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

by Chris Willis

  Early in the season, President Carr went to several games. On Saturday, October 16, he watched the Kansas City Cowboys visit the Columbus Tigers at Neil Park in Columbus. Carr and a crowd of 5,000 fans watched the Cowboys shut out the Tigers, 9-0. Carr was watching the last season of NFL play in his hometown, as the Tigers would not return to the NFL in 1927. The crowds were just too small, as most football fans in central Ohio were paying for tickets to see the Ohio State Buckeyes play, rather than the NFL. The following day Carr was in Stark County to take a look at the traveling Los Angeles (LA) Buccaneers play the aging Canton Bulldogs. Arriving before the game Carr met with both teams on the field and welcomed the LA team into the NFL: "Athletes of Los Angeles, you are meeting members of a football team that carries with it great tradition; you are in a city where players have been trail blazers, who always have fought honorably. Canton is a credit to the National League and we know Los Angeles will be."30

  An average crowd of 5,000 spectators and Carr showed up at Lakeside Park and saw an exciting game as the Buccaneers came from behind to win 16-13 over the Bulldogs. Canton's glory days were definitely behind them, as they finished the season with a 1-9-3 record. Three weeks later Carr traveled to the East Coast to see games in New York and Philadelphia. In the Big Apple he watched the Bulldogs play a special Tuesday election-day contest against the Giants. Only 4,000 fans showed up at the Polo Grounds to watch a 7-7 tie; it was a sight that disappointed Carr.

  In Philadelphia on Saturday, November 6, Carr was introduced to a crowd of 8,000 Yellow Jackets fans. After giving a short speech at midfield, Carr tipped his hat and received a standing ovation. As for the game, Carr saw one of the NFL's best teams put on a show as Guy Chamberlin's Yellow Jackets destroyed the Chicago Cardinals 33-7. At this point the NFL was barely getting by, as crowds were mostly small, and the rest of the season wouldn't get any better. Carr had witnessed some of the smallish crowds personally, but he took some solace in the fact that the AFL was doing even worse. Then Mother Nature threw the knockout punch to C. C. Pyle.31

  "I'll never forget that it rained every Sunday all fall. I don't think we had one sunny Sunday," Red Grange would recall about the fall of 1926. The competition with the NFL and the bad weather that hit finally took its toll on the AFL. Halfway through its inaugural season, Pyle's league hit a financial crisis. Cleveland and Newark quit by the end of October, and the Boston franchise surrendered in the middle of November. Rock Island followed next, and in an unusual move, the AFL's Brooklyn Horsemen merged with the NFL's Brooklyn Lions, becoming the Horse-Lions. By the end of the season, the AFL had become a four-team loop consisting of the Philadelphia Quakers, New York Yankees, Chicago Bulls, and Los Angeles Wildcats .12

  The Quakers defeated the Yankees twice in late November to finish the season with an 8-2 record and the AFL title. But by then nobody was watching. The final game of the AFL season was played on December 12 as Red Grange returned to Chicago with his Yankees to play the Bulls. The game was won by the Yankees 7-3, and it bankrupted Joey Sternaman. "We actually had a pretty good team but we didn't get the crowds. We sure tried. But everywhere in that league it was tough. We had plenty of big names and fellows who tried to make it work. But it went under at the end of the year. I came out broke after it; it was a bum gamble," Joey Sternaman recalled in a 1983 interview.33

  The teams in the AFL were undercapitalized, and when the league didn't capture the fans' interest, the owners-meaning C. C. Pylecouldn't cover the promised salaries. "He lost a bundle," Grange would later recall. A particularly rainy autumn compounded the problem. Plus most of the teams in the AFL weren't very good; they had been hastily assembled, lacked acceptable linemen, and were badly coached. The games, though often close, were always low scoring or dull. Despite some famous backs scoring was rare. In forty-one league games, the AFL teams scored only forty-two touchdowns.34

  Most of the problems that afflicted the AFL were present in the NFL too. Talent was spread thin, and most of the twenty-two teams were weaklings. The traveling Louisville Colonels didn't score a point in their four league games, and Hammond only a field goal in their four contests. Neither of those two teams, nor Racine or Milwaukee, finished the season. Akron, Brooklyn, Canton, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, and Hartford all limped to the end.

  The Nevers Eskimos drew fans here and there but not enough to completely offset heavy losses for even the stronger teams. Tim Mara's Giants, going directly against Grange's Yankees, reportedly lost $40,000. In Chicago, where three teams squared off, both the Bears and Cardinals were badly hurt. "I wasn't happy. We were back to the small gates, the search for fans, the pinching of the penny. Mara learned the Red Grange euphoria had vanished. The Giants drew only 3,000 or 4,000. Mara would look through binoculars at Yankee Stadium and say, 'There's no one over there either,"' Halas said in his autobiography.35

  Ironically, the NFL had a strong finish to the season. By the end of November, the Bears were undefeated (11-0-2) and the Frankford Yellow Jackets had one loss (12-1-1). On December 4 the Jackets and Bears faced each other at Philadelphia's Shibe Park. A nice crowd of 10,000 turned out for the game of the year. For fifty-five minutes the teams battled back and forth across the fifty yard line. The closest anyone came to scoring was Paddy Driscoll's third-quarter field goal attempt that was blocked by Chamberlin.

  Suddenly, in the fourth quarter, Bears halfback Bill Senn broke away for a sixty-two-yard touchdown scamper. Driscoll tried the extra point, and once again Chamberlin blocked it. With time running out, Frankford took over the ball. After a long pass to move the pigskin to the Bears' twenty-seven yard line, the Jackets won the NFL championship on the next play. Fading back to pass, Houston Stockton hit Henry "Two-Bits" Homan, the smallest man on the field at five feet five and 144 pounds, who made the catch of the day just as he crossed the goal line. When fullback Tex Hamer split the uprights, the Jackets moved into first place with a 7-6 "miracle" win.

  The Yellow Jackets finished the season with a win over the Providence Steam Roller and a tie against the Pottsville Maroons. Guy Chamberlin's squad was now 14-1-2 and it was his fourth NFL championship in the past five seasons. Philadelphia added the NFL crown to the AFL's won earlier by the Quakers. After the Quakers had their title in hand, Leo Conway tried to wangle a game with the Yellow Jackets but they refused. Joe F. Carr also issued a statement saying no NFL club would play the AFL's Quakers.

  However, Tim Mara agreed to let his Giants play the Quakers at the Polo Grounds on December 12 in an odd sort of "Super Bowl" with the champions of one league playing against the seventh-place team of the other. There is no evidence that has been found to say whether Carr gave his blessing for the game or that Mara was punished. Maybe Carr felt this was Mara's way of sticking it to Pyle. "Everybody on the Giants wanted to win that one. The Quakers thought the Giants were pushovers, but we kicked the bleep out of them," recalled Babe Parnell, Giants tackle. Only 5,000 die-hard fans braved the snow and cold to see the Grange League's best team get embarrassed. The Giants crushed the Quakers 31-0. There could be no doubt; the AFL was dead.36

  Although it looked like the NFL had won the war against the Grange League, it definitely lost its share of money. "The National League must have lost at least $250,000. 1 am sure that eleven of its twenty-two teams lost $150,000 among them. Our club finished the season at least $35,000 in the red," said Jack McDonough, manager of the NFL's Los Angeles Buccaneers, to a Universal Services sportswriter. "Tim Mara was a heavy loser. Only four clubs in our organization made money, the Philadelphia Yellow Jackets, the Chicago Bears, the Providence Steam Roller and the Green Bay, Wisconsin team."37

  Just a year after rejoicing the big crowd of the Grange tour game, Mara's heavy losses in 1926 made him rethink his involvement in the unpredictable sport of professional football. "Many times my father had second thoughts about football, advancing money and writing off losses. His friends told him he was foolish to keep the Giants but he stayed firm, I am sure, because my brother Jack and I
were so interested in the sport," remembered Wellington Mara.38

  In the end Carr's more structured league was better prepared to lose money and still be able to survive than Pyle's AFL. The NFL had survived its first war against a rival league. The war also proved to Carr, Mara, and Halas that the franchise-not the star-would guide the league and be the most important property. And these franchises would be more successful if the NFL lost some of its dead weight. Now was the time to get rid of some of those extra pounds.

  he 1926 season was a costly war financially for NFL owners, and it showed President Carr what had to be done in order for the league to prosper. Carr's ultimate vision of the NFL becoming a big-time sport, played in big cities, needed to be put into motion. There was no time to wait. Raising the guarantee league fee to $2,500 in 1926 and increasing the application fee were the first big steps to eliminate some of the league's "fat."

  In 1927 Carr and the NFL were now ready to get rid of the weaker franchises. For the league's initial seven seasons, franchises came and went as fast as the sun rises and sets, with most of the failed franchises drowning in their own red ink. A few of them had been removed forcibly for not paying league fees, but no owner had been kicked out or told to go away simply because his team couldn't hack it and was, as a result, costing other owners' money. Until now.

  One year earlier it was essential for the NFL to field as many franchises as possible to battle the American Football League. Anything to keep players away from AFL rosters, fans away from AFL games, or the league itself out of the sports pages. But now the crisis had passed as "healthy" franchises in larger cities, such as the Chicago Bears, New York Giants, and Frankford Yellow Jackets, who had lost money in 1926, were looking at a better situation in 1927. They needed to avoid being pulled into the abyss by the NFL's weaklings, such as the Canton Bulldogs, Akron Indians, Hammond Pros, Columbus Tigers, Racine Tornadoes, and other such losers.

  A sellout in Canton's tiny Lakeside Park would earn the Bears less as a visitor than the Halas men could reap from playing host before a modest crowd at Cubs Park. Also, fans in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia didn't want to see the likes of Canton or Akron-certainly Canton or Akron wouldn't be involved in the championship race in 1927 (and hadn't for awhile)-because they were old news.

  Teams in Green Bay, Providence, and Cleveland were caught in the middle; they could attract medium-size crowds for visiting teams-like the Bears and Giants-and they were good enough to get a home-andhome series with the larger cities; but in the end neither wanted too many Cantons cluttering up their schedule. So Carr started to get the word out that his league would be eliminating some of the weaker franchises starting at the NFL's annual winter meeting.

  Carr announced the meeting was to be held in New York on February 5-6 at the Astor Hotel. Twenty-one teams showed up; word got to Canton that they weren't wanted, so they didn't even send a representative. The owners heard Carr's report about the state of the NFL the previous year and Halas's brief statement on the meeting last July with General Pierce of the Intercollegiate Athetic Union.'

  After hearing the reports the owners got down to business. It was soon made clear to the representatives of teams like Akron, Louisville, Rochester, and such that the league had no more use for any weak teams who couldn't fill their 4,000-seat stadiums. Nor could it abide any more anemic road teams, whose only use was to show up in Chicago or New York on an odd weekend and provide a practice game for the local teams; such clubs as the Columbus Panhandles, Oorang Indians, or Los Angeles Buccaneers, once useful, were now considered leeches. Instead of by addition, in 1927, the NFL was about to grow by subtraction.

  Shortly after the discussion started, Dr. Harry March, president of the New York Giants, proposed that President Carr appoint a committee of nine to consider the "reorganization of the league." Carr appointed a nice mix of representatives of the strong, middle, and weak.

  Strong-Chicago Bears, New York Giants, and Frankford

  Middle-Providence, Pottsville, and Green Bay

  Weak-Kansas City, Akron, and Columbus2

  After a short fifteen-minute break to discuss the matter of reorganization, most of the time was spent telling Akron, Kansas City, and Rochester they were about to be lopped off; a battle ensued, with the weaker teams fighting to stay in the league. Somehow Carr had to find a suitable way to get the unproductive teams to agree, however grudgingly, to their own demise.

  Carr started day 2 at 10:00 a.m. but immediately deferred the meeting until 2:00 p.m. to continue the dialogue. A motion was then brought up by March that the league be divided into two divisions, to be known as class A (teams in) and class B (teams out), which was carried unanimously. A committee of five was established to help divide teams into two classes; Carr chose Charles Coppen (Providence) as chairman, Shep Royle (Frankford), Johnny Bryan (Milwaukee), Jimmy Conzelman (Detroit), and Jerry Corcoran (Columbus). But who would decide on who was A and who was a B. It came as no shock that when the committee of five returned from the break that the only member in charge of naming a B team was Corcoran, Carr's right hand man. It was clear Carr would decide who was in and who was out. Suggested A teams:

  B teams on the endangered list:

  Note that the B list included the heart of the old Ohio League and most of the teams that originally founded the league (Hammond, Rochester) less than a decade before. A few minutes after the list was presented, everything began to fall apart. Corcoran, head of the B teams, reported that the only thing his owners would accept would be the sale of their franchise back to the league for the current application fee of $2,500 per. In some cases, that was $2,400 more than had been paid for the originals. The ten B teams were proposing to sting the league's treasury for nearly $25,000 (more than was there). The A teams quickly voted no.4

  The owners then put the ball in the president's court. He was instructed by the owners to come up with an acceptable plan to reorganize the league by April 15. (It took him until April 23.) The heated meeting ended with Carr passing a rule that was brought on by Tim Mara's Giants playing the AFL's Philadelphia Quakers without his permission. The league adopted an amendment of the present rule that no club in the NFL be permitted to play an exhibition game "prior to, during, or after" the playing season without permission in writing from the president of the league.'

  Shortly after the winter meeting Carr took a surprise road trip east to, of all places, Pottsville, Pennsylvania. On March 6 Carr was the guest of honor at the Supporters of the Pottsville Maroons rally at the Hippodrome Theatre in the small town. A year ago Carr visited the small town and was given a tiny coal football fob by the Maroons supporters that was inscribed "Pottsville-J.F.C.-1926." A nice souvenir for the president who just one year earlier had suspended the Maroons for breaking a league rule. The original fob is now in the possession of the Carr family.

  After getting back to his hometown, Carr had a few months to reorganize his league and put his plan into writing. Before taking action, he decided to make things easier on his family. Just like his father Carr was now a well-established citizen in Columbus, and after spending the past four years at the Sullivan home, it was now time for his family to branch out on their own again. The situation following the death of Josie's father was now stable for her mother, so Joe looked outside of the Irish neighborhood to find a new home for his family.

  To the southeast of the old Irish neighborhood, Carr found a brand new house in the Bryden Road district. "It was very much a middle class neighborhood, which it remains today," says Gregory Carr, grandson of Joe F. Carr. "The house they bought just off Main Street had everything, a grocery store, dry cleaners, restaurants, a dentist, and a barbershop. The neighborhood was like a suburb and a main corridor and thoroughfare that led right into downtown Columbus."6

  The working-class neighborhood attracted Carr to the area, and it was the perfect place for Josie and the kids, Mary and Joe Jr., to make their new home. The two-story brick double broke into two homes, with the Carrs bu
ying the home on the left side at 1863 Bryden Road. The beautiful home had a very small front yard with enough space for a few flower beds about ten feet from the street's sidewalk. There were four concrete steps leading to the front porch, which had room for a two-person bench or swing. One large window looked out from the front living room.7

  Once you entered through the front door, the first floor had a fairly large living room accompanied by a gas fireplace; a dining room next to the stairways that led to the second floor and basement (which was used to keep coal for the furnace, a laundry area, and food storage); and a medium-size kitchen, which contained a gas stove, refrigerator, and oak breakfast table.

  Up on the second floor, the Carr family had three bedrooms; Joe and his wife had the front bedroom (with a small fireplace like the living room); Mary took the middle room; and Joe Jr. had the back bedroom, which also had a screened-in porch, which was nice for enjoying the summer nights. Besides the bedrooms there was one bathroom on the second floor, as well as a finished attic that could have been used as a fourth bedroom.

  The house's backyard was approximately fifty feet by eighty feet with a cement walk down the middle. Josie kept several flower gardens on either side of the yard all the way down the sidewalk. The home also had a two-car garage in back. "It was a very modest home. They didn't have a lot of fancy type of furniture or items like that. They lived a pretty modest life," says James Carr, grandson of Joe F. Carr. "The house they bought on Bryden Road was just recently built and they were the first people to occupy the house."8

  Josie quickly made the new home comfortable for her family and made sure it was a place where people felt at ease. "We visited the Carrs often and it was always a pleasant house to go to," says Martha Sullivan, niece of Josephine and Joe F. Carr. "Aunt Josie was a very gracious, charming hostess. She always had something kind of special for you if you went. We went frequently as kids. We would trailer into the kitchen and she'd have some goodie waiting for us there."9