Regular season | |
---|---|
Duration | September 19 – December 19, 1926 |
Champions | Frankford Yellow Jackets |
The 1926 NFL season was the seventh regular season of the National Football League (NFL). It was a year in which a record 22 teams participated, a number not equaled again until after the 1970 NFL-AFL merger.
In the spring of 1927, a league meeting was held in Cleveland in an attempt to solidify the league by relegating smaller and financially shaky teams out of the league. A total of just 12 teams would remain for the 1927 season.
The National Football League grew to 22 teams in 1926, with newcomers including the Brooklyn Lions, Hartford Blues,Los Angeles Buccaneers, and the Louisville Colonels, with the Racine Tornadoes re-entering.
Offsetting the torrent of first-time teams, the Cleveland Bulldogs sat out the season, the Rock Island Independents defected to the upstart American Football League, and the Rochester Jeffersons suspended operations for the final time (eventually folding in early 1928).
Adding to the confusion, in 1926 the Akron Pros re-branded as the Akron Indians, the Duluth Kelleys as the Duluth Eskimos, and the Buffalo Bison as the Buffalo Rangers (the team also used the names "Texas Rangers" and "Buffalo Cowboys"). [ citation needed ].
The Buccaneers, Eskimos, Colonels and Buffalo Rangers were "showcase teams," the first efforts for the league to reach beyond the northeast and midwest. The Buccaneers, a response to the AFL's Los Angeles Wildcats, represented the state of California; the Eskimos the far northern plains, while the Colonels represented the Southern United States and the Rangers represented the state of Texas and other areas of the Southwestern United States.[ clarification needed ] These four teams (except the Rangers) all played primarily as traveling teams. Three of the four teams only lasted one season; the Buccaneers and Colonels both folded while the Rangers reverted to their previous status as the Bison, with only the Eskimos returning for 1927.
In mid-November, Brooklyn merged with the AFL's Brooklyn Horsemen and stayed in the NFL, playing one more game as the Lions before changing its name to the Brooklyn Horsemen for the last three games — all shutout losses.
The Frankford Yellow Jackets were named the NFL champions after finishing the season with the best record. Their 14 victories were the most in an NFL season to that point, a record that would not be bested until the 1968 Baltimore Colts won 15.
After the season, the Philadelphia Inquirer lobbied for a World Series-style game between the Yellow Jackets and the AFL's champions Philadelphia Quakers, with the Quakers' owner challenging the Yellow Jackets, but ultimately the NFL denied permission to this game to be held. [1]
In January 1927, an owners' meeting was held in New York City at which tentative plans were made to reorganize the NFL into two classes, "A" and "B", with weaker teams demoted to the second division. [2] A follow-up meeting was held on April 23 and 24 in Cleveland's Statler Hotel to formalize these changes. [2]
Although the splitting of the league into tiers was initially envisioned, the decision was made to eliminate small and financially struggling teams from the league, with 10 of the league's 22 clubs thereby either relegated to independent semi-pro status or nudged into dissolution. [3]
The NFL would not again have as many as 22 teams until the 1970 season, which followed the NFL-AFL merger.
The league had a record 22 teams for the 1926 season.
First season in NFL * | Rejoined the NFL † | Last active season ^ |
NFL standings | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
W | L | T | PCT | PF | PA | STK | |||
Frankford Yellow Jackets | 14 | 1 | 2 | .933 | 236 | 49 | W6 | ||
Chicago Bears | 12 | 1 | 3 | .923 | 216 | 63 | L1 | ||
Pottsville Maroons | 10 | 2 | 2 | .833 | 155 | 29 | T1 | ||
Kansas City Cowboys | 8 | 3 | 0 | .727 | 76 | 53 | W7 | ||
Green Bay Packers | 7 | 3 | 3 | .700 | 151 | 61 | T1 | ||
New York Giants | 8 | 4 | 1 | .667 | 151 | 61 | W3 | ||
Los Angeles Buccaneers | 6 | 3 | 1 | .667 | 67 | 57 | L1 | ||
Duluth Eskimos | 6 | 5 | 3 | .545 | 113 | 81 | L1 | ||
Buffalo Rangers | 4 | 4 | 2 | .500 | 53 | 62 | T1 | ||
Chicago Cardinals | 5 | 6 | 1 | .455 | 74 | 98 | L1 | ||
Providence Steam Roller | 5 | 7 | 1 | .417 | 89 | 103 | L1 | ||
Detroit Panthers | 4 | 6 | 2 | .400 | 107 | 60 | L3 | ||
Hartford Blues | 3 | 7 | 0 | .300 | 57 | 99 | L1 | ||
Brooklyn Lions | 3 | 8 | 0 | .273 | 60 | 150 | L3 | ||
Milwaukee Badgers | 2 | 7 | 0 | .222 | 41 | 66 | L5 | ||
Dayton Triangles | 1 | 4 | 1 | .200 | 15 | 82 | L2 | ||
Akron Indians | 1 | 4 | 3 | .200 | 23 | 89 | T1 | ||
Racine Tornadoes | 1 | 4 | 0 | .200 | 8 | 92 | L4 | ||
Columbus Tigers | 1 | 6 | 0 | .143 | 26 | 93 | L5 | ||
Canton Bulldogs | 1 | 9 | 3 | .100 | 46 | 161 | L1 | ||
Hammond Pros | 0 | 4 | 0 | .000 | 3 | 56 | L4 | ||
Louisville Colonels | 0 | 4 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 108 | L4 |
The Frankford Yellow Jackets were a professional American football team, part of the National Football League from 1924 to 1931, although its origin dates back to as early as 1899 with the Frankford Athletic Association. The Yellow Jackets won the NFL championship in 1926. The team played its home games from 1923 in Frankford Stadium in Frankford, a section in the northeastern part of Philadelphia, noted for the Market–Frankford Line that terminates there.
Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under multiple names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s. The early NFL-era franchise was variously called the Buffalo All-Stars from 1915 to 1917, Buffalo Niagaras in 1918, the Buffalo Prospects in 1919, Buffalo All-Americans from 1920 to 1923, Buffalo Bisons from 1924 to 1925 and in 1927 and 1929, and the Buffalo Rangers in 1926. The franchise, which was experiencing financial problems in 1928, did not participate in league play that season.
The Orange Tornadoes and Newark Tornadoes were two manifestations of a long-lived professional American football franchise that existed in some form from 1887 to 1941 and from 1958 to 1970, having played in the American Amateur Football Union from 1888 to 1895, the National Football League from 1929 to 1930, the American Association from 1936 to 1941, the Atlantic Coast Football League from 1963 to 1964 and 1970, and the Continental Football League from 1965 to 1969. The team was based for most of its history in Orange, New Jersey, with many of its later years in Newark. Its last five seasons of existence were as the Orlando Panthers, when the team was based in Orlando, Florida. The NFL franchise was sold back to the league in October 1930. The team had four head coaches in its two years in the NFL – Jack Depler in Orange, and Jack Fish, Al McGall and Andy Salata in Newark.
The Duluth Eskimos were a professional football team from Duluth, Minnesota in the National Football League (NFL). After spending most of their time as a traveling team, they withdrew from the league after the 1927 season.
The Staten Island Stapletons, also known as the Staten Island Stapes, were a professional American football team. Founded in 1915, they played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1929 to 1932. The team was based in the Stapleton section of Staten Island. They played under the shortened nickname the "Stapes" the final two seasons.
Below is a list of professional football Championship Games in the United States, involving:
The 1990 NFL season was the 71st regular season of the National Football League (NFL). To increase revenue, the league, for the first time since 1966, reinstated bye weeks, so that all NFL teams would play their 16-game schedule over a 17-week period. Furthermore, the playoff format was expanded from 10 teams to 12 teams by adding another wild card from each conference, thus adding two more contests to the postseason schedule; this format was modified with realignment in 2002 before the playoffs expanded to 14 teams in 2020.
The 1924 NFL season was the fifth regular season of the National Football League. The league had 18 teams play during the season, including the new clubs Frankford Yellow Jackets, Kansas City Blues, and Kenosha Maroons. The Louisville Brecks, Oorang Indians, St. Louis All Stars and Toledo Maroons folded.
The 1927 NFL season was the eighth regular season of the National Football League. It was preceded by an April 1927 purge of the financially weakest franchises from the league roster, with the total number of NFL teams ultimately dropping from 22 in 1926 to just 12 in 1927.
Throughout the years, a number of teams in the National Football League (NFL) have either moved or merged.
The Philadelphia Quakers were a professional American football team that competed in the first American Football League in 1926 and won the league's only championship.
Walter Frederic Koppisch was an American football halfback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Buffalo Bisons and the New York Giants. He played college football for the Columbia Lions.
The first American Football League (AFL), sometimes called AFL I, AFLG, or the Grange League, was a professional American football league that operated in 1926. It was the first major competitor to the National Football League (NFL). Founded by Charles "C.C." Pyle, (1882–1939), and General Charles X. Zimmerman, (1865–1926), as vice president and starring Hall of Fame halfback Harold Edward "Red" Grange, (1903–1991), the short-lived league with nine teams competed against the more established – then six-year-old – NFL, both for players and for fans. While Pyle's and Grange's New York Yankees team and the already established Philadelphia Quakers became reliable draws, the lack of star power and the uncertain financial conditions of the other seven teams led to the league's dissolution after one season.
The 1926 AFL season was the only season of the first American Football League. It started with nine teams, with the initial game of the season being played in front of 22,000 fans in Cleveland, Ohio, but by the end of the season, only four teams were still in existence: three teams owned or subsidized by league founder C. C. Pyle and star Red Grange and league champion Philadelphia Quakers. The initial lineup of teams included the traveling Wildcats and a charter member of the National Football League, the Rock Island Independents, which became a second traveling team after having poor attendance in its first three games.
Adolf Frederick "Swede" Youngstrom was an American professional football player in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Dartmouth Big Green, earning consensus All-American honors in 1919. Over the span of his NFL career, Youngstrom played with the Buffalo All-Americans, Canton Bulldogs, Buffalo Bisons, Cleveland Bulldogs and the Frankford Yellow Jackets. He also served as a player-coach for the Yellow Jackets in 1927. Outside of the NFL, Youngstrom played pro football for the Millville Big Blue and the Haven-Villa of Winter Haven.
In professional team sports, a traveling team is a member of a professional league that never competes in a home arena or stadium. This differs from a barnstorming team as a barnstorming team competes in exhibition games and not within a league or association framework as a traveling team does. While leagues may designate a traveling team prior to the start of competition, some teams become road teams by simply not scheduling any home games.
The Los Angeles Wildcats was a traveling team of the first American Football League that was not based in its nominal home city but in Chicago, Illinois. Coached by Jim Clark, the team was designed to be a showcase for University of Washington star back George “Wildcat” Wilson. Compared to most traveling teams in professional football, the Wildcats were successful, compiling a 6–6–2 record in the only season of the team's – and the league's – existence.
The Cleveland Panthers were a professional American football team. They were an independent team founded in 1919 from the remains of the Youngstown Patricians. The Panthers played, with various degrees of success, continuously from 1919 and eventually, as fewer opponents played them each year after 1926, sputtered to a quiet folding in 1933.
Joseph "Butch" Spagna was a professional football player during the 1920s.
This timeline of the National Football League (NFL) tracks the history of each of the league's 32 current franchises from the early days of the league, through its merger with the American Football League (AFL). The history of franchises that began as independent teams, or as members of the Ohio League, New York Pro Football League, and other defunct leagues are shown as well.