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Professional football had been around since 1892, but it would be another 30 years before the dawn of an organized league. It came at the start of one of the most fruitful and entertaining decades in U.S. history. From the beginning, the Roaring Twenties lived up to their name. With the world safe and thriving in democracy after World War I, the United States discarded its battlefield persona and replaced it with an excess of fun and leisure. Prosperity fueled the celebration. Famed author Paul Gallico wrote, “We had just emerged from a serious war and now wanted no more of reality but only escape therefrom into the realms of the fanciful.”1
In 1920, Prohibition went into effect, American women got the right to vote, radio was popular, Warren G. Harding was elected president, and 10 professional football owners gathered in a Canton, Ohio, automobile showroom to organize the American Professional Football Association (APFA). Two years later, they renamed it the National Football League (NFL).2
The NFL was established during the age of flappers, jazz, the Charleston, Lindbergh, speakeasies, Capone, flaming youth, Chaplin, and sports of all sorts. For the first time, the world of sports was capturing the public eye and the public’s pocketbook. In the words of one historian, “Next to the sport of business, Americans enjoyed the business of sport.” Most Americans enjoyed the economic boom following World War I, and much of this money was spent on sports tickets, as people flocked to stadiums and arenas in record numbers. Sports heroes emerged in every field of athletics. Such names as Jack Dempsey in boxing, Red Grange and the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in college football, Lou Gehrig in baseball, Helen Wills and Bill Tilden in tennis, Bobby Jones in golf, and Johnny Weissmuller in swimming made it the Golden Age of Sports.3
Gallico, who followed the sports giants of the 1920s as a columnist and sports editor for the New York Daily News, wrote, “Sports and sports stories and sport characters who were almost magical in their performance provided much of that escape” for Americans to enjoy their free time. During the 1920s, professional football was an unloved child in the family of American sports. Baseball was indeed the national pastime. Baseball occupied the nation’s consciousness and the biggest stadiums, and it had the biggest name in sports during the Roaring Twenties: Babe Ruth. And if baseball wasn’t fascinating enough, there was always college football. College football had its well-established traditions and rah-rah attitudes that made front-page headlines. On the other hand, professional football went mostly unnoticed. The sport was truly unloved.4
But what was it really like in the early days of the NFL, when the game was played in an era before television, million-dollar contracts, fantasy football leagues, domed stadiums, and field turf? What was the “Old Leather” era truly like, when the football was fashioned from canvas and leather, and pro football was played on a dirt field? In The Football Encyclopedia, football historian Jordan A. Deutsch explains,
Much of what we know about the early days of pro football has come from the pages of the newspaper of the day. Little is revealed from newsreels, and photographs of games tantalize us with frames of action but cannot tell us of the pace of the game or what it was like to watch. All we have left is our imagination.
Let’s join Deutsch and attend a NFL game in the 1920s up close and personal.
We can get a front row seat for one dollar. If we’re at Canton’s Lakeside Park to watch the Canton Bulldogs, a mere 4,000 fans would pack the bleachers. A program costs 10 cents. There are no souvenir or beer stands, but you can bring your own liquor flask for later. You can also make a friendly bet on who would win with your neighbor sitting next to you. Usually $5 does the trick. Other spectators are wearing suits and ties, no outrageous costumes with team logos. No cheerleaders or banners to help pump up the crowd. These fans come to see the game, not to be seen.
The field is your familiar 100 yards long, laid out in five-yard segments, with real grass—or more likely, real dirt. It has no hash marks. Not until 1933 will the ball be brought in towards the middle of the field when a play ends near the sidelines or out of bounds. The bench area is just that, a wooden bench with maybe a bucket of water for a drink at halftime. The goal posts are roughly 20 feet high and stationed at the front of the goal line.
When the teams take the field, we notice that there are only 16 players on each squad. By 1930 the league votes to expand the roster to 20. Most players are paid about $100 a game, while some star players might make up to $150. Both teams wear dark jerseys, giving fans a tough time telling them apart. The uniforms show little individuality, except for maybe a logo or letter on the front. The faded jersey might have a number on the back, but the practice isn’t yet standard.
The trousers are made of canvas, worn with hip, thigh, and knee pads. Each player wears black high-top shoes with rectangular cleats and wool socks, if they have their own socks. The jersey is pulled over a flimsy set of shoulder pads that don’t seem to protect anything. The same can be said for the helmet, which is made from leather and called “head helmets.” Some players don’t bother to wear one. No rule requiring a player to wear a helmet was passed until 1943. The NFL in the Roaring Twenties has a ragtag look to it.
Instead of a whole set of officials, we only see three that govern the action. An umpire, a linesman, and a referee. The officials also keep the game clock on the field, no fancy scoreboards here. From our bleacher seat we see that the ball is made of leather and is fairly round. Easy to dropkick, but difficult to pass. By the end of the decade the ball is slimmed down, making passing easier.
After a coin toss at the center of the field, we see a kickoff at the 40-yard line. All 22 men who are on the kickoff teams stay on the field, no substitutes. Each man plays both offense and defense. Most plays are called at the line of scrimmage instead of a huddle. The head coach doesn’t send in plays, and little time is spent in between plays. There are also no television time-outs. Most linemen weigh about 200 pounds, with most backs being much smaller.
Passing is restricted because of the rather fat ball. Some teams pass more than others, but the early pro game is built around the power running game. Also, most rules still handicap the passing game throughout the 1920s. Until 1933, the forward pass has to be thrown from five yards behind the line of scrimmage. Until 1934, an incomplete pass in the end zone is an automatic touchback and gives the ball to the opponent. Also, most coaches don’t have the time to practice the passing game since most teams only practice once a week.
Most professional teams use the single-wing or Notre Dame box, a predominately rushing offense. Defensively, most teams use the six- or seven-man fronts to counter the rushing attacks of early NFL teams. Regardless, both offenses and defenses are so close to start a play, that when the ball is snapped 22 men converge on the ball and after the dust settles we see the ballcarrier has usually only gained a few yards.
Punting is the key to the outcome of most games. The way to victory is not to possess the ball, but to give it to your opponent deep in their territory and let him make a mistake. An amazing number of punts occur on third down, as teams play for field position. With defense so emphasized, low-scoring games dominate the early days of the NFL. Some games end in a 0–0 tie. If you are lucky enough to see a touchdown, you definitely won’t see any end zone celebrations from the players. The game usually lasts about two hours and ends with a gunshot from the referee.5
Representatives of the pro teams were under the gun in 1920, when they met in Canton to organize what would become the National Football League. The pro game was beset by three major problems: Salaries were skyrocketing, players hopped from team to team during the season to play for the highest bidder, and too many teams padded their rosters with moonlighting collegians playing with assumed names. A league needed to be formed.
They had good reason to meet in Canton, now the site of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Ohio was the geographical center of professional football. Proximity was important in that era, when teams traveled by train and team managers sought games with opponents in cities in Ohio and the Midwest that could be easily reached by rail. Thus, only a few East Coast teams played during the NFL’s early years, and the too-distant West Coast would not be home to a NFL franchise until after World War II.
When the league was formed in 1920, the newly established organization elected the biggest name in pro football to help guide it. His name was Jim Thorpe. But he was a great athlete, not an administrator. Thus, in 1921, the young league elected Joe F. Carr as its new president.
Carr had a great sports background, being a former sportswriter and editor at the Ohio State Journal, as well as team manager of the highly successful Columbus Panhandles pro football team. He was the right man for the job.
In 1922, the new league needed publicity and star power. It needed to get more fans to the games. Carr and the other NFL owners saw that Walter Lingo’s next promotional idea would be what the league needed. Lingo just had to convince a good friend to join him in executing his idea.