rival All-America Football Conference began play
On September 6, 1946 The rival All-America Football Conference began play with eight teams. AAFC’s first game, was on September 6, 1946, the Cleveland Browns hosted the Miami Seahawks, winning 44–0 before a professional football record crowd of more than 60,000 fans. This game marked the end of pro football’s color line. The Browns’ Marion Motley and Bill Willis, both future Hall of Famers, became the first black players to play pro football since 1933 (the NFL Rams, who had also signed two black players, UCLA great Kenny Washington and future actor Woody Strode, opened several weeks later). Notably, this was before Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, as Robinson was then playing for the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers’ top farm team. In coming years, the AAFC would tap this talent pool more than the NFL, with 20 black players compared with the NFL’s seven in 1949
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