The Allegheny Athletic Association was an athletic club that fielded the first ever professional American football player and later the first fully professional football team. The organization was founded in 1890 as a regional athletic club in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which is today the North Side of Pittsburgh.
The Latrobe Athletic Association was a professional football team located in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, from 1895 until 1909. A member of the unofficial Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit, the team is best known for being the first football club to play a full season while composed entirely of professional players. In 1895, team's quarterback, John Brallier, also became the first football player to openly turn professional, by accepting $10 and expenses to play for Latrobe against the Jeannette Athletic Club.
John Kinport "Sal" Brallier was one of the first professional American football players. He was nationally acknowledged as the first openly paid professional football player when he was given $10 to play for the Latrobe Athletic Association for a game against the Jeanette Athletic Association in 1895.
The PittsburghAthletic Club football team, established in 1890, was based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1892 the intense competition between two Pittsburgh-area clubs, the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, led to William (Pudge) Heffelfinger becoming the first known professional football player. Heffelfinger was paid $500 by Allegheny to play in a game against Pittsburgh on November 12, 1892. As a result, Heffelfinger became the first person to be paid to play football. Allegheny would go on to win the game, 4–0, when Heffelfinger picked up a Pittsburgh fumble and ran it 35 yards for a touchdown. In 1893, Pittsburgh again made history when it signed one of its players, probably halfback Grant Dibert, to the first known pro football contract, which covered all of the team's games for the year.
Ira Lawson Fiscus (1866-1949) was one of the first professional football players. He attended Princeton University, where his outstanding play at offensive guard earned him the title Samson of Princeton, before going on to play professionally with the Allegheny Athletic Association in 1891 and the Greensburg Athletic Association in 1893. His brothers Ross and Newell also played for Pittsburgh-area athletic clubs and were highly regarded as players.
Charles Robert Shiring was a professional football player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began his playing career with the Pittsburgh Athletic Club during the late 1890s and the Homestead Library & Athletic Club in 1901. In 1902, he played for the Pittsburgh Stars of the first National Football League (NFL) who ended up winning the league title. Since the Stars consisted of the best professional players from western Pennsylvania at the time, it can be said that Shiring was considered the best at his position, center, in the region. However Shring is best known for playing for the Massillon Tigers from 1903 until 1907. He finally served from 1907 to 1909 as a player-coach for the Pittsburgh Lyceum, Pittsburgh's last championship professional football team, until the 1970s.
Benjamin Shenstone "Sport" Donnelly was an American football player and coach. He was the second-ever known professional football player, after Pudge Heffelfinger. He was paid $250 for one game on November 19, 1892 by the Allegheny Athletic Association, for a game against the Washington & Jefferson Presidents football team. The November 19 date was exactly seven days after the team paid Heffelfinger $500 for a game. In 1893, Donnelly was hired by the Allegheny Athletic Association as player-coach, making him the first man to ever coach a known pro team. Heffelfinger once said that Donnelly was the only man that he had played against who "could slug you and at the same time keep his eyes on the ball". Donnelly also served as the second head football coach at the University of Iowa for a single season in 1893, compiling a record of 3–4.
The Chicago Athletic Association was an American football team, based in Chicago, Illinois. The club itself had been organized in 1890, and in 1892 it formed a football team. The team was built around veterans of Chicago's University Club football team.
Grant Dibert was an early professional football player with the Pittsburgh Athletic Club and the Allegheny Athletic Association. As a fullback, his primary team was the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, whom he played for from the team's founding in 1890 until 1893. Prior to his professional career, Dibert played college football at Swarthmore College.
Oliver David Thompson was an early football player at Yale, who played alongside Walter Camp. After his time at Yale, Thompson played, and served as the manager, for the Allegheny Athletic Association. However Thompson is best known for paying Pudge Heffelfinger $500 to play for Allegheny against their rivals, the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Thompson's historic actions went unnoticed until the 1960s, when an 1892 account ledger prepared by Thompson – while he was manager of the Allegheny Athletic Association – included the line: "Game performance bonus to W. Heffelfinger for playing (cash) $500." The ledger is currently on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Professor Louis Frederick Kirchner, misnamed in some posthumous sources as William Kirschner, was an early football player and physical instructor for the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. He may, or may not, have been one of the earliest professional football players. Even though he had never played football before 1890, he had the ability to learn and adapt to the game quickly. During the 1890s he was viewed as one of the best offensive linemen in Pennsylvania.
Charles Elmer Aull was an early professional football player. He played professionally for the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. He also played college football from 1889 until 1891 for the Penn State Nittany Lions. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1869. He died in Ohio in 1958.
Augustus Clement Read was a college football player and the captain of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team, and a college shot putter. He was from Delano, Pennsylvania.
John Albert "Burt" Aull was an early football player with the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, prior to the club's hiring of professional football players.
JohnMoore Van Cleve was an American football player and coach. He became one of the earliest known people paid to play the sport when he, Ollie Rafferty, and Peter Wright signed contracts with the Allegheny Athletic Association for $50 per game for the entire 1893 season. Only Pudge Heffelfinger and Sport Donnelly are known to have been professionals earlier.
Joseph Clifton Trees was a college football player at the University of Pittsburgh, the first athlete to receive an athletic subsidization at the school, and, possibly, an early professional football player. He later made millions of dollars in the oil industry and became a trustee and significant benefactor to the university and its athletic department. His hobbies included philanthropy, scientific research and agriculture. His 2,600-acre (11 km2) estate in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania was devoted to a large extent to fruit trees.
John Alston Moorhead was an American college football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of Pittsburgh during the 1907 and 1908 seasons; the school known as the Western University of Pennsylvania before 1908. Moorhead applied for the coaching job after being cut off by his father for eloping with his mother's French maid. Prior to coaching at Pittsburgh, He played halfback while attending Yale University, from which he graduated in 1904.
John Lang was a professional American football player. In 1902 he won a championship in the first National Football League with the Pittsburgh Stars. A year later he was a member of the Franklin Athletic Club football team that was considered the "best in the world". He also won the 1903 World Series of Football, held at Madison Square Garden, with the Franklin Athletic Club.
American football in Western Pennsylvania, featuring the city of Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, has had a long and storied history, dating back to the early days of the sport. All levels of football, including high school football and college football, are followed passionately, and the area's National Football League (NFL) team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, is consistently one of the sport's most popular teams. Many of the NFL's top stars have come from the region as well, especially those that play quarterback, earning Western Pennsylvania the nickname "Cradle of Quarterbacks".
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.
