The Northwest Football League (NWFL) was a professional

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 wi ...

minor league that played from 1935 to 1938, in the northern part of

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

. The league had some relationships with 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 ...

(NFL), and scheduled exhibition games against the Chicago Bears,

Chicago Cardinals The professional American football team now known as the Arizona Cardinals previously played in Chicago, Illinois, as the Chicago Cardinals from 1898 to 1959 before relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1960 through 1987 seasons. Roots ...

and Green Bay Packers through it existence. The last remaining member of the NWFL, the Des Moines Comets, continued as independents through 1940.

League origin

Prior to the NWFL first season there was a circuit that operated in the Midwestern area called Tri-States Football League in 1934. The "league" was more of a loose association between the teams, who also scheduled games against NFL and other prominent independent or Canadian pro teams, without attempt to crown a champion as scheduling was left up to each team. Because of that there were wide variations, both in the overall number of games played and in the number played against other association members. The Chippewa Falls Marines, Gogebic Panthers, La Crosse Old Style Lagers and Minnesota All-Stars (then known as the ''Minnesota University All-Stars'') would later form the ''Tri-States Division'' in the Northwest Football League.

1935

The season started with eight teams, four teams from the Tri-States Football League, and four from the

Minneapolis–Saint Paul Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities ...

area, divided to two separate divisions. The St. Paul Bears folded after only two games (both loses), while the Minneapolis Ewalds decided to dropped out before the final week of the season. Northwest Football League champions.
''Folded mid-season.'' Championship Game: Minneapolis Jerseys 0 vs. La Crosse Old Style Lagers 25 (November 24, 1942 in Minneapolis, MN) Lagers star Halfback Russ Cycmanick was killed in a car accident on his way to the game, while starting

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Herman ("Max") Gay was seriously injured and had to retired from football. A week after the season La Crosse played All-Star benefit exhibition game against ''"Northwest Football League All-Stars"'', winning the match 18–13, and donating the earnings to the players families.Bob Gill, with Tod Maher. ''Outsiders: Minor League And Independent Football, 1923-1950'', p. vii. St. Johann Press, 2006.

1936

After the dissolution of the Tri-States Division, the league dropped the two-division format, and decided the championship solely on the regular season results. On October 11, La Crosse decided to run the score against Madison (winning 100–0), because they wanted the Cardinals to dropped out of the league, as they failed to attract former

Wisconsin Badgers The Wisconsin Badgers are the athletic teams representing the University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin). They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level ( Football Bowl Subdivis ...

stars as promised. The Cardinals folded few days later. Northwest Football League champions.

1937

The league returned for the 1937 with only four teams. Des Moines were able to defeat La Crosse in both meetings, finishing the season with a perfect 6–0 record and winning their first championship. Northwest Football League champions.

1938

The two-time champions La Crosse failed to field a team for the 1938 season, with only Des Moines and Cedar Rapids returning from previous season. To compensate, the league added lower level independent teams, but none offer a real competition to the Comets, who ran out the league for their second and final NWFL championship. The league disbanded at the end of the season, with most teams folded. The only other important team that season was the Chicago Brown Bombers, an all-black team that played almost exclusively on the road. The Brown Bombers played a year earlier against league members as a non-league opponents, but made history in 1938 when they joined the NWFL full-time, as the first all-black football team in a pro football league. Northwest Football League champions.

References

{{Professional gridiron football leagues in North America Defunct American football leagues in the United States 1935 establishments in the United States 1938 disestablishments in the United States Sports leagues established in 1935 Professional sports leagues in the United States