Shibe Park - Professional Football

Professional Football

Shibe Park hosted the Frankford Yellow Jackets against the Chicago Bears on December 5, 1925 and the Yellow Jackets against the Bears on December 4, 1926. It also served as the site of two AFL games in 1926, the Philadelphia Quakers against the Los Angeles Wildcats on November 20, 1926 and the Quakers against the New York Yankees on November 27, 1926. The stadium hosted the December 12, 1925, Pottsville Maroons-Notre Dame All-Stars game. The Maroons' NFL franchise was suspended as a result of the team's participation in that contest, costing Pottsville the 1925 NFL championship.

The National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles moved to Shibe Park in 1940 and played their home games at the stadium through 1957.

To accommodate football at Shibe Park during the winter, management set up stands in right field, parallel to Twentieth Street. Some twenty feet high, these "east stands" had twenty-two rows of seats. The goalposts stood along the first base line and in left field. The uncovered east stands enlarged capacity of Shibe Park to over thirty-nine thousand, but the Eagles rarely drew more than twenty-five to thirty thousand.

The Eagles played the 1948 NFL Championship game in a blizzard; the home team defeated the Chicago Cardinals 7-0, the only score being a Steve Van Buren touchdown. The Eagles left Connie Mack Stadium after the 1957 season for Franklin Field. Franklin Field would seat over 60,000 for the Eagles whereas Connie Mack had a capacity of 39,000.

FDR addresses the crowd from his open car, elevated by special ramps on the field