September 17, 1920: The NFL Is Founded

September 17, 1920, 100 years ago: The National Football League is founded. As the website of the Pro Football Hall of Fame says:

 

On September 17, 1920, a group of men gathered in Canton, Ohio at the Hupmobile showroom of Ralph Hay, owner of the hometown Bulldogs. The result of the meeting was the birth of the National Football League.

First known as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) and later renamed the NFL in 1922, the league's first president was Jim Thorpe. Without a doubt the most famous athlete of his time, Thorpe helped add credibility to the sport. While not front-page news in 1920, the league's formation was the start of a journey that has made the NFL this country's favorite sport.

Pro football began in 1892 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when former Yale star William "Pudge" Heffelfinger was paid a notable sum of $500 to play in a single game for the Allegheny Athletic Association on November 12. For nearly the next three decades, pro football faced its ups and downs as the game was played primarily in small towns throughout western Pennsylvania and the Midwest.

Many problems plagued the game of pro football with increasing regularity. The need for a sense of order brought these men, which among others included George Halas, together in Canton to form the first professional football league. Eleven franchises were represented at the meeting: The Akron Pros, the Canton Bulldogs, the Chicago Cardinals, the Cleveland Indians, the Dayton Triangles, the Decatur Staleys, the Hammond Pros, the Massillon Tigers, the Muncie Flyers, the Rock Island Independents and the Rochester Jeffersons.

The first matter of business was Massillon's withdrawal from professional football for the 1920 season. The team never joined the NFL. However, by season's start, the membership also included the Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandles, and Detroit Heralds. Only two of the franchises still exist today. The Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago in 1921 and were renamed the Bears one year later. The Chicago Cardinals franchise now calls Arizona home.

On September 26, 1920, the first game featuring a team from the APFA was played at Douglas Park in Rock Island, Illinois. The Independents were victorious as they rolled to a 48-0 win over the St. Paul Ideals. One week later, two league teams battled head-to-head for the fist time. The Dayton Triangles shutout the Columbus Panhandles, 14-0 in Triangle Park. (Video: Two minutes of pro football history: The NFL's first games)

The Akron Pros, with an 8-0-3 regular season record, were crowned the league's first champion.

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The meeting was held in the Odd Fellows Building in Canton. The ground floor included the showroom of the Hupmobile dealership owned by Ralph Hay, who had used his profits from that dealership to buy the most successful pro football team of the 1910s, the Canton Bulldogs, who had once included Thorpe.

Hay was a key figure in the NFL's founding. Oddly, he has never been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And I don't know why. True, he only owned the Bulldogs for 4 years, but those 4 years included the 1919 Ohio League title, the closest thing pro football then had to a "World Championship"; and the 1922 NFL title. (He then sold them, and they won the title again in 1923 and '24.)

But it's not like he is known to have done anything to not deserve election. As far as I can tell, he was reasonably well-liked by his fellow team owners, and there seems to be no scandal attached to his name. The only reason he sold the Bulldogs was because he was losing money. In 1988, the Professional Football Researchers Association -- the game's answer to baseball's SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) -- established the Ralph Hay Award, for "lifetime achievement in pro football research and historiography." So why isn't he in the Hall of Fame?

At any rate, being the founding city of the NFL is the reason that, when the Pro Football Hall of Fame was established, Canton was chosen as the location for its members' gallery and museum, just as Cooperstown, New York was (erroneously) thought to be the location of the invention of baseball (in 1839); and Springfield, Massachusetts was chosen for the Basketball Hall of Fame because the sport absolutely was invented there, in 1891.

The Hockey Hall of Fame is in Toronto, because that's where the NHL's offices were. It's not clear where or when ice hockey was invented, although what's recognized as the 1st organized game was played in 1875 in Montreal.

It is a common belief that the actual Hall of Fame complex, which includes Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium (formerly Fawcett Stadium, and now named for the late New Orleans Saints owner who financed its renovation), the site of the annual preseason Hall of Fame Game, was built on the site of the showroom.

But this is incorrect: The Odd Fellows Building site is now occupied by the Frank T. Bow Federal Building, at 201 Cleveland Avenue SW, downtown. (Bow was a Canton native who served in Congress from 1951 to 1972.) The Hall of Fame is 2 1/2 miles to the northwest, across Nimishillen Creek, at 2121 George Halas Drive NW.

(Halas usually gets the most credit for founding the NFL, since, unlike Hay, he was involved beyond the founding era, all the way until his death in 1983, the last survivor of the founders. Halas Drive did not exist until the Hall complex was built, so it wasn't named anything before it was named for him.)

And what, you may ask, are the Odd Fellows? They're a fraternal organization, like the Masons and the Elks, made up of "people who exercised unusual, miscellaneous odd trades."