Overview
On June 24th, 1922 the American Professional Football Association employed a name change and became the National Football League. While this was the beginning of that hugely popular league as we know it professional football had actually begun many years earlier. Pro football began as a much disorganized jumble of teams. But eventually it emerged as the leagues that would become the NFL.
First Professional
In 1876 the man who would be credited with much of the development of modern American football, Walter Camp, helped to write the sport's first rules. Football was a combination of soccer and rugby at that point but Camp came up with rule changes to rugby that made his blossoming sport hugely popular to athletic clubs. By 1892 many such clubs existed. In the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area two athletic clubs, the Pittsburgh Athletic Club and the Allegheny Athletic Association waged a negotiation for the services of William Heffelfinger, a standout on the Yale football team. The AAA won out, paying Heffelfinger the sum of $500 to play against PAC, thus creating the first paid professional football player. When Heffelfinger grabbed a fumble and scored the money seemed well spent as AAA won the game.
Early Professional Teams
The Pittsburgh Athletic Club signed a player named Grant Dibert to the first pro contract, according to the Professional Football Hall of Fame. This occurred in 1893. By 1896 the Allegheny Athletic Association club put an all professional team out on the field of play, with all of its members being paid to play for a season that was composed of only two contests. The next year the Latrobe, Pennsylvania team paid players to compete for a longer season and football professionals became commonplace after that.
The Cardinals
In Chicago a man named Chris O'Brien put together a football team that played their games as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1899. Over the years this same team was nicknamed the Normals and then the Racine Cardinals, in honor of a Chicago street. This morphed into the Chicago Cardinals, a team which would join the NFL and move to St. Louis in 1960. The Cardinals would migrate to Phoenix, Arizona in 1988. The club remains the oldest pro football team that has been operating continually.
American Professional Football Conference
By the year 1904 Ohio was home to as many as seven professional teams but there was no fixed league that all of them played in. During 1906 a betting scandal involving the top clubs from Ohio caused a decline in the interest of pro football. Not until 1916 when Jim Thorpe led Canton, Ohio to the Ohio League title did pro football begin to show signs of life again. In 1920 an attempt to create a league for all pro teams located in the Midwest was made, with the result being the American Professional Football Conference. The name was changed to the American Professional Football Association but the league was so disorganized that it could barely sustain itself.
The NFL
The American Professional Football Association completely reorganized in 1921, with the league coming up with stricter by-laws. Teams such as the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Staleys, a club that would later become the Bears, came into the league. Despite some scandals involving the use of college players that had eligibility remaining the league did well enough to become the National Football League in 1922, comprised of 18 teams.
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