December 4, 1921: The Staley Swindle

December 4, 1921, 100 years ago: The Chicago Staleys beat the Buffalo All-Americans, 10-7 at Cubs Park in Chicago. The Staleys thus win an NFL Championship that the All-Americans thought they had already won. It becomes known as the Staley Swindle.

The Buffalo All-Stars were a professional football team founded in 1915, as the Buffalo All-Stars. They became the Buffalo Niagaras in 1918, the Buffalo Prospects in 1919, and the Buffalo All-Americans in 1920, as charter members of the American Professional Football Association.

The APFA was founded by the owners of the member teams, including George Halas, a former University of Illinois end who was now the head coach, general manager, and starting end on both offense and defense, for the Decatur Staleys, as they were a "company team" (in English sport, they would say "works side") for the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company of Decatur, Illinois, makers of starchers and sweeteners. And Halas was then employed by them.

After a playing the 1920 season in Decatur, Halas got permission to move the team to Chicago for 1921, signing actual football players, not just Staley employees who had once played football. Company owner Gene Staley offered to sell the team to Halas, on the condition that it keep the name for 1 more season. He agreed.

At the time, not every team played by an APFA team was another APFA team. Nevertheless, the Staleys won their 1st 7 games of 1921, beating non-APFA team the Waukegan Legion (of Illinois) in their opener, and then APFA teams the Rock Island Independents (Illinois) twice, the Rochester Jeffersons (New York State), the Dayton Triangles (Ohio), the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians (those last 2 named for the baseball teams in town).

In contrast, all of the All-Americans' games that season were against APFA teams, and they won their 1st 6, beating the Hammond Pros (Indiana), the Columbus Panhandles (Ohio), the New York Brickley Giants (led by former Harvard star Charley Brickley and failing to get many fans into the Polo Grounds), the Jeffersons, the Tigers and the Indians. This was followed by ties against teams from outside Cleveland, the defending Champion Akron Pros and the Canton Bulldogs.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not permit professional sports to be played on Sundays, making it difficult for teams from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to get into the new league while still playing on Saturday, when college football soaked up the market.

So, to make more money -- and, remember, in those days, most football players weren't the 300-pound behemoths of today, or even the 250-pounders of the 1950s -- some men played pro games on Saturdays and Sundays, to make more money. Some were playing for the Philadelphia Quakers on Saturday, then taking a train to Buffalo, where they played for the All-Americans on Sunday.

But in mid-November, the APFA found out about this. It violated league policy, and forced the players to decide. And 5 of the Quakers/All-Americans decided to stick with Philadelphia. Fortunately, the league permitted the All-Americans to hire players from a team that folded in midseason, the Detroit Tigers, so they could have a full roster the rest of the way.

On November 24, Thanksgiving Day, the All-Americans played the Staleys at Cubs Park on the North Side of Chicago. Buffalo emerged victorious, 7-6. Three days later, they beat the Triangles, and had just 1 more game to go, home to Akron. They were 8-0-2. Their fullback, Elmer Oliphant, ended up leading the league in these categories: Field goals (5), points-after-touchdown (26), overall scoring (47 points) and touchdown passes (7 -- it was mostly a running game then).

Elmer Oliphant

Three days after Thanksgiving, the Staleys played a team founded in 1919, but making their league debut in 1921: The Green Bay Packers. Chicago won, 7-0. Now, they were 8-1. And Halas challenged the All-Americans to a rematch.

George Halas. Yes, old "Papa Bear" was a player,

and, by the standards of his time, a very good one.

The All-Americans agreed to play them on December 4, again at Cubs Park, on one condition: That the game would be considered an exhibition game, designed solely to generate gate receipts for the teams, and wouldn't count in the standings. Halas told them that he accepted this.

There was a problem, and, as would happen with Buffalo sports teams in the future, the All-Americans had no one to blame but themselves: They played a game that did count the day before, December 3. They beat Akron again, 14-0 at Buffalo Baseball Park. Then they got on a train to Chicago, to play again the very next day.

They did so knowing that they wouldn't have the former Detroit Tigers players they had signed. Because the Tigers were allowed to reassemble for one last game, to make up some of the money they owed, by playing the Detroit Maroons. That game ended in a 0-0 tie.

So the All-Americans, depleted in terms of manpower and physical energy, took the field at Clark and Addison Streets on the North Side of Chicago, and played the Chicago Staleys. Chicago scored a touchdown in the 1st quarter, when Guy Chamberlin intercepted Oliphant, and returned the ball 75 yards for a touchdown. Buffalo equalized in the 3rd, when they blocked a punt, and Clarence "Steamer" Horning recovered it in the end zone.

But, later in the 3rd quarter, Dutch Sternaman -- at that point, Halas' co-owner, and brother of another teammate, Joey Sternaman -- kicked a 20-yard field goal to give the Staleys a 10-7 lead, and that held to the end of the game. Attendance: 12,000.

December 4, 1921 was, of course, a Sunday. These other APFA games were played that day, all previously scheduled, thus unwittingly deepening the case for the Staleys:

* The Akron Pros beat the Chicago Cardinals, 7-0 at Normal Field on the South Side of Chicago.

* As mentioned, the Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Maroons (not an APFA team) played to a tie, 0-0 at Navin Field, which would be renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938 and Tiger Stadium in 1961.

* The Columbus Panhandles beat the Louisville Brecks, 6-0 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky. What's a "Breck"? The team was founded by the Louisville Breckenridge club, named after (though misspelling) John C. Breckinridge, who served Kentucky in both houses of Congress before becoming President James Buchanan's Vice President -- and, near the end of the Civil War, the Confederate Secretary of War.

* The Evansville Crimson Giants beat the Indianapolis Football Club (not an APFA team), 17-0 at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana.

* The Minneapolis Marines played away to Sioux City Football Club (not an APFA team) in Iowa, and lost 10-0.

* And the Green Bay Packers played fellow Wisconsans the Racine Legion to a 3-3 tie, at Hagemeister Park in Green Bay.

And then, the other shoe dropped: Halas got in touch with the other team owners, and gained their support, and contacted the league office, arguing that the game should count in the standings. After all, in pro football leagues to that point, the season usually extended past December 4. To make his point further, Halas risked his standing by scheduling 2 more games. They beat the Canton Bulldogs on December 11, then played the Chicago Cardinals on December 18, only gaining a 0-0 tie. So this plan could have backfired on him.

Now, the season was over. Chicago was 9-1-2, and Buffalo was 9-1-1. Each team's only loss was to the other. At the time, ties were not computed as part of winning percentage: Only wins and losses mattered. Frank McNeil, owner of the All-Americans, pointed out the agreement between him and Halas that the game was an exhibition and didn't count in the standings. Halas broke the agreement, telling the league that, under league rules, there was no such thing as an exhibition game.

And then he invoked the tiebreaker which was part of league rules at the time: The 2nd game between a pair of teams counted more than the 1st did. (Had the league not bought this argument, he was prepared to argue aggregate points, which favored the Staleys, 16-14.) But the APFA recognized the Staleys as Champions.

Football historians are split on this. On the one hand, Halas broke his word, and the game should have been accepted as an exhibition. On the other hand, Halas didn't break the rules: Instead, he used the rules as they then stood, regardless of whether they were fair then, or seem fair now. Halas was perfectly willing to be seen as a smart businessman, even if it affected his reputation as a sportsman.

Jeffrey J. Miller, a Buffalo-based historian who has written several books on Buffalo and pro football -- including a few books about Buffalo-based football -- wasn't born until 40 years later. But the subject bothered him enough to coin a phrase that did not exist at the time: "The Staley Swindle." In 2004, he published a book about the All-Americans: Buffalo's Forgotten Champions.

The Staleys became known as the Chicago Bears in 1922. The APFA became the National Football League that year as well. And Cubs Park became known as Wrigley Field in 1926.

The All-Americans? They became known as the Buffalo Bisons in 1924, the Buffalo Rangers in 1926, the Buffalo Bisons again in 1927, and a team out of business in 1930. Ironically, in their last season, 1929, they avoided a winless season by beating the Bears. The NFL would not return to Buffalo until the merger with the AFL in 1970, admitting the Buffalo Bills.

The Staley company remained in business, long after everybody but people who knew NFL history had forgotten they had anything to do with the Bears, until 2005, when they were bought out by Tate & Lyle Ingredients Americas, LLC.