LA Dons

George Bozeka visits the Pigpen once again to talk about an interesting AAFC franchise, the Los Angeles Dons and their unique and powerful ownership group.

The Los Angeles Dons were one team that had great ownership, marketing and players but appear to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Dons in their first season of 1946 were in a battle with another team that was already established for the hearts of the fans of Souther California. The Cleveland Rams who had just won the 1945 NFL Title were moving to LA as part of the League's westward expansion in part because a new rival League, the All-American Football Conference, with their leader Arch Ward were placing a franchise in the City of Angels, the Dons.

The ownership of the new AAFC franchise looked like a Hollywood A-list as Don Ameche, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Pat O'Brien and Hollywood studio owner Louis B. Mayer were partners in the venture. It was even rumored that Clark Gabel was possibly a silent parnter. Their first battle, just like the Rams was to secure the publicly funded LA Coliseum. Los Angeles authorities had concerns over racial representation on teams that would play in their facility.  The Dons and the Rams both added African-American players to their rosters in historic moves. The commission for the stadium wound up granting permission for both clubs of the competing leagues to share the field on alternating weekends.

Although never filling the mammoth facility, the Dons went into some great marketing sprograms to provide respectable numbers of tickets for sale at reasonable prices, including 40,000 reserved seats for each home contest priced at $2.50, 15,000 general admission seats costing $1.50, and 8,000 children's tickets priced at just sixty cents. The sold a season ticket package at the 50 -yard line for $21.00.

The team played its first regular season home AAFC game in 1946 versus a League foe the Brooklyn Dodgers on September 13, 1946 in before a Friday night crowd of 18,955. This was the first time professional football game that had ever been played in the Coliseum. The Dons opened the inaugural season with three wins and a tie before a dry spell and ended up finishing in third place in the AAFC's Western Division with a record of 7–5–2, out of the playoffs. Unfortunatley for them they were set in the same division as the very good San Francisco 49ers and the powerful Cleveland Browns. 

The Browns won all four AAFC Championship titles and had but four losses in those seasons. Two were from the LA Dons. Some of the stars that played for the Dons were Heisman winner Angelo Bertolli, Hall of Famer Len Ford, Chuckin' Charlie O'Rourke and Bernie Nygren. Bertolli was fresh off a great collegiate career at Notre Dame and played in the Atomic Bowl in Japan. Len Ford was defensive end that played from 1948 to 1950 with te Dons. Cleveland Coach Paul Brown remembered him after the AAFC merger and recruited Ford to the Browns during the early NFL seasons. He played college football for the University of Michigan and professional football for not only the Los Angeles Dons and Cleveland Browns but also Green Bay Packers as his career spanned throught the 1958 season. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1976. Glen Dobbs the outstanding kicker most notably in the CFL, also spent a couple of seasons as a member of the Dons. The Dons franchise was dissolved when the AAFC was merged into the NFL in 1950, but the older organization wanted on the Browns, 49ers and the Baltimore Colts to join intact. The rest of the teams of the AAFC including the Dons were spread around to the other NFL franchises.