Game Plan: How the NFL started in Canton 100 years ago

by Vince Guerrieri // photos by Tylar Sutton 

and historical photos courtesy of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Massillon Museum

Ohio had the country’s best pro football teams at the start of the 20th century. While the first documented pro football player, William “Pudge” Heffelfinger, was paid $500 in 1892 in Pittsburgh, Ohio surpassed Pennsylvania as the hotbed for pro football by 1905. The early Ohio League, with the heated rivalry between the Canton Bulldogs and Massillon Tigers at its center, recruited the best players, paid the most and drew the largest crowds, surpassing other small leagues in Midwestern cities. Despite the growing following, college ball was still supreme. Controversy over fixed games and player bribes swirled around pro football. 

Joe Horrigan (retired executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame): When you go down the list of sports at the time the NFL was founded, there was college football, Major League Baseball, boxing, horse racing and pro football down below that.

It was a very risky business, and the initial owners weren’t entrepreneurs beyond a small level. [Philadelphia Eagles owner] Bert Bell was a blue blood, but he spent as much money as he had. Tim Mara, who owned the [New York] Giants, had money. He was a bookie. The only revenue source was the gate. 

The Ohio League wasn’t formal. Teams would change, but the nucleus teams were Akron, Canton, Massillon and Youngstown.

Canton was the cornerstone franchise, largely due to the notoriety of [Olympian and player] Jim Thorpe, but the first champions of the NFL were the Akron Professionals. They were charter members of the NFL. I hope someday there will be a historic marker in Akron to recognize that. Akron played such a pivotal role in the early years, not only the first champion, but [one of] the first African American players, Fritz Pollard, who became the first African American head coach. We need to recognize that.

In 1920, 11 team owners — including five from Ohio — gathered in a Hupmobile dealership in downtown Canton owned by Ralph Hay, who also owned the Canton Bulldogs. They signed papers to start the American Professional Football Association. In 1922, the name changed to the National Football League.

Horrigan: When the NFL was founded in Canton, there were three principal reasons: to combat players’ high salary demands, keep players from jumping from team to team and protect college players’ eligibility. A hundred years later? Same three problems. They’re the universal problems of professional sports. 

Elmer Layden, the first league commissioner, was a real stickler for making sure the image of football was pure. The first thing he did was write the teams’ publicity directors and make sure players and coaches did not get involved in endorsing cigarettes, alcohol or laxatives — those were evil things. 

Jim Thorpe was the league’s first president. He gave the league credibility. He lasted one season, went back to playing, and Joe Carr became the administrator. He took the league from 25 or 30 teams in small markets to the end of the ‘20s when he said, “Let’s make the league smaller but put teams into bigger cities in Major League Baseball stadiums.” They built a foundation.

During World War II, teams merged (like the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Chicago Cardinals for one year) or suspended operations. While the NFL started off integrated with Pollard and others, from 1933 to 1945, it banned black players. After the war, the NFL expanded westward a full decade before the MLB did and pro football teams like the Browns integrated a year before Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Kendle: We have a 1945 letter from Bill Willis to Paul Brown requesting a letter of recommendation as a coach. Willis played for Brown at Ohio State [University], and he thought his playing career was over because African Americans couldn’t play pro football at that point. After the letter was written, Brown probably wrote Willis back and said, “I want you to be one of my players.” He ended up being one of the first four players to reintegrate pro football in 1946. 

[Part of] the last paragraph of the letter reads, “The people of my race will always remember you as an honest, straightforward and very fair leader in the world of sports.”

That to me represents football. There are a lot of other races, religions and backgrounds in the huddle, but at the end of the day, you’re part of the team.

Horrigan:  The man was virtually colorblind. He played African American players when he coached in high school, in college and in the service — and he won on every level. He brought the best of college games to the pros. Can you write the history of the game without him? The answer with Paul Brown is a resounding no. 

Kendle: Things we think are commonplace now [Brown] was doing in the 1940s. In our archives, we have scouting reports and defensive play sheets written out from the offensive side of the ball, what each player should be doing, how they stop the ball. He’s basically breaking down film. 

We have George Ratterman’s helmet with the receiver in it. He thought, I can communicate directly with the quarterback instead of using messenger guards. At a time when most QBs called their own plays, he wanted to have control over that.

His fingerprints are all over the history of the game. He not only made a lot of advancements, but he coached a lot of people who went on to be head coaches like Don Shula and Chuck Noll.

Three years after the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened in Canton, the NFL, then a loose confederation of 15 family-run businesses, began merging with the upstart American Football League. Finally, football eclipsed baseball as America’s favorite pro sport. 

Horrigan: Bert Bell granted Latrobe, [Pennsylvania], the site designation for a hall of fame. They never came up with the money. The Canton Repository put the public challenge out that pro football needed a hall of fame and the logical site is here. The Timken Co. saw the benefit because their national headquarters was here — and it would clean up the city’s image. Frankly, Canton was considered a mob city between Cleveland and Youngstown. The Timken brothers seeded money to get it started. 

The 1958 championship game was the first nationally televised [championship] game, and it went into overtime. That’s when we realized it was perfect for television. It brought a whole new aspect to the game.

Football became America’s No. 1 sport. Most of the teams still operated independently. But as they grew, the game grew and television grew, so too did the Hall of Fame. 

When Horrigan arrived at the Hall of Fame in 1977, it was not so much a museum as it was a collection of memorabilia. 

Horrigan: There were only nine full-time employees, the collection was small. The archives consisted of three file cabinets and two bookshelves. The collection was mostly game programs.

Today we have 40 million pages of documents and 6 million images. That’s the heart and soul of the whole history of the league. The documents and images that record the actual history are the favorites to me because they’re so significant.

Kendle: Over the years, we’ve received donations and major collections. I love an Otto Graham jersey that we have, donated by the family. It has No. 14, but in the background, you can see where No. 60 was sewn on. In 1952, the NFL went to specific uniforms by position. He was enough of a star that he didn’t have to change the number, but he was enough of a leader that he did. And unlike now, when they’d just make him a new one, they took the old numbers off and sewed new ones on.

Horrigan:  In this job, sometimes you get to meet someone you admire and find out they’re the man you thought they were. When Jim Brown walks into a room, even today, the room lights up. 

Jim Otto is a personal hero for the life he’s led. Paul Brown’s another good example. He was a man of high character — and he sought out high character. Getting to know someone like Johnny Unitas is a genuine thrill. Unitas was so humble, he was almost embarrassed by the attention he got.

After four decades, Horrigan retired in 2019 with a reputation as the greatest football historian and released the book “NFL Century: The One-Hundred-Year Rise of America’s Greatest Sports League.” As Canton readies for the NFL centennial celebration in September, a hotel is set to open in the Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village this summer, while construction is starting on a water park, convention center and more honoring the sport that has become an integral part of everyday American life. It’s a far cry from men sitting on running boards in a car showroom paying $100 to own an NFL franchise.

Horrigan: I look at the NFL story and say look how far we’ve come. Pro football and its high-profile nature can help teach the things an athlete accomplishes through his dedication and perseverance as an example of what we can all do in our everyday life. 

I can’t think of any other industry that gives communities the type of civic pride that sports teams do.

Kendle: While it’s entertainment, the rest of the country looks to the NFL for guidance.

I’ve gone to people’s homes and through their collections like [former] commissioner [Paul] Tagliabue. To go through his collection with him and have him document why a certain piece was important to the history of the National Football League or even American history was remarkable. 

He had an entire folder dedicated to post-9/11 planning: heightening security, decking out the stadium in red, white and blue, making sure first responders were celebrated.

You really got the sense of how the NFL stepped up and took a leadership role in helping America heal and celebrate patriotism to bring this country together to move forward as one. They stepped in and said, We’re going to invest in this to help make America a better place.

Those values — commitment, integrity, courage, respect and excellence — really transcend the football field.