The Los Angeles Dons were an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team in the newly formed football league the

All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the ...

(AAFC) from

1946 Events January * January 6 - The 1946 North Vietnamese parliamentary election, first general election ever in Vietnam is held. * January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into f ...

1949 Events January * January 1 – A United Nations-sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The war results in a stalemate and the division of Kashmir, which still continues as of 2022. * January 2 – Luis ...

, and played their home games in the

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Conceived as a hallmark of civic pride, the Coliseum was commissioned in 1921 as a mem ...

. The Dons were the first professional football team to play a regular season game in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, two weeks before the first game of the rival

Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...

of the

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 ...

, who had moved from

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Team history

Launch

, a new professional football league was launched to do battle with the long-established National Football League (NFL). This new league, the

(AAFC), included eight teams—an Eastern Division with three teams based in the state of

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and another in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

, and a Western Division with teams in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and Los Angeles. The AAFC's

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

franchise, which was to compete directly with the newly-relocated Rams of the NFL, was known as the Los Angeles Dons. The leader of the ownership group was Fernando Gonzalez III, a California businessman and longtime football fan.Jerry Crowe
"The Dons of L.A. Pro Sports,"
''Los Angeles Times,'' September 13, 2006. Other owners included Hollywood notables

Louis B. Mayer Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1882 or 1884 or 1885 – October 29, 1957) was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industr ...

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 5 ...

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

, and actor

Don Ameche Don Ameche (; born Dominic Felix Amici; May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993) was an American actor, comedian and vaudevillian. After playing in college shows, stock, and vaudeville, he became a major radio star in the early 1930s, which l ...

. The Dons' head coach was "Dud" DeGroot, a

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

football player who had gone on to earn a PhD from that institution.Ray Schmidt
"Welcome to LA,"
''The Coffin Corner,'' vol. 25, no. 3 (2003), pg. 1. He was the head coach of the NFL's

Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) N ...

1944 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in Nor ...

and

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. Januar ...

before jumping over to the rival AAFC for its debut 1946 season. The Dons shared the Coliseum with the Rams for home games.Ray Schmidt, "Welcome to LA," pg. 6. Although never filling the mammoth facility, the club made a show of offering vast numbers of tickets for sale at reasonable prices, including 40,000 reserved seats for each home contest priced at $2.50, 15,000 general admission seats costing $1.50, and 8,000 children's tickets priced at just sixty cents. The team played its first regular season home game in 1946 on against the

Brooklyn Dodgers The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association (19th century), American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the ...

on September 13 in before a Friday night crowd of 18,955 — the first time professional football had ever been played in the Coliseum. The Dons took a first quarter lead on a 55-yard pass from

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

"Chuckin' Charlie" O'Rourke to

Bernie Nygren Bernie may refer to: Places in the United States * Bernie, Missouri, a city * Griffithsville, West Virginia, also called Bernie People * Bernie (given name) ** Bernie Sanders, United States senator and 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential candi ...

and never looked back, triumphing 20–14 over the visitors from New York. The Dons opened the inaugural season with three wins and a tie before a rough spell; they finished in third place in the AAFC's Western Division with a record of 7–5–2, out of the playoffs.

Development

For most of their existence, the Dons compiled an average record, and never qualified for the AAFC playoffs. This was mainly because they were in the same division as the league's two most powerful teams, the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference ( ...

and

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

. Unlike the Browns, 49ers, and

Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...

, the Dons were not one of the AAFC teams that remained intact when the AAFC merged with the NFL in : they merged with the crosstown

Rams In engineering, RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)1949 Events January * January 1 – A United Nations-sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The war results in a stalemate and the division of Kashmir, which still continues as of 2022. * January 2 – Luis ...

season.James P. Quirk and Rodney D. Fort,
''Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports,''
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992; pg. 438.

Legacy

One Dons player, William Radovich, formerly of the NFL's

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at Ford ...

, filed a lawsuit against the NFL after being

blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...

ed from playing or working in it afterwards. It led to the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

ruling, in the case of ''

Radovich v. National Football League ''Radovich v. National Football League'' (NFL), 352 U.S. 445 (1957), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that professional football, unlike professional baseball, was subject to antitrust laws. It was the third of three such cases heard by th ...

'', that professional football, unlike baseball, was subject to

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

laws.

Pro Football Hall of Famers

Season-by-season

, - ,

, , 7 , , 5 , , 2 , , 3rd AAFC West , , -- , - ,

1947 It was the first year of the Cold War, which would last until 1991, ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Events January * January–February – Winter of 1946–47 in the United Kingdom: The worst snowfall in the country in ...

, , 7 , , 7 , , 0 , , 3rd AAFC West , , -- , - ,

1948 Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

, , 7 , , 7 , , 0 , , 3rd AAFC West , , -- , - ,

, , 4 , , 8 , , 0 , , 5th AAFC , , -- , - !Totals , , 25 , , 27 , , 2 , , , ,

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Los Angeles Dons Franchise Encyclopedia
pro-football-reference.com/ Defunct American football teams in California 1946 establishments in California 1949 disestablishments in California American football teams established in 1946