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The Akron Pros were a professional football team that played in Akron, Ohio, from 1908 to 1926. The team originated in 1908 as a semi-pro team named the Akron Indians, but later became Akron Pros in 1920 as the team set out to become a charter member of the American Professional Football Association. Fritz Pollard, the first black head coach in the NFL, co-coached the Akron Pros in 1921. Paul Robeson played for the team in 1921 as well. He was among the earliest stars of professional football, before football became segregated from 1934 to 1946. In 1926, the name was changed back to the Akron Indians, after the earlier semi-pro team. Due to financial problems, the team suspended operations in 1927 and surrendered its franchise the following year.
The Providence Steam Rollers was a professional American football team based in Providence, Rhode Island in the National Football League from 1925 to 1931. Providence was the first New England team to win an NFL championship. The Steam Roller won the league's championship in 1928, to date, this is the latest NFL championship win by a defunct team. Most of their home games were played in a 10,000-seat stadium that was built for bicycle races called the Cycledrome.
The Columbus Panhandles were a professional American football team based in Columbus, Ohio. The club was founded in 1901 by workers at the Panhandle shops of the Pennsylvania Railroads. They were a part of the Ohio League from 1904 before folding after one season. Three years later, the team tried again and playing the Ohio League from 1907 to 1919, not winning a championship, before becoming charter members of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) which became the National Football League (NFL).
The Rock Island Independents were a professional American football team, based in Rock Island, Illinois, from 1907–1926. 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 Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA) is an organization of researchers whose mission is to preserve and, in some cases, reconstruct professional football history. It was founded on June 22, 1979 in Canton, Ohio by writer/historian Bob Carroll and six other football researchers and is currently headed by an executive committee led by its president, Ken Crippen, and executive director Mark L. Ford. Membership in the organization includes some of professional football's foremost historians and authors. The organization is based in Grand Island, New York.
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. 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 scheduled 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.
The Atlantic Coast Football League (ACFL) was a minor football league that operated from 1962 to 1973. Until 1969, many of its franchises had working agreements with NFL and AFL teams to serve as farm clubs. The league paid a base salary of $100 per game and had 36 players on each active roster.
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 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 major National Football League 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 American Association (AA) was a professional American football league based in New York City. Founded in 1936 as a minor league with teams in New York and New Jersey, the AA extended its reach to Providence, Rhode Island prior to the onset of World War II. After a four-year hiatus, the league was renamed the American Football League as it expanded to include teams in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1947, the Richmond Rebels of the Dixie League purchased the assets of the defunct AFL Long Island Indians and jumped leagues.
The 1940 American Football League season was the first season of the third American Football League. The league was formed when the New York Yankees, Boston Bears, and Buffalo Indians were joined by the Cincinnati Bengals, Columbus Bullies, and Milwaukee Chiefs of the minor American Professional Football Association. After the announcement of the formation of the AFL, applications for membership by former APFA members St. Louis Gunners and Kenosha Cardinals were rejected by the upstart league, which started with six members.
The "Dixie League" was a professional American football minor league founded in 1936 originally as the "South Atlantic Football Association", with six charter member teams in the Middle Atlantic states of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Like the American Association (nicknamed the 'A.A.', which was another minor league in pro football that formed in 1936,, its popularity rivaled that of another earlier established "major league" grouping, the National Football League of 1922. Unlike most professional football minor leagues, the "Dixie League" had a relative stability in membership during the "Great Depression" in the years prior to World War II, maintaining a five or six-team lineup membership of franchises.
The Association of Professional Football Leagues was a compact formed in 1946 among the National Football League and three minor leagues of professional American football: the American Association, the Dixie League, and the Pacific Coast Professional Football League. While the NFL had an informal farm system in the pre-World War II AA, this was the first time in which it had a working arrangement with multiple leagues whose local popularity rivaled that of the major league. The agreement lasted less than two years, its termination triggered by the folding of the Dixie League after one of its members jumped to the American Football League one week into the 1947 season.
The Milwaukee Chiefs were a professional American football team based in Wisconsin that competed in the third American Football League in 1940 and in 1941.
The 1920 Canton Bulldogs season was the franchise's sixteenth and its first in the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which became the National Football League two years later. Jim Thorpe, the APFA's president, was Canton's coach and a back who played on the team. The Bulldogs entered the season coming off a 9–0–1 performance as Ohio League champions in 1919. The team opened the season with a 48–0 victory over the Pitcairn Quakers, and finished with a 7–4–2 record, taking eighth place in the 14-team APFA. A then-record crowd of 17,000 fans watched Canton's week 12 game against Union AA of Phoenixville.
Dale Johnson was a local businessman in Rock Island, Illinois, who is best known for his role in the ownership of the Rock Island Independents of the National Football League from 1923 until 1925. He took over the team from Walter Flanigan after Flanigan decided to refocus all of his time on his insurance and real estate businesses.
The Orlando Panthers were a professional American football team based in Orlando, Florida. Founded in 1958 as the Franklin Miners, the team spent its first four years in the Eastern Football Conference, then three further years in the Atlantic Coast Football League before moving to the Continental Football League in 1965. The franchise moved from Newark, New Jersey to Orlando in 1966 and found success on the field as the Panthers. However, while the team won the COFL championship twice they were plagued by financial difficulties. The team jumped back to the ACFL in 1970 but were suspended by the league after the season.
William John Laub was the Mayor of Akron, Ohio, 1916–17, and an early professional American football player-coach. Laub was the first head coach of the Canton Bulldogs and a player-coach for the Akron East Ends.
The Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit was a loose association of American football clubs that operated from 1890 to approximately 1940. Originally amateur, professionalism was introduced to the circuit in 1892; cost pressures pushed the circuit to semi-professional status from about 1920 through the rest of its existence. Existing in some form for 48 years, it was one of the longest-lived paying football loops to operate outside the auspices of the National Football League.
The Norfolk Neptunes were an American football franchise based in Norfolk, Virginia that played in the Continental Football League from 1966 until 1969 and the Atlantic Coast Football League from 1970 to 1971. The team played at Foreman Field at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.
Minor league football is a loose term for pro football (gridiron) which is played below the major league level. There is a major league designation to the National Football League and the Canadian Football League, but contrary to the other major sports in North America no formal development farm system is in use, after the NFL severed ties with all minor league teams in 1948, and again with the cancellation of NFL Europe in 2006. Since 2018 the CFL has a partnership agreement with the Professional American Football League of Mexico (LFA) for player development, but do not consider it as a minor league in the traditional sense.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Ancient Faces". 1973. Retrieved April 26, 2012.
- ↑ "Family Search". 1973. Retrieved April 26, 2012.
- 1 2 Gill, Bob (1990). "Nothing minor about it The American Association/AFL of 1936-50" (PDF). The Coffin Corner. Professional Football Researchers Association. 12 (2). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- ↑ "Joseph Rosentover Is Dead; Led Minor Football Leagues". The New York Times. December 21, 1973. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- 1 2 Gill, Bob (1989). "ALL FOR ONE... The Minor Leagues' "Big Three" Make History in 1946" (PDF). Coffin Corner. Professional Football Researchers Association. 11 (1). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- ↑ "Semi-Pro Hall of Fame". American Football Association. American Football Association. Retrieved 27 April 2012.