1960s
The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. Informally, it can also include a few years at the end of the preceding decade or the beginning of the following decade.
Several trends emerged in the Sixties, including the emergence of professional sports (the NBA would reach new heights of popularity behind superstars like Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, and the NFL introduced the Super Bowl, which would eventually become the biggest sporting event in the world) at the expense of amateur athletics. The major pro leagues also got considerably larger in the 1960s: Major League Baseball added several western franchises through expansion and relocation, the NBA expanded from eight to seventeen teams before the decade was through, and even the NHL (long a six-team league that was an afterthought on the American sports landscape) saw rapid growth, doubling their number of franchises in 1967 alone.
With the growth of the professional sports leagues, sports became more of a business than ever before during the 1960s. In 1969, Curt Flood challenged the St. Louis Cardinals' right to trade him to the Philadelphia Phillies; while his case would eventually be defeated, he opened the door for free agency in modern sports. Additionally, rival leagues began cropping up to challenge the financial domination of the traditional pro powers. The AFL began operating in 1960, and would forever change the way pro football was played -- first by emphasizing the forward pass far more than the older, more staid NFL, and second by forcing the NFL to accept a merger in 1970. The AFL's success would also inspire the WHA to go up against the NHL in the 1970s.
Superstars became more prevalent than teams in the Sixties, starting when Wilt Chamberlain scored an astonishing 100 points in an NBA on December 8, 1961, and would finish the 1962 season with a staggering scoring average of 50.4 points per game. However, the Boston Celtics, long the embodiment of team play and unselfishness, would continue their dominance well into the decade, winning a record 8 consecutive NBA titles from 1959 to 1966 -- with many coming at the expense of Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors. The NFL's Green Bay Packers were the dominant pro football team of the decade, and they, too, built their success on a team system (crafted by legendary coach Vince Lombardi) rather than superstar players. One counter-example is the New York Yankees, who did win with superstars in the 1960s, dominating the first half of the decade thanks to some of the greatest players in baseball history: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, and Elston Howard, among others. But maybe the biggest story of the decade in baseball was another team-first group, the 1969 "Amazin'" New York Mets, who won the World Series against all odds with a cast of largely no-name players. So while superstars became a phenomenon in the Sixties, the key to winning still seemed to be old-fashioned teamwork.
College Basketball saw its racial barriers finally get broken during the Sixties, first when Loyola (Chicago) broke an unwritten rule against playing more than three black players at any given time en route to the 1963 NCAA Championship, and again in 1966, when Texas Western's all-black lineup stunned the University of Kentucky in the title game. UCLA dominated most of the decade, winning championships in 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, and 1969 under coach John Wooden -- who had the foresight to use another great African-American player, Lew Alcindor, as the centerpiece of his powerful teams.
Most historians agree that the 1960s marked the beginning of the modern era of sports, thanks to the introduction of television coverage to virtually every big game; the advent of free agency, franchise relocation, and expansion; and major steps being taken toward racial equality in sports.
