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

by Chris Willis

  The other Ohio League teams weren't doing much better than Canton. Massillon had been gone since 1919, and after the 1923 season so were Toledo, Cincinnati, and the colorful but poorly coached Oorang Indians; hanging on were Akron, Canton, and Columbus. The only two franchises that looked somewhat strong were Dayton (because of Carl Storck's involvement as NFL secretary-treasurer) and the Cleveland Indians operated by Sam Deutsch. The Indians had showed they could draw fans, but they were boring and not very strong. That would change for the 1924 season 26

  Now that the season was over the Green Bay Press-Gazette published an All-Pro team, encouraged by George Calhoun, selected by a poll of sportswriters from fifteen NFL cities around the league. The poll would become an annual event that eventually led to the NFL making an "official" AllLeague team. The first team included the following:

  End-Inky Williams, Hammond

  Tackle-Ed Healey, Chicago Bears

  Guard-Bub Weller, St. Louis

  Center-Harry Mehre, Minneapolis

  Guard-Swede Youngstrom, Buffalo

  Tackle-Pete "Fats" Henry, Canton

  End-Gus Tebell, Columbus

  Quarterback-Paddy Driscoll, Chicago Cardinals

  Halfback-Jim Thorpe, Oorang

  Halfback-Al Michaels, Akron

  Fullback-Doc Elliott, Canton27

  Of course, Canton dominated the first team with two choices, but the big surprise was that Guy Chamberlin didn't make the first team (placing on the second), though winning the NFL title probably softened his disappointment. Also making the first team was Jay "Inky" Williams, one of the early black players, who was one of at least six black players in the NFL in 1923. Joe F. Carr was happy to see that the NFL was still standing and operating at the end of the season despite all the negative publicity heaved on his delicate league. But one thing was sure, Carr was a fighter, and he wasn't afraid to mix it up with the big boys.

  arr began his fourth year as president with another trip to Chicago for the annual winter meeting. On January 26-27 the league's magnates gathered at the Hotel Sherman to further establish the NFL. Eighteen of the twenty teams showed up, with representatives from Duluth and St. Louis not able to attend. After Carr began the first day of the meeting, at precisely 4:00 p.m., a very interesting proposal was brought up. The owners voted the president to appoint a committee of five members to draw up a plan to divide the league into two geographical divisions and adopting a schedule based on the divisions.'

  This was the first time the idea of splitting the league into divisionssimilar to major league baseball's National and American leagues-had come up. The motion carried unanimously, and Carr nominated Lester Higgins (Canton Bulldogs), Andy Turnbull (Green Bay), Chris O'Brien (Chicago Cardinals), Mike O'Rourke (Columbus), and chairman Babe Ruetz (Racine). The committee would talk the rest of the night to see what they could come up with.

  Then the owners awarded the 1923 NFL championship to the Canton Bulldogs and once again the title-winning team was awarded gold footballs and a championship pennant. The first day's proceedings ended with the election of the NFL's officials and to no one's surprise Joe Carr (president), John Dunn (vice president), and Carl Storck (secetary-treasurer) were all reelected.

  The following day Carr accepted the application for a new franchise from Kansas City (Missouri) and passed a resolution that the referee would be paid thirty-five dollars a game and traveling expenses. Also carried was that the umpire and head linesman are to be agreed upon by the two teams (assigned at least four days in advance), that the visiting club chooses the head linesman, and that each is to be paid no more than twenty-five dollars per game.3

  Lastly the topic of scheduling with the two-division setup came back up, and after much discussion, complaining, and rewording, nothing was approved. Each club was to submit to Carr a seven-game schedule by June 1 that would be ratified at the July meeting. A nine-game schedule was to be drafted with at least the first five games to be divisional games. In the end, when all of the owners returned home, the idea of having two divisions died. Its time would come a decade later.

  Six months later Carr and the owners returned to the Hotel Sherman in Chicago to put the finishing touches on the upcoming season, which meant approving new franchises and completing the schedule. Meeting on July 25-26, Carr and the owners first established the NFL season by agreeing to start the year on September 28 and finish on November 30. Ignored was the fact that teams usually contended and scheduled games into December. Then Carr accepted the applications of the Kansas City (Missouri) Cowboys and a new Philadelphia team. With the removal of the Toledo, LaRue, St. Louis, and Louisville franchises, the NFL in 1924 would have eighteen teams 4

  At the end of the meeting the owners finalized the schedules that each team did on their own and voted on increasing the player limit from sixteen to eighteen, allowing teams some flexibility in case injuries happened during the season. After wrapping up the two-day meeting, President Carr was exhausted but noticed that the league was continuing to take baby steps to gain the stability it needed to succeed. His eighteen-team loop had gone through some changes, and two franchises (one new and one old) would make things very interesting for the upcoming season.5

  The newest member of the NFL was the Frankford Yellow Jackets. Frankford was a suburb northeast of Philadelphia and had built a worthy reputation as the strongest team in the city-succeeding Leo Conway's Philadelphia Quakers. The Yellow Jackets were founded in 1899 by the Frankford Athletic Association (FAA), a nonprofit organization composed of sports lovers of the community who paid annual dues to belong. The president of the FAA was H. S. "Shep" Royle, a former tackle for the Yellow Jackets, who was also the president of a large textile mill and a state representative and would do anything to build a successful squad. Being in a fairly big market got Carr very excited despite the fact the Yellow Jackets couldn't play on Sundays.

  Pennsylvania Blue Laws forbade football on Sundays, necessitating Saturday games for the Yellow Jackets. Very quickly they fell into a pattern of playing home on Saturday, then jumping a train to play somewhere else on Sunday. As a consequence, in some years, they would play twice as many games as some of the other NFL teams. Lesser teams would have crumbled, but from the start the Yellow Jackets were one of the league's best teams. Better yet, for Carr, Frankford drew big crowds as the FAA had just built a new stadium that cost roughly $100,000 and would seat about 15,000 fans. The Yellow Jackets would be that big-city team Joe F. Carr was now leaning toward. Having the Yellow Jackets in the league also gave the western teams someplace to go east where they could make some money.'

  The other franchise that would make a big move was the NFL's twotime champions the Canton Bulldogs. Once again the Bulldogs were a financial disaster. High salaries, traveling expenses, and low attendance combined to put the team in red ink. On August 24 the Canton Repository reported the news that due to staggering losses of approximately $13,000, the team would be sold to Sam Deutsch.7

  Deutsch was a sports promoter from Cleveland who was involved in both minor league baseball and boxing in the city, but he really wanted to have a big-time pro football team. He took over the Cleveland franchise vacated the previous year by Jimmy O'Donnell and named his team the Cleveland Indians, matching the baseball squad. His team went 3-1-3, and its only loss was a 46-10 blowout to the Bulldogs, giving Deutsch a front-row seat to watch Guy Chamberlin's powerful team. So seeing the Canton team in financial distress, he made an offer of $2,500 to buy the team that was essentially the old Canton Bulldogs team with a few exceptions. So after nearly two decades of sitting on top of the pro football world, the city of Canton and the Canton Bulldogs would not field a professional team in 1924. The game was definitely changing, and Carr could see the day that the small towns (that started and nurtured the game) would eventually fade. But when that would finally happen he didn't know.

  As the Cleveland Bulldogs situation resolved itself, the 1924 season started on the weekend of September 28. Carr continued
to write his Gridiron Gossip column, and his positive and truthful writing was never sharper.

  October 4-"One of the big games, Sunday, will be the tilt between the Chicago Bears and Cleveland. The Windy City combination will have to step on the gas. Guy Chamberlin's lineup looks mighty powerful.

  Green Bay is booked to invade Chicago for a fracas with the Cardinals. Quite a kicking duel should be on tap when these clubs clash as Paddy Driscoll and Cub Buck are past masters at booting the pigskin.'

  The gossip gave the league some constant publicity and was a great example of Carr using the press/media to help get his league some exposure that would put people in the stands. They were the first "unofficial" press releases sent out by the NFL office, an example of blogging or putting up short stories on the Web for the 1920s. In the second week of October, Joe F. Carr planned a trip with the officials of the Columbus Tigers to check out two eastern teams. Traveling with team president Mike O'Rourke and team manager and friend Jerry Corcoran, Carr planned to watch the Tigers play the Frankford Yellow Jackets on Saturday, October 18, and then accompany the team to see the Tigers play the following day against the Providence Steam Roller, a nonleague team. He heard good things about the Steam Roller and wanted to see if it could be a potential NFL team. The Steam Roller was another one of those teams that played in a bigger market and would expand the NFL's population circle.'

  In Frankford Carr saw the Tigers lose 23-7 to the talented Yellow Jackets in front of a large crowd of 10,000 spectators, a number that impressed Carr very much. The following day Carr saw 7,000 fans show up for the Columbus-Providence game, and Carr was once again impressed by the fairly large crowd. He definitely thought Providence had the potential to be a good NFL town, and its proximity to Boston (forty miles) would help attract some new fans.10

  As the NFL was settling into the teeth of its season, the biggest news coming out of the football world was about the exploits of Harold "Red" Grange, the junior halfback for the University of Illinois. In a game against the University of Michigan on October 18, Grange made sports history. In a matchup of the two best teams in the country, Grange returned the opening kickoff ninety-five yards for a touchdown. Then he ran sixtyseven, fifty-six, and forty-four yards for three more touchdowns-all in the first twelve minutes of the game. Tired, Grange sat out the second quarter. He came back to run eleven yards for a fifth touchdown and passed twenty yards for a sixth, as Illinois won 39-14 to end Michigan's twenty-game unbeaten streak. He totaled an amazing 402 total yards and became a national hero. The national press would follow his every move, and the owners of the NFL started to line up for his talent.

  Joe F. Carr would also take notice of the best football player in the country. He knew Grange could help his league as fans wanted to watch the redhead perform. But Grange was only a junior, so Carr and the rest of the NFL would have to wait. On November 9 the Columbus Tigers traveled west to play the Chicago Bears. During the Bears' 12-6 win, the 10,000 fans at Cubs Park saw a strange play that caught the whole crowd by surprise. While on offense, the Tigers fumbled and Bears fullback Oscar Knop picked up the loose ball, got mixed up, and started running toward his own goal line. After rumbling thirty-five yards, Knop was brought down at his own five yard line by his teammate Joey Sternaman. The big crowd got a laugh, but George Halas didn't. His Bears were right in the middle of trying to win another NFL championship."

  The Bears might have been running the wrong way, but Carr was hoping his sport was heading in the right direction and taking the necessary baby steps forward. One team that was running the right way was the Cleveland Bulldogs. To start the season the Bulldogs defeated the Chicago Bears in a close contest (16-14) and suffered a tie against the Frankford Yellow Jackets. But after that, the Bulldogs won four straight games and found themselves at the top of the standings heading into the final weeks of the season.

  After getting off to a slow start (losing to Dayton, tying Cleveland, and losing to the Bears by the lopsided margin of 33-3), the Frankford Yellow Jackets then turned it on by winning their last eight games. The most shocking victory was on November 16 when they handed the Cleveland Bulldogs their first defeat of the season, 12-7. This game gave Guy Chamberlin his first loss as a head coach. He was unbeaten at 26-0-4 in his first thirty games as head coach of the Canton-Cleveland Bulldogs. Nobody has ever matched Chamberlin's start, and it's probable that nobody will.

  Although the Yellow Jackets would not win the championship, finishing with an 11-2-1 record, they were winners at the box office. In their ten home matchups (nine games were played on Saturday and one Thanksgiving Thursday), the Yellow Jackets averaged close to 7,500 fans per game.

  September 29-Rochester (7,000)

  October 4-Kenosha (7,000)

  October 11-Cleveland (not available)

  October 18-Columbus (10,000)

  November 1-Akron (6,000)

  November 8-Kansas City (10,000)

  November 15-Minneapolis (8,000)

  November 22-Milwaukee (5,000)

  November 27-Dayton (15,000)

  November 29-Buffalo (7,000)

  ten home games (averaging 7,500)12

  The Bulldogs rebounded with two straight wins to finish with a 7-1-1 record on November 30-the supposed ending date of the season. At the same time, the Bears were 6-1-4. The NFL didn't count ties, so the Bulldogs had a better winning percentage than the Bears at .875 to .857. Had everyone stopped playing on November 30, the Bulldogs' championship would have been cut-and-dry. Moreover, the general public was still not at all clear on how the NFL champion was to be chosen. In the days before the league existed, settling the championship by the "last win" method always took precedence in any dispute between two teams with fairly similar records. The Bears were close and invited the Bulldogs to Chicago to settle the matter.

  George Halas set up the game for December 7 at Cubs Park, and the Chicago newspapers billed the game as being "for the championship." Chamberlin and his Bulldogs treated the game as an exhibition, thinking that November 30 was the end of the season. Close to 18,000 fans saw a very close game through three quarters, after which the Bulldogs trailed 7-0. Then they let everything slide as the Bears scored several times in the fourth quarter and won easily 23-0.13

  The Chicago press, as well as other newspapers across the country, immediately awarded the Bears the championship. Mass confusion ensued, and Carr took his time on clearing the air. Well aware that the end of the season was established early in the year as November 30, Carr knew that the Bulldogs were the champs, and according to the bylaws, the decision to award the title wouldn't happen until the following winter meeting in January. Writing in his Gossip column, Carr didn't even bother to mention the dueling title winners and wrote about the league's just finished season.

  December 14-The Chicago Bears administered a stinging 23-to-0 defeat to the Cleveland Bulldogs. Chamberlin's crew simply could not get going and they went down grade fast in the fourth quarter, when the Bruins ran wild.

  Walter Camp, dean of collegiate football, was an interested spectator at the Bear-Bulldog game. Sir Walter admitted it was a great exhibition of pigskin chasing, adding that the brilliant offense rather surprised him.

  This is the time of the year that the moguls begin figuring up their profits and losses. If it hadn't been for several months' bad breaks in the weather, the majority of the clubs would have, at least, come through about even.

  Reports from Notre Dame have it that the "Four Horsemen" will not play pro football together. From this it would seem that several of the players may be seen on the post-graduate grid. Any one of them would be an attraction.

  Chris O'Brien is looking around for new blood in his Cardinal eleven and it is understood that there will be a thorough house-cleaning before it is time to start another season of professional football.14

  But the confusion and the Bears' contention (led by George Halas) that they had a shot at the title just added to the hysteria. At the root of the controversy was a ve
ry basic question, one that had been hovering for five years ever since the idea of a league had first surfaced in Ralph Hay's Hupmobile office in 1920: was this a league of equals, all following the same rules, or was it a business in which economic might made right? At the league meeting in January of 1925, Carr came down on the side of his bylaws and awarded the championship to the Cleveland Bulldogs. The championship went to the team with the best winning percentage on November 30, just as the owners decided the summer before.

  Furthermore the league didn't have a "championship" game and individual clubs-like the Bears-had no right to invent one. In other words, only the league could establish a title game. So Guy Chamberlin had his third straight NFL championship, and Sam Deutsch his first. On December 21 Carr wrote an in-depth season-ending article for the Ohio State Journal titled "Pro Football Takes Better Hold on Fans."

  Professional football came into its own during the season of 1924. The press and some of the great football authorities have been willing to admit that the post-graduate gridiron game has made rapid strides into public favor. It wasn't so long ago that the "money-tainted" footballers were looked upon with disfavor and the critics of the pro game were losing little time heaping gobs of abuse on those who attempted to foster Sunday football with the dollar sign as the goal.

  However times have changed and this season planted professional football solidly in the ranks of fall sports. There is no question but that the post-graduate has improved rapidly. The class of play is much better and the club owners are making progress towards handling their teams in collegiate style.

  Hold Daily Practice

  Back in the olden days, the players used to arrive just a few hours before the game and run through signals in a hotel corridor or back alley. But today, the majority of the teams keep their players on the scene of action all week and the squad has its daily practice. Under this new working order, the class of play measures up pretty close to a 100 percent to the collegiate brand. Possibly the individual condition of the pro players is a bit below the college grade but each year this weakness is being wiped out as the club owners are fining heavily those players who stray off the straight and narrow path.