The Los Angeles Dons were an American football team in the newly formed football league the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) from 1946 to 1949, and played their home games in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Dons were the first professional football team to play a regular season game in Los Angeles, California, two weeks before the first game of the rival Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, who had moved from Cleveland. Other owners included Hollywood notables Louis B. Mayer, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and actor Don Ameche. He was the head coach of the NFL's Washington Redskins in 1944 and 1945 before jumping over to the rival AAFC for its debut 1946 season. Although never filling the mammoth facility, the club made a show of offering vast 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 Dons took a first quarter lead on a 55-yard pass from quarterback "Chuckin' Charlie" O'Rourke to Bernie Nygren and never looked back, triumphing 20–14 over the visitors from New York. The Dons opened the inaugural season with three wins and a tie before a rough spell; they finished in third place in the AAFC's Western Division with a record of 7–5–2, out of the playoffs.

Development

For most of their existence, the Dons compiled an average record, and never qualified for the AAFC playoffs. This was mainly because they were in the same division as the league's two most powerful teams, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers. Unlike the Browns, 49ers, and Baltimore Colts, the Dons were not one of the AAFC teams that remained intact when the AAFC merged with the NFL in : they merged with the crosstown Rams of the older league after the 1949 season.

Legacy

One Dons player, William Radovich, formerly of the NFL's Detroit Lions, filed a lawsuit against the NFL after being blacklisted from playing or working in it afterwards. It led to the Supreme Court ruling, in the case of Radovich v. National Football League, that professional football, unlike baseball, was subject to antitrust laws.

Pro Football Hall of Famers

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="5" style="color:white; background-color:#CF2D1E;"|Los Angeles Dons Hall of Famers

|-

! colspan="5" style="color:white; background-color:#001D5B;"|Players

|-

! No.

! Name

! Position

! Tenure

! Inducted

|-

| 50 || Len Ford || DE || 1948–1949 || 1976

|}

Season-by-season

|-

|1946 || 7 || 5 || 2 || 3rd AAFC West || --

|-

|1947 || 7 || 7 || 0 || 3rd AAFC West || --

|-

|1948 || 7 || 7 || 0 || 3rd AAFC West || --

|-

|1949 || 4 || 8 || 0 || 5th AAFC || --

|-

!Totals || 25 || 27 || 2 || ||

References

  • Los Angeles Dons Franchise Encyclopedia, pro-football-reference.com/