American Professional Football Association and Demise
The year 1939 was the fifth year of the Tanks' existence, still with their original owners and their original (head) coach, and still in the league which they helped form in their first days of their existence. The former Midwest Football League, on the other hand, changed its name for the second consecutive year (to the American Professional Football Association) as it hinted at being more than a midwestern minor league as it added the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Bulldogs of the second major AFL and a powerful independent team that would later dominate another pro football league: the Columbus Bullies. The Tanks' string of winning seasons - and league championships - ended at four as they finished in last place with a 2-9 record. The three newcomers finished in the top three positions.
The following year started with both optimism and surprise for the APFA membership. The Columbus Bullies were declared the champions with a 9-4 record despite the Los Angeles Bulldogs' losing only a single game (7 wins, 1 loss) and the Cincinnati Bengals' having a 6-2 record. Milwaukee was admitted as the replacement for the Bulldogs, who left to form the Pacific Coast Professional Football League... and the league admitted to its having major league aspirations as the Green Bay Packers protested the APFA's intrusion into its territory.
By July, it was all over as Cincinnati, Columbus, and Milwaukee left the loop to become the charter members of a new American Football League. Louisville and the Dayton Bombers announced that they were not fielding teams for 1940... and the APFA folded. The Tanks and the Bombers never returned to the gridiron.
Read more about this topic: Louisville Tanks
Famous quotes containing the words american, professional, football and/or association:
“... though it is by no means requisite that the American women should emulate the men in the pursuit of the whale, the felling of the forest, or the shooting of wild turkeys, they might, with advantage, be taught in early youth to excel in the race, to hit a mark, to swim, and in short to use every exercise which could impart vigor to their frames and independence to their minds.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“... all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)