Competition and Dissolution
By October 7, 1934, the day of the league's first games, the AFL settled on a double round robin schedule, with each team scheduled to play one road game and one home game against each of the other members of the league. Despite the league's intention, only Memphis and Charlotte managed to play the full ten games as weather forced the cancellation of several games.
Final league standings – 1934
| Team | W | L | T | Pct. | PF | PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis/Kansas City Blues | 7 | 0 | 1 | 1.000 | 161 | 40 |
| Memphis Tigers | 5 | 3 | 2 | .625 | 94 | 76 |
| Louisville Bourbons | 5 | 3 | 0 | .625 | 76 | 70 |
| Dallas Rams | 3 | 6 | 0 | .333 | 65 | 105 |
| Carolina Bantams | 3 | 7 | 0 | .300 | 81 | 122 |
| Tulsa Oilers | 1 | 5 | 1 | .333 | 28 | 92 |
By late October, the Blues' supremacy was virtually conceded as St. Louis was not only dominating each of its games but also outdrawing the Gunners, which had to cobble together a schedule after the rejection by the NFL and the reduction of availability of AFL members for scheduled football games. When the Gunners’ purchase of the Cincinnati Reds was finally approved by the NFL, Blues' ownership decided not to compete with the newest member of the National Football League and opted to move across the state of Missouri, to Kansas City, one-time home of the NFL's Kansas City Blues and Kansas City Cowboys. After the move, the former St. Louis Blues became the new Kansas City Blues.
The St. Louis/Kansas City Blues ran roughshod through the league, with only a tie with Memphis marring its won-lost record with a late-season tie. On December 16, 1934, the Blues finally met the Gunners for the first (and only) time, with the NFL team prevailing 7-0 before it was disbanded due to unpaid tax debts (a new St. Louis Gunners team would surface by later 1935, again as an independent).
Preparations for the 1935 season saw the Blues returning to St. Louis after the Gunners' dissolution and Louisville playing exhibition games in September, but none of the other league members had bothered to assemble their squads, including the Tigers, which were sited in the league's home city, Memphis. S. A. Goodman, both the president of the AFL and the owner of the Tigers, announced on September 26, 1935, that due to "lateness in organizing", the 1935 AFL season was cancelled, but the league would return in 1936.
St. Louis and Louisville played four games in front of diminishing crowds before folding; the Memphis squad was tentatively put together by two longtime Tigers (Red Clavette and Cliff Norvell) and bankrolled by Wilson Murrah. While the team managed to play three games (scoring 100 points in the process), the writing was on the wall: the Tigers (and any possibility of the AFL returning in 1936) winked out of existence.
Read more about this topic: American Football League (1934)
Famous quotes containing the words competition and, competition and/or dissolution:
“The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)
“We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)