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The American Professional Football Conference
was in formed in 1920. Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland
Indians, and Dayton Triangles were represented. A second
organizational meeting was held in Canton, September 17.
The teams were from four states:Akron, Canton, Cleveland,
and Dayton from Ohio, the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers
from Indiana, the Rochester Jeffersons from New York, and
the Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine
Cardinals from Illinois. The name of the league was changed
to the American Professional Football Association. Scheduling
was left up to the teams, and there were wide variations,
both in the overall number of games played and in the number
played against APFA member teams. Four other teams: the
Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandles,
and Detroit Heralds joined the league sometime during the
year. On September 26, the first game featuring an APFA
team was played at Rock Island's Douglas Park. A crowd of
800 watched the Independents defeat the St. Paul Ideals
48-0.
By the beginning of December, most of
the teams in the APFA had abandoned their hopes for a championship,
and some of them, including the Chicago Tigers and the Detroit
Heralds, had finished their seasons, disbanded, and had
their franchises canceled by the Association. Four teams-Akron,
Buffalo, Canton, and Decatur-still had championship as-pirations,
but a series of late-season games among them left Akron
At one of these games, Akron sold tackle Bob Nash to Buffalo
for $300 and five percent of the gate receipts-the first
APFA player deal.
In 1921, at the league meeting in Akron,
the championship of the 1920 season was awarded to the Akron
Pros, as the only undefeated team in the Association in
1920. The APFA was reorganized, with Joe Carr as president.
Carr moved the Association's headquarters to Columbus, drafted
a league constitution and by-laws, gave teams territorial
rights, restricted player movements, developed membership
criteria for the franchises, and issued standings for the
first time, so that the APFA would have a clear champion.
The Association's membership increased to 22 teams.
In 1922 the American Professional Football
Association changed its name to the National Football League,
June 24. The NFL fielded 18 teams. In 1925 the NFL established
its first player limit, at 16 players. Late in the season,
the NFL made its greatest coup in gaining national recognition.
On Thanksgiving Day, a crowd of 36,000, the largest in pro
football history, watched the Chicago Bears play the Chicago
Cardinals at Wrigley Field. At the beginning of December,
a crowd of 73,000 watched the game Bears played against
the Giants at the Polo Grounds and 75,000 fans watched them
defeat the Los Angeles Tigers in the Los Angeles Memorial
Coliseum.
In 1926 Grange started the first American
Football League. It lasted one season and included Grange's
New York Yankees and eight other teams. At the end of the
season, the AFL folded. The NFL grew to 22 teams, and Halas
pushed through a rule that prohibited any team from signing
a player whose college class had not graduated.
At a special meeting in Cleveland in
1927 Carr decided to secure the NFL's future by eliminating
the financially weaker teams and consolidating the quality
players onto a limited number of more successful teams.
The new-look NFL dropped to 12 teams, and the center of
gravity of the league left the Midwest, where the NFL had
started, and began to emerge in the large cities of the
East. The NFL was reduced to only 10 teams in 1928. The
NFL added a fourth official, the field judge, in 1929.
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