Founded | 1915 |
---|---|
Folded | 1926 |
Based in | Racine, Wisconsin, United States |
League | Independent (1915–1922) National Football League (1922–1924, 1926) |
Team history | Racine Regulars (1915) Racine Battery C (1916–1918) Horlick-Racine Legion (1919–1922) Racine Legion (1922–1925) Racine Tornadoes (1926) |
Team colors | Crimson, white |
Nickname(s) | [1] |
Head coaches | Babe Ruetz (1922–1924) Shorty Barr & Wally McIlwain (1926) |
General managers | Babe Ruetz |
Owner(s) | William Horlick (1919–1924) Racine Exchange Club (1925–1926) |
Named for | The 1st Wisconsin Reserve Artillery Battery C William Horlick Racine American Legion Post |
Home field(s) | Horlick Field |
The Racine Legion was a professional American football team based in Racine, Wisconsin, of the National Football League from 1922 to 1924. Its official name was the Horlick-Racine Legion. [2] The team then operated as the Racine Tornadoes in 1926.
In 1915, the Racine Regulars formed Wisconsin's first important semi-professional team. They primarily played against teams from Illinois and Indiana. The team became known as the Racine Battery C in 1916 after many of the players joined the First Wisconsin Reserve Artillery Battery C.
Because of World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 the team took a break. It was reorganized in 1919 with sponsorship from the local American Legion post and William Horlick, president of his family's malted milk company. The reorganized team was known as the Horlick-Racine Legion.
In 1922, the American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League. Racine, now known simply as the Racine Legion, although its official name remained the Horlick-Racine Legion, was one of four new teams admitted to membership that season.
Led by the fullback-kicker Hank Gillo, who led the league in scoring with 52 points, Racine finished sixth in the 18-team league with a 6–4–1 record. Despite two more respectable seasons, the team failed because of finances. In 1925, the franchise was held over by the NFL, but they did not field a team that season.
Milton "Mitt" Romney, team captain at the University of Chicago in 1922, became a quarterback for the Racine Legion before later joining the Chicago Bears. He was a cousin of Michigan Governor George W. Romney, and his nickname inspired that of George Romney's son, 2012 U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Facing the threat of Red Grange's American Football League in 1926, the NFL was eager to get as many teams and players as possible into the fold to keep them away from the AFL. The Racine franchise was reactivated. The team, now called the Tornadoes, had a few of the same players as the Legion but many stars went to other teams in 1925. After winning their first game, the Tornadoes lost four in a row and disbanded in late October because of struggling finances.
Year | W | L | T | Finish | Coach | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Legion | 1922 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 6th | Babe Ruetz |
1923 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 9th | ||
1924 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 7th | ||
1925 | Suspended Operations | |||||
Tornadoes | 1926 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 16th | Shorty Barr, Wally McIlwain |
The Racine Legion have the distinction of winning the only NFL game where one team scored exactly 4 points. On November 25, 1923, the Legion beat the Chicago Cardinals by a score of 10–4. [3] Further, the Cardinals franchise had used Racine as its geographic name until 1922, referring to Racine Ave. on which the team's home field was located.
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Horlick Field, located on the north side of Racine, Wisconsin, in the United States, is a 5,000-seat football stadium and a baseball park enclosed within stone walls and chain fences. The land for the field was donated by William Horlick, the inventor of malted milk. It was designed in 1907 by Walter Dick, who also designed the North Beach Beach House.
John Leo "Paddy" Driscoll was an American professional football and baseball player and football coach. A triple-threat man in football, he was regarded as the best drop kicker and one of the best overall players in the early years of the National Football League (NFL). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1974.
Ernest Lowell "Dick" Romney was an American football, basketball and baseball player and coach, track athlete, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach and athletic director at the Agricultural College of Utah, now Utah State University, from 1918 to 1949, compiling a career college football record of 128–91–16. Romney was also the head basketball coach at Utah Agricultural from 1919 to 1941, tallying a college basketball mark of 224–158. He served as the commissioner of the Skyline Conference from 1949 to 1960. Romney was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1954 and was elected to the Helms Athletic Foundation and Hall of Fame as a football coach in 1958.
William Horlick, Sr. was an English food manufacturer and the original patent holder of malted milk. He emigrated to the United States in 1869, settling in Racine, Wisconsin. There he started a food company with his brother, James. Horlick was a well-known philanthropist in the Racine area. He was also a major sponsor of the Racine Legion, which played in the National Football League from 1922 until 1924. He died 25 September 1936 at the age of ninety.
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George Gerhard Ruetz was a professional football coach in the National Football League (NFL) for the Racine Legion. Prior to that he had been one of Racine's finest amateur players from about 1910-1920. In June 1922 George traveled to Canton, Ohio and made a $100.00 payment to secure the Legion franchise in the newly formed NFL. He also served as the team's general manager in 1922 and 1923. Outside of football, George owned and operated a grocery store in Racine. He scheduled the Legion's very first NFL game, played against the Chicago Bears.
Wallace Andre "Shorty" Barr was a professional American football player in the National Football League (NFL) for the Racine Legion and the Milwaukee Badgers. He was also a player-coach for the NFL's renamed Racine Tornadoes in 1926.
Milton Addas "Mitt" Romney was an American professional football player who played in the offensive backfield for the Racine Legion from 1923 to 1924 and was a quarterback for the Chicago Bears from 1925 to 1928. Romney played quarterback for the University of Chicago in the early 1920s when it had a winning varsity team, and was elected captain of the team in 1922. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1923, Romney was head basketball coach at the University of Texas at Austin during the 1922–23 season. He coached the Longhorns to a record of 11–7.
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.
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