NFL Founded: Professional Football Begins in Canton

Fourteen men gathered in Ralph Hay’s Hupmobile automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, on September 17, 1920, and created the American Professional Football Association, the organization that would be renamed the National Football League two years later. Some of the representatives reportedly sat on the running boards of the cars in the showroom because there were not enough chairs. The entry fee was one hundred dollars, though there is no evidence any team actually paid it. Professional football, which had been a loosely organized and faintly disreputable regional pastime, now had a formal structure, however threadbare. The meeting was driven by a practical problem: player poaching. Teams had been raiding each other’s rosters with impunity, bidding up salaries and luring players to jump contracts mid-season. The chaos was destroying what little financial stability the teams possessed. Jim Thorpe, the legendary Olympic athlete who played for the Canton Bulldogs, was named president, though the title was largely honorary and the real organizational work fell to others. The original roster of teams reads like a directory of midwestern industrial towns: the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Dayton Triangles, Rock Island Independents, and Muncie Flyers among them. Most played in baseball parks or public fields, charged modest admission, and operated on budgets that would not cover a modern player’s meal allowance. The Akron Pros won the first championship with an 8-0-3 record, earning their players approximately $1,500 for the season. The league nearly died multiple times in its first decade. Franchises folded constantly, attendance was sparse, and college football was considered the superior product by fans and sportswriters alike. The turning point came in 1925 when Red Grange, the most famous college player in America, signed with the Chicago Bears and drew massive crowds on a barnstorming tour. The 1958 NFL Championship Game, televised nationally and decided in overtime, cemented football as America’s premier spectator sport. The league that started on the running boards of Hupmobiles now generates over $18 billion in annual revenue.