The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr

by Chris Willis

  The Karr family was devastated by Margaret's death, especially Michael, who after thirty-two years of marriage, was now left alone. Three days after Margaret's death the family gathered to say good-bye. At 9:00 a.m. the family held a funeral for Margaret at St. Joseph's Cathedral (the same place where Joe was baptized). They would eventually bury her at Mt. Calvary Cemetery, the well-known Catholic cemetery in Columbus. Although she was only fifty-eight years old, Margaret Karr lived an immigrant life and probably felt more like she was eighty years old.

  Joe was just eighteen years old when his mother died. In future years he never talked much about his mother, so we don't know how close he was to her or how he reacted to her death. He continued to work and helped his siblings look after their father. With a new century approaching the family got a new name. After a few years of trying it out (as you can see in Margaret Carr's obituary), the family officially changed the spelling of their last name to a more American version, C-a-r-r. Only the family rebel John Karr in Chicago kept the original spelling, mainly to keep his cigar shop's current name. For the rest of his life, Joe would be known as Joe F. Carr.'

  Also that same year his brother, Michael L. Carr, married a local Irish girl named Margaret Megahan. Michael was built just like his younger brother Joe. "He had the same blue eyes like Joe with sandy blonde hair and the same body build. He had a deep voice and loved to smoke. He was a chain smoker just like Joe; maybe that's where Joe picked it up. He also was crazy about his wife and she was crazy about him, " says Margaret Mooney, the granddaughter of Michael L. Carr. "Like his brother my grandfather loved sports. He played golf and he bowled. He played poker a lot too. I doubt Uncle Joe played poker though," says Mooney.6

  Michael moved out of his father's home soon after getting married and continued to work as a clerk at the grocery store. The couple went on to have three children-Robert, John, and Margaret (although Robert would die before the age of ten). Joe's relationship with Michael and Eddie was the best among all his siblings, and it grew during this time. Joe liked working in the shops, but he wanted to do more and get involved in the one thing he truly loved-sports.

  The new century had seen a new name, a new sister-in-law, and now a new career. Around this time Joe got his first job in the sporting world, as he was hired as an assistant sports editor at the Ohio State journal, one of the big newspapers in the city, along with the Columbus Dispatch, the Columbus Press-Post, and the Columbus Citizen.

  In 1811 the Ohio State journal was founded in Worthington, Ohio, a small town just north of Columbus and was titled the Western Intelligence. After Columbus was named the capital, the paper moved to the downtown area. In 1840 the paper was renamed the Ohio State Journal and later became the Republican Party's main voice in central Ohio. This first sports job would come in handy down the road as Carr would continue to have a relationship with the Ohio State journal for the next four decades.

  Joe's title at the paper sounded bigger than the job, as the sports department wasn't very big and the pay was less. But it was a chance for Joe to be involved in the sports world, and that's all he wanted. He was able to attend local sporting events, and while doing this he got to know owners, promoters, athletes, team managers, coaches, and, just as important, other sportswriters. While covering the sports scene, he became well-known for his knowledge and writing on all sports, but it was his boxing stories that grabbed extra attention around Columbus. His boxing yarns were very popular, as well as his famous trademark line that would accompany every article: "the fighters went at it hammer and tongs."'

  Joe was barely in his early twenties when he was gaining this muchneeded experience in seeing from all angles how the sports world was being operated and run. His sports-writing days would always come in handy as he furthered his career, and the NFL would be the ultimate benefactor. Carr always saw the press as a dear friend and he treated it with respect. Once talking about the press he said, "Their support is the most important factor in the success of any sports venture. Be fair with the press and it will be fair with you." He lived by this motto for the rest of his career.'

  Although Joe was covering sports for the Ohio State journal, that wasn't enough. He wanted to more involved. He wanted to run his own sports team just like back on the sandlots in the neighborhood. He was smart and knew sports as well as anybody. He knew he could do it. So back at the Panhandle shops he formed a baseball team made up of employees of the railroad. The Panhandle Athletic Board approved the team. Because Joe was a fan of Chicago White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey, who was nicknamed "the Old Roman" and was one of the founders of the new American League, Joe named his team the Panhandle White Sox.

  The Panhandle baseball team would go on to play in the Capital City League and the Saturday Afternoon League in Columbus for several years. About the same time Bob Quinn returned to Columbus to be secretarybusiness manager for the Columbus minor league baseball team in the new American Association. Joe would strike up a friendship with him and continue to see that one could make a career out of being a sports executive. Everything was falling in place for Joe to learn his true trade, as the machinist job was starting to take a back seat.

  In the fall of 1901 a fairly new sport was starting to take off in central Ohio and in the Panhandle shops that would grab the attention of Joe Carr. Professional football had gotten its roots in western Pennsylvania in the 1890s and now started to make its way west into Ohio. Columbus had several teams playing, including the Columbus Nationals, Columbus Northerns, and the Columbus Barracks (made up of soldiers who were stationed in Columbus). Colleges like Ohio Medical University and Ohio State University, which started football in 1890, would contribute to the excitement of the sport in Columbus by playing each other.

  In the Panhandle shops there were whispers of a football team being formed. William Butler, a former fullback at Ohio Medical University and a blacksmith in the shops, decided to start the team and coach. The team would be called the Columbus Panhandles. Butler recruited players for the team through the employees of the railroad and contacted other local teams for games. In 1901 the Panhandles played three games; they faced the Columbus Barracks soldier team twice and traveled west to play the Logansport team once. They finished 1-2. Fans started to notice the new "physical" sport in Columbus, as crowds from 400 to 1,200 attended the games, but the leadership of the team was very poor.'

  In the Panhandles first four seasons, the team had five different team managers and played only seventeen games. Nobody had the time (especially with no salary being ofered) or, more importantly, the passion to help run a football team. It took dedication to field a team, to schedule games, sell tickets, book travel, talk to the press about publicity for the team, and much more. In 1904 alone, the Panhandles had two separate team managers, with one quitting due to his railroad shop duties, and the team played just three games that season. The team went 2-1 with their only loss to the more skilled team from the Ohio State University. Carr, only twenty-five years old, witnessed all this confusion firsthand, and at the same time, this is where he started to fall in love with the sport. Football was just getting started in the Midwest and he thought this was a way of making his mark in the sporting world. Baseball was already established, but football needed some guidance.

  Joe's experience the past couple of years with the newspaper and the company baseball team showed him that this type of mismangement could only hurt a team. He was proven right when the Panhandles would not field a football team in 1905 and 1906. Joe knew that a manager had to be hard working, fair, and honest with his players as well as the press, which at this time had a big influence on whether a team could be successful.

  As Joe worked harder his father started to work less due to some reoccurring health issues. He was not working as a sewer contractor when another tragic death hit the family. While back in Columbus from Chicago, James Carr was stricken by the flu and never recovered. On December 9, 1904, at the young age of thirty-one, James died, just nine days short o
f his birthday; the family actually listed him at thirty-two years old on his tombstone. James was buried next to his mother at Mt. Calvary Cemetery. The family stood together in front of the two tombstones aching. Little did they know that in less than two months they would return to this very spot-grieving again.

  Michael Carr was again hit hard by a death in his family. He wasn't working, his drinking was evident, and his health was in bad shape. The head of the Carr family had lived a typical Irish immigrant story in America. He left the troubled land of Ireland for a better life, and he succeeded. He was a hardworking, well-respected citizen, who provided for his large family and gave them a better life. It was now time to go home to meet his maker.

  At 10:30 a.m. on the morning of February 6, 1905, and just two months after his son died, Michael Carr suffered a second stroke within a week and passed away at his home at 274 Hamilton Avenue. He was sixty-three years old. His death was reported by all of the Columbus newspapers, including the Columbus Dispatch's evening edition of that day. After nearly forty years living in the capital city, Michael and Margaret Carr had both passed away. All five Carr children gathered to pay their respects to the father that gave them a better life.

  The funeral was held on February 9 at St. Patrick Church. Family and friends said good-bye to an Irish life at the church that Michael loved so much. To describe Michael, the obituaries used the words "pioneer," as they had with his wife, and "one of the best known residents of the East Side." Joe and his siblings were proud of their father, and this goingaway ceremony at the church was just what their father would want. After the funeral, the five Carr siblings marched over to Mt. Calvary Cemetery to bury their father. The patriarch of the Carr family was now laid to rest next to his wife and a few feet in front of his son James. The three tombstones were identical, made from white stone concrete, and stood about two and a half feet tall, with a solid stone base. The names were carved in the stone, the spelling of the family name being C-a-rr, with the words father, mother, and son carved at the top. They were simple but elegant.10

  Just as with the death of his mother, Joe Carr, in future years, didn't say anything about his relationship with his father; no quotes in any articles, interviews, or oral history passed down with his family. Joe's work ethic and dedication to God were definitely passed down from his parents, but what else? Nobody knows. He definitely didn't live in the past. One thing Joe learned from his father-probably the most important thingwas his dislike for drinking. For his entire life, Joe never took a drink of alcohol. "He was a teetotaler, no question about it," says Gregory Carr, grandson of Joe Carr." This loss of family didn't stop Joe from working hard and trying to make his future better. He would work harder; it was the Irish way.

  Shortly before and after her father's death, Joe's older sister Mary became romantically involved with a prison trustee, Frank Pratt, while working as a stenographer at the Ohio Pen. The slender, very attractive Mary didn't know how her father felt about Frank, but she had fallen in love with him and the two married. The couple started a family and eventually moved north to Toledo. The marriage didn't last though. The two divorced, which created some tension with her younger brother Joe, who like any good Catholic didn't believe in divorce. Mary found work as a secretary for St. John's College in Toledo and rarely saw her brother. Over the years the only way they would communicate was by writing letters, and most of Mary's letters were written by her children.

  Pretty much from this point on, the Carr family in Columbus consisted of the three youngest boys-Michael, Joe, and Eddie. They would all remain in Columbus and have successful careers and lives in the capital city for the rest of their lives. While the three boys dealt with the loss of their father, the first thing they did was sell the Carr family home at 274 Hamilton Avenue. Michael was living with his wife and children, leaving Joe and Eddie to try and take care of a large house, so they agreed to sell it. After twenty years of living on Hamilton Avenue, Joe had to find a new home.

  He and Eddie moved out and became boarders at the residence of a family friend, Charlotte Vanderau, who was a recent widower and had rooms for rent at her house at 295 North 21st Street. Her husband, Casper, had run a saloon on Mt. Vernon Avenue in the Irish neighborhood and had known Joe's father, who would stop by for drinks after work. It was an easy transition for the two brothers, considering the circumstance of losing their father and family home.'2

  Eddie Carr, age twenty-one, physically looked like his brothers, sharp blue eyes, slender build, deep voice, and a hard worker. Always good with numbers, after finishing school he became a clerk for several companies, including several buggy companies in the city. He would continue to do this type of work for the rest of his life. As roommates, Joe and Eddie got along well, although they lived separate lives. Joe was still working full-time as a machinist and socializing with his small group of friends. He was a member of the Monday Night club at the Buckeye Hall in Columbus, where a group of young men would meet to speak, sing, eat, and have a few cigars to pass the night. Joe was now a full-blown smoker, which would last the rest of his life. While mourning his father's death and finding a new place to live, Joe failed to notice that the Panhandles didn't field a football team in 1905 and 1906. But the sport was never too far from his mind.

  During the two-year hiatus of the Panhandles, Carr heard about the gridiron exploits of two of his coworkers who had played for his baseball team. John and Ted Nesser were part of a large railroad family (they had eight family members working for the Pennsylvania Railroad at different times) who had played football the last two years with the Massillon (Ohio) Tigers. The Tigers were the best pro football team in the state of Ohio for those two seasons, compiling a record of 20-1-0 and attracting fairly big crowds for pro football games at that time. Their rivalry with the Canton Bulldogs (who were specifically set up to battle the Tigers) attracted crowds of 6,000 to 8,000 in 1905-1906 and gave the sport some national exposure, since the pro game at this time was still only played at the local level where small-town rivalries were the lifeblood of the sport.

  Carr heard these stories from the two Nesser brothers and took note that the sport might have a future. College football had been around for nearly forty years, with the Ivy League schools being the standard bearers for the sport, and Ohio State University was slowly building a following in Columbus. But at the end of 1906, a scandal rocked the sport and Joe took notice.

  There was no official football league in the early days of pro football; most teams played local and nearby teams, with team managers setting up games on the fly. At the start of the twentieth century, pro football was considered a criminal activity by the public and press and was frowned upon by the college game. Most teams would spend money to get the best players possible to try and beat their nearby rival for bragging rights and to collect a few bucks along the way. Stark County had the two best teams in the state do just that. In 1905 Massillon defeated the Canton team twice to claim the mythical title of "best pro team" in Ohio. So at the end of 1906 the Massillon Tigers set up two games with their archrival-the Canton Bulldogs. This was going to be the two best teams playing each other for bragging rights (since there was no actual league title to win), and it was to be the big paydays for each team, too.

  Both teams spent money to bring in top talent (including players like John and Ted Nesser) to play in the two games. Canton won the first game 10-5, and Massillon won the second game 13-6. But shortly after the second game, there were rumors that the game was fixed so that there would be a third game to be played. Stories of betting by the managers and players on each team surfaced, and fans almost brawled in a hotel lobby hearing these rumors. It ruined a great season for professional football. Carr, a young executive and sportswriter, saw how this damaged the sport. The answer was simple to him: you needed to be honest and fair, and you needed rules to follow. Although gambling would be part of all sports (including pro football), Carr knew that in no way should a team manager or player gamble or try to fix a g
ame for his own personal gain. If the fans wanted to lay a bet on the game (something he couldn't control), that was fine, but a manager, coach, or player was unacceptable. In order for pro football or any sport to be accepted by the public it needed to be played clean and fair as possible. The Canton-Massillon scandal showed this to Carr. He took note.13

  Carr was now hooked on football, and the past several years of working in the sports world gave him confidence to move forward in making this a career. "He definitely used this period to feel out if this was something he wanted to do. It grew on him.... He didn't play these sports; with his stature, he couldn't play them. So he went into other areas like organization, " says Michael Carr, grandson of Joe Carr.14 His family was now less a part of his life than the sporting world. It was time to make his family proud of him. He remembered his father's Irish work ethic, "a handful of skill is better than a bagful of gold." His parents were now gone. But what would Joe say to them if they were here? "Love you mom, love you dad, but now it's time to go to work."

  By the time the NFL was founded in 1920, football rules had already undergone significant change. Some pre-NFL rules that helped shape the American game include the following:

  1879: scrimmage line replaced the rugby "scrum"

  1880: eleven players on a side

  1881: field dimensions reduced to 110 yards in length by 53 yards in width

  1882: three downs to gain five yards

  1893: kickoff must go ten yards unless touched by the defense to be in play

  1895: seven men required to be on the line of scrimmage at the snap

  1906: forward pass (with restrictions) made legal

  1906: game made sixty minutes long

  1910: game to be played in four 15-minute quarters