jrn 362 / sps 362 - lecture eight (september 22 2016)

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Eight

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

Review• The end of World War I ushered

in the golden age of football as the game commanded new heights of popularity.

• More than 70 new stadia were built in the 1920s to meet spectator demand.

• An example? The Rose Bowl.


The Golden Age• The three men who appear on the next three slides played pivotal

roles in the development of another piece of football’s Golden Age: the pro game.

• The first is Jim Thorpe, who played football for Pop Warner at the Carlisle School and would later be a star for the first true pro league.

• The third is Red Grange, who in the mid 1920s left the University of Illinois after his final game signed with the Chicago Bears.

• The man who signed Grange? George Halas, visible in the second slide.


The Golden Age• Thorpe (far right in stance)

played for Pop Warner at Carlisle.

• In 1911, he scored all of Carlisle’s points in a stunning 18-15 victory at Harvard.

• In 1912, he led Carlisle to the national championship.


The Golden Age• Also in 1912, Thorpe won the

gold medal in the pentathlon and decathlon.

• He also played baseball, but Thorpe saw himself first and foremost as a football player.


The Golden Age• Over the first two decades of the

20th century, post-graduate, or pro, football was played almost entirely in the football crescent.

• Teams from towns such as Canton and Massillon, Ohio, and other places would pay players to show up and play.


The Golden Age• In 1915, the Canton Bulldogs

signed the greatest athlete of the day, Thorpe, to play against the Massillon Tigers, for $250.


The Golden Age• Thorpe led Canton to

championships of the Ohio League in 1916, 1917 and 1919, making the team the unofficial world champion of professional football given the standing of the league as the best in the play-for-pay sector.


The Golden Age• Thus, Thorpe set the stage for a larger professional league that

would eventually range outside of its crescent to capture the nation.

• And the great and the good of college football in the 1920s would do all they could to – unsuccessfully – to stop the pro game.


The Golden Age• While Thorpe was winning Ohio

League pro football championships, current and former college players joined the service but still played for their posts or stations.

• George Halas of the University of Illinois was one of the former players who joined after graduating in 1918.


The Golden Age• Halas was assigned to the Great

Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago where he organized the football team.


The Golden Age• The 1919 Rose Bowl featured a

game between two military bases: Great Lakes Naval Station and Mare Island.

• Halas caught two touchdown passes in leading Great Lakes to the win – and establishing the station as a key element in the history of pro football.


The Golden Age• In 1919, only two pro football leagues of note – the Ohio League

and the New York Pro Football League – existed.

• Both leagues were pinned tightly to the football crescent pinned to the Great Lakes region and both had teams that played against each other in exhibition games.

• Team owners and representatives of the two leagues set up a meeting in August 1920 to discuss a merger.


The Golden Age• George Halas represented the Decatur Staleys, a team owned by a

starch company in Illinois.

• The team hired Halas in 1919 to upgrade the team so that it could compete against other semi-pro and industrial teams in Illinois and adjacent states.


The Golden Age• In September, the teams agreed

on a combined league and a name: the American Professional Football Association.

• And they named Jim Thorpe to the post of league president to give it credibility among players and fans.


The Golden Age• The league consisted of the following teams: 1. Akron Pros2. Buffalo All-Americans3. Canton Bulldogs4. Chicago Tigers 5. Cleveland Tigers6. Columbus Panhandles7. Dayton Triangles8. Decatur Staleys


The Golden Age9. Detroit Heralds10. Hammond Pros11. Muncie Flyers12. Chicago (Racine) Cardinals13. Rochester Jeffersons14. Rock Island Independents


The Golden Age• The league followed the contour of the football crescent (next

slide) and even that of the Big Ten, of Western, college conference as established by Amos Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago. (the slide after that).

• Here, in both the industrial heartland and coal country of America, pro football took root.


The Golden Age• The league standardized rules of play and animated the idea that

the pro game could compete if it presented quality competition within an organized schedule to eliminate the chaos that ruled professional football since 1892.

• Teams agreed to a primitive salary cap and promised not to sign each other’s players or to take players still competing in college.

• Halas would play a pivotal role in establishing the league but almost from the start his team ran into financial problems.


The Golden Age• In its second year, 1921,

recession forced the Staley company to layoff its athletes.

• Halas paid $100 for the rights to the team and moved it to Chicago.

• The team – the Chicago Staleys – won the 1921 league championship, its first.


The Golden Age• Also in 1921, a team from the

northern reaches of the crescent joined the league.

• Its name: the Green Bay Packers, in Wisconsin.


The Golden Age

• A year after that, In 1922, with his team on stronger footing, Halas renamed it the Chicago Bears in homage to baseball’s Cubs.


The Golden Age

• And the league renamed itself.

• It would now be known as the National Football League, effective for the 1922 season.


The Golden Age

• Over the next two years, some original teams would fold, and new ones added.

• A team headed by Thorpe, the Oorrang Indians, of LaRue, Ohio, the smallest town ever to host a NFL team, joined in 1922 but folded after the 1923 season.


The Golden Age

• In 1924, the NFL ventured outside the football crescent to eastern Pennsylvania, adding the Frankford Yellow Jackets.

• Previously an independent team, the Yellow Jackets had their own field in northeastern Philadelphia and an following of working class men.


The Golden Age

• The industrial northeast was much like the midwest in that its factories employed millions of people who sought recreation and entertainment when not working, making it possible for the NFL to expand outside of the crescent.


The Golden Age

• In 1925, the league would add new teams, including one in New York, named the Giants by the owner, Tim Mara.

• That marked the continued expansion of the NFL to eastern cities such as Providence in 1925 and Hartford in 1926 along with a Brooklyn team.


The Golden Age

• The NFL went to the west coach for the first time in 1926 when the Los Angeles Buccaneers began play.

• Even though the team’s players were selected from California colleges, it was based in Chicago and played only road games outside of two exhibition games in January 1927.


The Golden Age

• Professional football’s problems, however, persisted. Many Midwestern teams folded, leaving the league’s center of gravity in New York, Providence and Philadelphia with the Frankford club.

• The league would not be stable until the late 1930s.


The Golden Age

• The college game was simply more dynamic and in the space of just two generations had bolted itself to America’s autumnal rites awash in tradition and nostalgia.


The Golden Age

• When Thorpe - who had left the league office to lead a team in Cleveland – appeared in New York for an exhibition game, the reaction was muted.

• Only 3,000 people came to see the world-famous Thorpe and his team play.


The Golden Age• “There was none of the cheering

or color of a college contest, and the players seemed to reflect the indifference of their audience … The play lacked speed and snap, and the men went their paces in a manner that would have been fatal on a college gridiron.” – The New York Times.


The Golden Age• College coaches were even more

strident in their criticism of the game as they sought to protect the holy ground of amateurism.

• During a December 1921 meeting of the American Football Coaches Association, college football – and Walter Camp who attended the meeting as an honorary member – struck back.


The Golden Age• Pro football, the coaches stated,

was “detrimental to the best interests of American football and American youth” among other things.

• The group voted to revoke varsity letters from undergraduates who played in pro games and ban officials who worked the games.


The Golden Age• And this was just the start of a

decade-long war between college and professional football.


The Golden Age• The great Amos Alonzo Stagg

joined in, channeling his inner Walter Camp about the dangers of playing for pay.

• His caustic remarks revealed deepening animosity between the formally organized but still upstart National Football League and the college game.


The Golden Age• Stagg wrote in a letter addressed

to “all friends of college football that:

• “ … to patronize Sunday professional football is to co-operate with the forces which are destructive of interscholastic and intercollegiate football, and to add to the heavy burden of the schools and colleges in preserving it in its ennobling worth.”


The Golden Age• He went on write:

• “If you believe in preserving interscholastic and intercollegiate football for the upbuilding of the present and future generations of clean, healthy and right-minded and patriotic citizens, you will not lend your assistance to any of the forces helping to destroy it.”


The Golden Age• Stagg’s fear of the menacing influence of professional football was

based on a 1921 game between players from Illinois and Notre Dame in Taylorville, Ill.

• Taylorville was a semipro team that had beaten another semipro team from Carlinville in 1920.


The Golden Age• Seeking revenge in 1921, Carlinville planned to hire college players

from Notre Dame, then coached by Knute Rockne.

• Carlinville rooters bet heavily on their team to win, knowing they had the Notre Dame players.


The Golden Age• Taylorville heard about the scheme and hired players from Illinois.

• Taylorville won, meaning the residents of Carlinville who bet that their team would win lost.

• Rumors placed the figure at $500,000.


The Golden Age• The action shook college football to its core and led to severe

actions:

- The Notre Dame players were expelled. - Nine players from Illinois were suspended- The Big Ten hired its first commissioner.- The NCAA revised eligibility rules.


The Golden Age• The battle for the soul of football was on.

• And it would soon involve the great Knute Rockne, who had transformed an obscure Indiana Catholic college into a national powerhouse through the power of publicity as hostilities between college and the pro league raged in the 1920s.

• And it would also involve the greatest player certainly of his generation and perhaps of all time – Harold “Red” Grange of Illinois.


The Golden Age• Grange was born in western

Pennsylvania but grew up in Wheaton, Illinois. In summers there, he delivered ice.

• He earned 16 letters in football, baseball, basketball and track.

• In track, he was a four-time sprint champion.


The Golden Age• Grange, however, did not want

to play football at the University of Illinois.

• He preferred basketball and track and wanted to compete in those sports.

• Fraternity brothers talked him into playing football.


The Golden Age• In 1923, Grange rushed for 723

yards as a sophomore.

• In 1924, his exploits became legend.


The Golden Age• On Oct. 18, 1924 against Michigan in the game that opened

Memorial Stadium on the Illinois campus, Grange scored four touchdowns in 12 minutes:

- He returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown.

- He followed that with touchdown runs of 67, 56 and 44 yards.

- That’s as many TDs as Michigan allowed in the two previous seasons.


The Golden Age• The press couldn’t get enough of

Grange.

• Grantland Rice wrote: “A streak of fire, a breath of flame, eluding all who reach and clutch; a gray ghost thrown into the game that rival hands may rarely touch; a rubber bounding, lasting soul whose destination is the goal – Red Grange of Illinois.”


The Golden Age• A Chicago sportswriter gave him

one of the greatest nicknames in the history of sport: The Galloping Ghost.


The Golden Age• Camp saw in Grange the perfect

combination of brains and brawn.

• In the citation for Grange’s selection to the 1924 All-America team, Camp wrote a startling account of the back’s capacity to gain yardage, comparing him in one passage to an animal and in another as a man possessing a fertile imagination.


The Golden Age• “Red had that indefinable

something that the hunted wild animal has – uncanny timing and the big brown eyes of a royal buck. I sketched a team around him like the complementary background of a painting …


The Golden Age• “The average person does not

think of imagination as being necessary to an athlete. Brawn without brains has become a by-word in athletics. But in real life brawn and brains together excel …


The Golden Age• “He is elusive, has a baffling

change of pace, a good straight arm and finally seems in some way to get a map of the field at starting and then threads his way through his opponents.”


The Golden Age• Grange’s coach, Robert Zuppke,

agreed:


The Golden Age• “A brawny football player must

be able to picture the entire scope of the play he is a part of. Otherwise he cannot know how the other players are cooperating with him to make him an effective part of the picture. When Red Grange ran a play, his imagination pictured the part and duties of every one of his teammates. Inferior athletes are unable to do that.”


The Golden Age• Grange projected the personality

of a humble football player as per the template of the grid hero.

• He was an easy sell.

• In 1925, he was on the cover of Time magazine.


The Golden Age• For a time, his popularity

exceeded that of Babe Ruth, a larger-than-life figure in the mid 1920s.


The Golden Age• Commercial endorsements

followed later.


The Golden Age• Yet even the Galloping Ghost

himself could not have predicted the impact a decision he made in the Fall of 1925 would have on the sports landscape of the United States.


The Golden Age• Some 85,500 people watched

Grange play in his final collegiate game at Ohio State.

• “The most famous, the most talked-of, the most written about, most photographed and most picturesque player that the game has ever produced has completed his intercollegiate career.” – The New York Times


The Golden Age• Then Grange then did something

that upended football: he turned pro.


The Golden Age• After his final college game,

Grange headed for Chicago, where he would play for George Halas and the Bears.

• A ground of 45,000 watched the game and Grange, who wore his No. 77.

• A week later, 70,000 watched him play in New York.


The Golden Age• Grange had given professional

football a legitimacy that he had not secured prior to 1925.

• And that flew in the face of college coaches and officials – including the founding fathers Camp and Stagg – who earlier than Grange’s appearance had remarked saw pro football as the focus of all evil in the world.


The Golden Age• "I'd have been more popular with the

colleges if I had joined Capone's mob in Chicago rather than the Bears," Grange said.


The Golden Age• Grange becomes a somewhat

tragic figure as a result.

• He played for the Chicago Bears in 1925 after leaving Illinois but sought to own a team, in New York.

• The Giants’ owner, Tim Mara, said no as he sought to protect his territory.


The Golden Age• Grange started a team, the New

York Yankees, as part of a new American Football League in 1926.

• The league folded after one season.


The Golden Age• The NFL added the New York

Yankees in 1927 but Grange suffered a knee injury and didn’t play in 1928.

• He rejoined the Chicago Bears in

1929, playing until 1934 when he retired to become one of the first former athletes to broadcast games, first on radio, then on TV.


The Golden Age• Grange’s decision to go into

broadcasting after football was almost as revolutionary as his decision to turn pro immediately after his last college game.

• He anticipated the rise of media coverage of football in radio and film and, in the 1950s, television, conquering all as football got bigger each year.


The Golden Age• College football continued to

prosper as a new public figure – Rockne - took the stage just as the Walter Camp era finally ended.


The Golden Age• Camp died on March 14, 1925,

after a meeting of college football’s Rules Committee.

• "Football has lost its father," Michigan football coach Fielding Yost said later that day. "He gave football its high place in amateur athletics. He wrote its rules. He taught its uses. He made it a dominant factor in American youth."

jrn 362 / sps 362 - lecture eight (september 22 2016)

Education