AFL Inaugural Meeting — Broncos 31, Raiders 14

The Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders met for the first time on October 2, 1960, during the American Football League's inaugural season. Denver defeated Oakland 31–14 in that regular-season meeting, marking the beginning of what became one of the AFL/NFL's persistent divisional rivalries [4][11]. The game took place as part of a fledgling league schedule designed to build regional interest; each franchise was establishing identity and roster foundations. Specific box-score details from that inaugural season are recorded in historical team logs and head-to-head records [4]. The winner, Denver, used balance on offense and opportunistic defense to create separation, while Oakland — in its first year under head coach Eddie Erdelatz and later Marty Feldman that season — was still assembling its personnel [11]. Contemporary coverage of AFL games emphasized growth rather than entrenched rivalry, but the October 2 meeting is notable because it created the annual pairing that produced repeated divisional stakes over decades. The first matchup's 31–14 score is preserved in Pro-Football-Reference's head-to-head listing and in historical summaries of both franchises' early AFL years [4][11].

This game matters because it is the recorded origin point of a recurring divisional series that would shape both franchises' histories. The October 2, 1960 meeting established the Broncos–Raiders as regular opponents through AFL scheduling, creating context for future playoff confrontations, dramatic regular-season finishes and cultural clashes between the teams' ownerships and fan bases [11]. The fixture's continuity linked the clubs across eras — from AFL beginnings to NFL merger — making the first game a useful anchor for the rivalry's timeline [4][11].

Following the inaugural meeting, the Broncos and Raiders continued to meet annually as AFL opponents; after the AFL–NFL merger their contests retained divisional importance and accumulated into a long head-to-head record tracked by historians and statisticians [4][11]. The early result contributed to a pattern of mutual familiarity that later produced high-stakes games, off-field disputes and notable player confrontations across decades. The first game's primary long-term effect is procedural: it created a repeated pairing whose later incidents came to define the rivalry's narrative [11].