Football: Professional

FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL

From Rags to Riches

At the beginning of the 1920s professional football was in disarray. The play-for-pay sport was twenty-five years old in 1920, but few people took notice. Tickets to games could hardly be given away. Players met in the lobby of a hotel on a Sunday morning, discussed some plays, and then put them into the game that afternoon. A teammate in one game might be an opponent in the next. What league organization existed was merely a loose confederation. Four men changed the game into a popular, rapidly growing spectator sport before the decade was over: Joe E. Carr, Tim Mara, Red Grange, and George Halas.

The National Football League

On 17 September 1920 the American Professional Football Association was founded in Ralph Hays's automobile agency in Canton, Ohio. The great former Olympian and football star Jim Thorpe was elected president; Stanley Cofall, the former Notre Dame star and coach of the Massillon Tigers, was elected vice president. George Halas was also among those present. Each of the eleven franchise teams paid $100 to be part of the organization. These eleven teams were the Canton Bulldogs; the Cleveland Indians; the Dayton Triangles; the Akron Professionals; the Massillon Tigers; the Chicago Cardinals; the Chicago Staleys; and yet unnamed clubs in Rochester, New York; Rock Island, Illinois; Muncie, Indiana; and Hammond, Indiana. The association, however, lacked direction until 1921 when Joe E. Carr, an experienced sports promoter, transformed it into the well-managed National Football League, as the association was renamed in 1922. Carr realigned teams, and Green Bay, Buffalo, Detroit, Columbus, and Cincinnati franchises replaced Massillon, Muncie, and Hammond teams. Although it was in the smallest market, the Green Bay team, founded in 1921 by Earl Louis "Curly" Lambeau for $500, provided one of the most consistent spectator markets in the league.

True League Prosperity

The turning point for professional football occurred in 1925 when Tim Mara paid $2,500 for the New York Giants franchise although he had not seen a football game in his life. His purchase of the franchise proved to be a brilliant business venture, for it coincided with Red Grange's entry into the pro game. The huge New York sports market provided 76,000 paying customers to watch Grange and the Chicago Bears play the New York Giants on 6 December 1925. Such a crowd helped insure financial stability for Mara, Grange, and George Halas's Chicago team.

Halas and Grange

Grange was signed to play professional football by George Halas, the former University of Illinois great. When Halas finished playing college football, his coach, Bob Zuppke (later Grange's coach), bemoaned his player's graduation, saying, "Just as a player begins to get good and learn something about this game, he graduates." Zuppke's words stuck with Halas, who decided to remedy the absence of postgraduation football. Halas, hired as the athletic director and football coach of the Staley Starch Works of Decatur, Illinois, formed the Chicago Staleys. He approached his professional team with a college coach's sense of organization, demanding daily practice, for example. Halas at first served as coach, captain, and end for the team. Later he became the team owner and in 1922 renamed his team the Chicago Bears. With Grange on the team, the Bears became a powerful club and financial success. Grange, who had been the most publicized college player in the country, created national interest and drew front-page newspaper coverage—the boost the sport needed to ensure its financial future. From 1925 on, professional football succeeded and eventually grew into one of America's greatest spectator attractions.

Sources:

Arthur Daley, "Professional Football," in Sport's Golden Age, edited by Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper, 1948);

The Encyclopedia of Football, edited by Roger Treat (New York: Barnes, 1959).