NFL History
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NFL History
The National Football League (NFL) was founded in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) with ten teams from four states, all of whom existed in some form as participants of regional leagues in their respective territories. The league took on its current name in 1922. The NFL was the first professional football league to successfully establish a nationwide presence, after several decades of failed attempts. Only two founding members, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), are still in the league. The Green Bay Acme Packers, founded in 1919 (joined the NFL in 1921, now the Green Bay Packers) is the oldest NFL franchise with continuous operation in the same location. League membership gradually stabilized throughout the 1920s and 1930s as the league adopted progressively more formal organization. The first official National Football League championships, championship game was held in 1933. The NFL Black ...
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National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the 18-week regular season which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week In sport, a bye is the preferential status of a player or team that is automatically advanced to the next round of a tournament, without having to play an opponent in an early round. In knockout (elimination) tournaments they can be granted eit .... Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference (four division winners and three wild card teams) advance to the p ...
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American Football League
The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence. It was more successful than earlier rivals to the NFL with the same name, the 1926, 1936 and 1940 leagues, and the later All-America Football Conference (which existed between 1944 and 1950 but only played between 1946 and 1949). This fourth version of the AFL was the most successful, created by a number of owners who had been refused NFL expansion franchises or had minor shares of NFL franchises. The AFL's original lineup consisted of an Eastern division of the New York Titans, Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, and the Houston Oilers, and a Western division of the Los Angeles Chargers, Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, and Dallas T ...
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Buffalo (1920s NFL Teams)
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. History Prior to the NFL Buffalo operated an early professional football circuit from at least the late 1800s onward. Among notable predecessors to the team discussed here were the Buffalo Oakdales, whose heyday was in the years 1908 and 1909 and who ceased operations c. 1915; the Cazenovias, who were New York's best team in 1910 and 1911; and the Lancaster Malleables, from the neighboring town of Lancaster, New York, who were the ...
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Rochester Jeffersons
The Rochester Jeffersons from Rochester, New York played from 1898 to 1925, including play in the National Football League from 1920 to 1925. History Formed as an amateur outfit by a rag-tag group of Rochester-area teenagers after the turn of the 20th century (a 1925 report has the team being founded in 1898), the team became known as the Jeffersons in reference to the locale of their playing field on Jefferson Avenue. Around 1908 a teenager by the name of Leo Lyons joined with the club as a player, and within two years began to manage, finance, and promote the team on a full-time basis. For their first decade of their existence the "Jeffs" played other amateur and semi-pro teams from the upstate New York area such as the ''Rochester Scalpers'' and the ''Oxfords''. From 1914 to 1917, the team grew stronger with opponents from Buffalo and Syracuse. In 1916, they were the New York State champions. By 1917, the Jeffs had started to look past state borders not only for big-name opp ...
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New York Pro Football League
The New York Pro Football League (NYPFL) was a professional American football league, active in the 1910s, and based in upstate New York, primarily Western New York. Between 1920 and 1921, the league's best teams were absorbed into the National Football League, though none survive in that league today. It was one of the biggest challengers to the Ohio League in professional football in the 1910s. Its formation was highly informal. The teams were largely clustered around the two cities of Rochester, New York and Buffalo, New York, with rural teams to fill the differences. Rochester had built its reputation around a strong "sandlot football" circuit, for instance, and was most popular when it consisted mostly of local teams. Rochester's best team, the Jeffersons, was instrumental in bringing the NYPFL and the Ohio League together to form the American Professional Football Association. The circuit continued to exist even after the birth of the APFA (with the NYPFL teams continuing to ...
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Jim Thorpe
James Francis Thorpe ( Sac and Fox (Sauk): ''Wa-Tho-Huk'', translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played American football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of ...
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Ohio League
The Ohio League was an informal and loose association of American football clubs active between 1902 and 1919 that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship (OIC). As the name implied, its teams were mostly based in Ohio. It is the direct predecessor to the modern National Football League (NFL). A proposal to add teams from outside Ohio, such as the Latrobe Athletic Association, to form a formal league known as the "Football Association" fell through prior to the 1904 season. Though a champion was declared by the group throughout its existence, a formal league was not founded until 1920, when several Ohio League teams added clubs from other states to form the American Professional Football Association. In 1922, the APFA became the National Football League. All but one of the remaining Ohio League teams left the NFL after the 1926 season, with the sole remaining team, the Dayton Triangles, surviving until 1929, before moving several times and eventually ending up in Dalla ...
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World Series Of Football (1902)
The World Series of Soccer was a series of club games hosted by Major League Soccer from 2005 to 2007. It was used by MLS to provide its teams with opportunities to compete against top international teams. Previous uses of name The term, World Series of Soccer, was originally used for a series of senior international soccer matches hosted by the United States Soccer Federation between 1991 and 1994. In 2005, Major League Soccer re-introduced the name for a series of professional matches in the United States 2005 In 2005, Major League Soccer (MLS) began the World Series of Soccer (WSS), a series of games pitting MLS and big name international clubs against each other. The games took place across the United States. The WSS was a round robin style competition between two MLS teams: D.C. United and Chicago Fire as well as two European powerhouses: Chelsea of the English Premiership and Milan of Italy's Serie A. The games were played during the MLS season, the European off-season. ...
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National Football League (1902)
The first National Football League (NFL) was the first attempt at forming a national professional American football league in 1902. This league has no ties with the modern National Football League. In fact the league was only composed of teams from Pennsylvania, which meant it was actually regional, despite having locations in the two largest cities in Pennsylvania. Two of the teams were based in Philadelphia, while the third was based in Pittsburgh. This NFL was a curious mixture of football players and baseball players who adapted to playing football. Future Baseball Hall of Famer Rube Waddell was with the Philadelphia Athletics, and pitcher Christy Mathewson a fullback for Pittsburgh. Two of the three teams were owned by the Philadelphia Phillies and Philadelphia Athletics, with the third team suspected of being owned by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The league folded after the 1902 season. History Founding Ironically the roots of the league lay with baseball, not football. It b ...
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Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit
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 football clubs of the 1880s and 1890s were amateur teams. They were under the membership of an athletic club, which provided both sports and the ability to wager money on the sports. However, the prestige and increased membership that could come from a successful team, led these clubs to begin secretly hiring talented players. The amateur athletics that these clubs engaged in were policed by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). By the mid-1890s allegations of professionalism became known to the ...
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Allegheny Athletic Association
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. History Origins The Allegheny team was assembled in 1890. At that time athletic clubs and associations, ranging from the best with extensive facilities to local organizations with minimum meeting rooms, were in their prime as a source of fraternal fellowship for athletes. In most sports, Allegheny provided very little competition for the more established East End Gymnasium Club (EEGC), which in 1892 became the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Allegheny soon took up football largely when the club discovered that it could give them a recruiting edge over the East Enders. Many Allegheny club members had gone to eastern colleges and played football. Members O. D. Thompson and Jo ...
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Ben "Sport" Donnelly
Benjamin Shenstone "Sport" Donnelly (October 18, 1869 – August 3, 1922) was an American football player and coach. He was the second-ever known professional football player, behind 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. College football playing career Donnelly began his college football career at Princeton University. Whi ...
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