Columbus Bullies

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."