During his tenure as NFL commissioner between 1960 to 1989, Pete Rozelle helped the league achieve enormous growth and stability. Rozelle, who was the 33-year-old GM of the Rams when he was voted commissioner on the 23rd ballot, accomplished a series of highly challenging feats early in his reign that boosted the league’s popularity and maintained peace. In 1962, Rozelle negotiated the NFL’s first league-wide television contract, which featured the equal sharing of revenues. In 1964, he suspended high-profile players Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for one year for betting on football games to ensure the league’s integrity. Rozelle deftly negotiated – and won congressional approval for – an NFL / AFL merger in 1966, and later used his talents as a negotiator and persuader to secure a restructuring of the NFL into two conferences of 13 teams each. Under Rozelle's watch, the NFL also created Monday Night Football, expanded the regular season and more than doubled its number of teams to 28. All the while, the Super Bowl became the most popular sporting event in America.