The Cleveland Bulldogs were a team that played in Cleveland, Ohio in the National Football League. They were originally called the Indians in 1923, not to be confused with the Cleveland Indians NFL franchise in 1922. However, after team owner Samuel Deutsch purchased the Canton Bulldogs in 1924, he merged the Canton team with his Indians and renamed his franchise the Cleveland Bulldogs. The Canton Bulldogs remained a part of the team until 1925, when they were sold back to Canton. The Cleveland Bulldogs played in the NFL until 1928 when they were relocated to Detroit and became the Detroit Wolverines. The team was later incorporated into the New York Giants in 1929. The Cleveland Bulldogs won the 1924 NFL championship.
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 Cleveland Tigers were the first Cleveland team franchise in what became the National Football League (NFL). The Tigers played in the "Ohio League" before joining the American Professional Football Association during the 1920 and 1921 seasons.
The Rock Island Independents were a professional American football team, based in Rock Island, Illinois, from 1907 to 1926. The Independents were a founding National Football League franchise. They hosted what has been retrospectively designated the first National Football League game on September 26, 1920, at Douglas Park. The Independents were founded in 1907 by Demetrius Clements as an independent football club. Hence, the team was named the "Independents."
The 1920 APFA season was the inaugural season of the American Professional Football Association, renamed the National Football League in 1922. An agreement to form a league was made by four independent teams from Ohio on August 20, 1920, at Ralph Hay's office in Canton, Ohio, with plans to invite owners of more teams for a second meeting on September 17, 1920. The "American Professional Football Conference" (APFC) was made up of Hay's Canton Bulldogs, Akron Pros, the Cleveland Tigers and the Dayton Triangles, who decided on a six-game schedule to play each other at home-and-away, an agreement to respect each other's player contracts, and to take a stand against signing college students whose class had not yet graduated.
Berlin Guy "Champ" Chamberlin, sometimes misspelled Guy Chamberlain, was an American professional football player and coach. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1962 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965. He was also named in 1969 to the NFL 1920s All-Decade Team.
Wilbur Francis "Pete" Henry was an American football player, coach, and athletic administrator. He was a charter inductee into both the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.
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.
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.
The Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL), also known as the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL) and Pacific Coast League (PCL) was a professional American football minor league based in California. It operated from 1940 through 1948. One of the few minor American professional sports leagues that competed in the years of World War II, the PCPFL was regarded as a minor league of the highest level, particularly from 1940 to 1945, at a time in which the National Football League (NFL) did not extend further west than Chicago and Green Bay. It was also the first professional football league to have a team based in Hawaii.
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.
David Gordon Noble, nicknamed "Big Moose", was an American football running back. He played college football for the University of Nebraska, where he scored the first touchdown in Memorial Stadium history. After his college years, Noble played three seasons in the National Football League (NFL) and one in the American Football League (AFL), and was voted to the NFL All-Pro team in 1925.
Jack Sack was an American football player and coach. Sack was a college football player at the University of Pittsburgh and coach, and played professional football in both the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL).
Stanley Rankin Robb was an American football lineman and end who played one season in the National Football League (NFL) for the Canton Bulldogs. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he attended Peabody High School and Mercersburg Academy, after which he played college football for the Centre Praying Colonels (1920) and West Virginia Wesleyan Bobcats (1921). Robb began his professional football career in 1922, splitting the year between the Holmesburg Athletic Club and Philadelphia Quakers. He played the 1923 season with the Clifton Heights Orange & Black before joining the Pottsville Maroons for their Anthracite League championship year in 1924. Robb joined the Canton Bulldogs, coached by his brother Harry, in 1926, playing what would be his only three games in the NFL while scoring one touchdown. He later returned to Clifton Heights to finish his career.
Raffaello "Ralph" D. Vince was an American football player for the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Bulldogs, and the Cleveland Panthers. He later coached at Baldwin–Wallace College and John Carroll University. Outspoken and inventive as a coach, he was the inventor of the face mask. The original he created is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He was the first coach to put an armband of plays on his quarterbacks' wrists, now a common sight in football. He attended Washington & Jefferson College and played in the 1922 Rose Bowl. He is distinguished as being the first Italian to play in the National Football League (NFL).
Samuel H. Deutsch was a prominent sports franchise owner and jeweler. He is best known as being the owner of the National Football League (NFL)'s Cleveland Indians, formerly the Cleveland Tigers, in 1923 as well as for moving the Canton Bulldogs to Cleveland from Canton and renaming the team the Cleveland Bulldogs.
Guy Thomas "Zeke" Roberts was a professional American football player in the early National Football League (NFL) and the first American Football League (AFL). He played for three pro teams over the course of two years. In 1926 he played with the Canton Bulldogs in the NFL and the Cleveland Panthers in the AFL. He played the following season with the NFL's Pottsville Maroons. Prior to his professional career, Roberts played college football for the Iowa State Cyclones.
The Canton Bulldogs were a professional American football team, based in Canton, Ohio. They played in the Ohio League from 1903 to 1906 and 1911 to 1919, and the American Professional Football Association, from 1920 to 1923, and again from 1925 to 1926. The Bulldogs won the 1916, 1917, and 1919 Ohio League championships. They were the NFL champions in 1922 and 1923. In 1921–1923, the Bulldogs played 25 straight games without a defeat. This remains an NFL record.
