American Football League (1926) - Origin of League

Origin of League

The controversial ending of the National Football League’s 1925 season led to the founding of the first AFL by Red Grange’s agent, C. C. Pyle. In an era in which no professional football team had a prearranged schedule (each team was responsible for booking its own games, with virtually no limitations as to the number of games), the Pottsville Maroons were hailed as the NFL champions by several newspapers after Pottsville defeated the Chicago Cardinals on December 6, even though there were still two weeks left in the season.

Cardinals owner Chris O’Brien hastily arranged for two more games – one against the Milwaukee Badgers the following Thursday, another against the Hammond Pros two days later, even though both teams had already disbanded for the season. Two shutouts (59-0 and 13-0) later, the Cardinals claimed the top spot with a 11-2-1 record. Simultaneous with the Cardinals-Pros game was an exhibition game between Pottsville and an all-star team consisting of former Notre Dame players at Shibe Park, near the home of the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who protested the invasion of territorial rights by the Maroons.

Despite an order from NFL commissioner Joe Carr to cancel the exhibition, the Maroons proceeded to defeat the Notre Dame all-stars 9-7, scoring a field goal in the last minute. Carr immediately canceled the Maroons' scheduled game against the Providence Steam Roller and suspended the franchise. In the league meeting in January 1926, O’Brien refused to accept the championship, but the league record book remained unchanged, showing the Cardinals with a 11-2-1 record to the Maroons’ 10-2-0.

While NFL management was contemplating the penalties for the suspended Pottsville franchise (which was eventually reinstated with the payment of a moderate fine) in December, C. C. “Cash and Carry” Pyle surprised the league by requesting a franchise in New York City for himself and star back Red Grange and secured a five year lease for Yankee Stadium, in direct competition to Tim Mara's year-old New York Giants. When Carr announced a ruling in favor of Mara's objection to Pyle's application for NFL membership, Pyle announced the formation of the first American Football League, featuring Grange and the New York Yankees. The NFL charter member Rock Island Independents left the seven-year-old league to join the AFL, and, and the upstart league matched the NFL in having a road team representing Los Angeles.

The new league chose former Princeton athlete, former New York City deputy of street cleaning, and former Newark, New Jersey chief of waste disposal Bill Edwards as its league president and prepared to compete against the older league for its talent and spectators. The AFL and NFL were head-to-head in New York (Yankees and Giants), Brooklyn (Horsemen and Lions), Chicago (Bulls vs Bears and Cardinals), and Philadelphia (Quakers and Yellow Jackets). The AFL’s Cleveland Panthers, previously independent, were also prepared to go face-to-face with the Cleveland Bulldogs, the NFL champions of 1924, when Bulldogs owner Sam Deutsch decided to suspend the operations for 1926.