The Columbus Bullies were a professional football team founded by Phil H. Bucklew in Columbus, Ohio in 1938. The Bullies started out as a member of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1939. Later, in 1940, the Bullies joined the Cincinnati Bengals and Milwaukee Chiefs in leaving the APFA and becoming charter members of a new American Football League. Playing in Red Bird Stadium, the Bullies won both AFL Championships prior to ceasing operations when the AFL disbanded due to World War II. The Bullies defeated the Milwaukee Chiefs in 1940, and the New York Americans in 1941 in the only two AFL Championships.
The Bullies are one of only two major league American football teams to have ever lost to a current Canadian Football League team; the Bullies lost to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (then an amateur team in the WIFU) in a 1941 game; the Bullies responded, however, by defeating Winnipeg twice in the next two games of the three game series. (The other American team to lose to a Canadian team is the modern Buffalo Bills, who lost to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1961.)
Current city Mayor Michael B. Coleman has lobbied the return of The Bullies since attending his last Blue Jackets ice hockey game saying, "I would rather have a team of bullies than a team of losers."
Famous quotes containing the words columbus and/or bullies:
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Eagerness to please attracts bullies and bores.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)