 49ers on 7/3 and released later in camp.

And Bill Worrell, as you mentioned.

As you mentioned, rounds 26-28 were 100% players drafted in the 1962 NFL draft. Since there are four players from rounds 31-34 that signed with teams in 1961, it seems a safe bet that those rounds did occur far earlier in 1961.

Rounds 29-30 are all players drafted in the 1961 NFL draft. However, none of them were signed by any professional football team. So it's possible that those rounds were a separate "clean up" of players not yet assigned rights to AFL teams. 

[ehaight]

Yeah, the MacKinnon and Allen situations make it pretty clear that those rounds don't fit in with the official narrative. As for the 29th and 30th rounds, the Raiders "30th" round pick, Pete Nicklas, was mentioned in the November 30, 1961 story in the Oakland Tribune, along with their "29th" round pick, Leon Donahue. They were both lumped in with the later picks in the story. Nicklas had been drafted by the Colts in the 1961 NFL draft, but wasn't signed by the Raiders until late February 1962. So, none of it squares with the official record, not that any official folks probably care at this point.

[ehaight]

And your thought about the league assigning signing rights to some stragglers sounds pretty plausible, which is what the Total Football authors were hinting at, too, even if the dates didn't make sense. Too bad Bob Carroll isn't still with us so we can bug him about it.