| Regular season | |
|---|---|
| Duration | September 25 – December 18, 1921 |
| Champions | Chicago Staleys |
CeltsProsKardexThe1921 APFA season was the secondseason of the American Professional Football Association, which was renamed theNational Football League in 1922.
TheStaleys, who moved their base of operations fromDecatur, Illinois, toChicago mid-season, were named the APFA Champions over theBuffalo All-Americans.
At a league meeting inAkron, Ohio on April 30 prior to the season, the Association was reorganized, withJoe Carr of theColumbus Panhandles named as president. The Association's headquarters was moved toColumbus, Ohio, and a league constitution and by-laws were drafted, giving teams territorial rights, restricting player movements, and developing membership criteria for the franchises.
Representatives from ten professional football teams were in attendance at Akron, with an additional 14 clubs sending word that they wished to become a member of the circuit for 1921.[1] Those in attendance includedMorgan O'Brien of Decatur,Chris O'Brien of Chicago,Alva "Doc" Young ofHammond,Ralph Hay andCarl Storck of Canton,Joe F. Carr of Columbus,Art Ranney of Akron,Leo Lyons of Buffalo, andLeo Conway of Philadelphia.[1]
The gathering determined that the league would play under the rules ofcollege football. Official standings were to be issued for the first time so that there would be a clear champion, with only games played against league teams counting toward the standings.
The league's teams adopted a salary cap of $1,800 per game.[2] Rules were adopted prohibiting players from jumping from one team to another.[1]
Officers were elected, with Joe Carr of the Panhandles elected as president; Morgan O'Brien, vice-president; and Carl Storck, secretary-treasurer.[1] A three-member committee was also appointed to overhaul the association's constitution, with changes to be presented at the next scheduled league meeting, to be held June 18 in Cleveland.[3]
The 1920 World's Championship was awarded to theAkron Indians, who were presented with a silver loving cup in recognition of their achievement.[1]
The 1921 season saw several significant revisions of the rules governing team rosters. The raiding of college rosters — a source of great conflict — was henceforth prohibited. Any team making use of a player who had not "completed his school course" was to be expelled from the association, it was determined.[3] Closely related to this, the use of assumed playing names to disguise real life identity was banned unless the player first received special permission from the association's executive committee.[4]
Players were to be bound by their contracts for the duration of the season, with no player free to sign with another club mid-season without having been formally released by their first team.[4] The loaning of players from one club to another for late season games was to be carefully regulated by the executive committee, with the loaned player to be used in place of an injured player to maintain team integrity rather than to be appended to the roster to build competitive superiority.[4]
The 1921 season was seen as a year of transition byFrank G. Menke, a sportswriter of national renown with the Hearst newspapers. Declaring that "professional football becomes an established organization this fall," Menke noted that APFA owners had maintained a steady focus on the Midwest and Western New York, with "no cities along the Atlantic seaboard...represented in the circuit."[5]
"It is the plan of the American Professional Football Association to have two separate leagues operating in 1922," Menke confidently predicted, "one composed of Eastern cities and the other of towns in the Middle West. The banner gridiron clash of the year will come when a sort of "World Series" will be played between the champion teams of the East and West."[5]
It would be another difficult decade before anything like this bifurcated league would come into existence. New APFA presidentJoseph Carr was extensively quoted in the same article by Menke and would seem likely to have been the source of this "12 month plan" for the association.
The APFA began its existence with universalist intention, with the Akron delegates voting to seek the affiliation of "every professional football club in the country," according to a press report of the day.[1] Entry into the league was therefore largely unrestricted and franchise fees inexpensive.
With its "come one, come all" policy, the APFA boomed from 14 to 21 teams for 1921, but many of these newcomers entered on the financial precipice and shortly exited having fallen over it. TheKardex ofTonawanda, New York, managed to play only one league game and theMuncie Flyers managed two before abruptly terminating.Charlie Brickley's first iteration of theNew York Giants managed two APFA games (both shutout losses) amidst a year of non-league games and cancellations before folding the tent.
TheDetroit Tigers, formerly known as the Heralds, folded mid-season, with its stars absorbed by theBuffalo All-Americans. Cellar-dwelling squads fromCincinnati andWashington were shortly out of the league as well, as was the league's more establishedCleveland franchise.
| First season in APFA | First and only season in NFL |
| Team folded this season | |
| APFA standings | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W | L | T | PCT | PF | PA | STK | |||
| Chicago Staleys | 9 | 1 | 1 | .900 | 128 | 53 | T1 | ||
| Buffalo All-Americans | 9 | 1 | 2 | .900 | 211 | 29 | L1 | ||
| Akron Pros | 8 | 3 | 1 | .727 | 148 | 31 | W1 | ||
| Canton Bulldogs | 5 | 2 | 3 | .714 | 106 | 55 | W1 | ||
| Rock Island Independents | 4 | 2 | 1 | .667 | 65 | 30 | L1 | ||
| Evansville Crimson Giants | 3 | 2 | 0 | .600 | 89 | 46 | W1 | ||
| Green Bay Packers | 3 | 2 | 1 | .600 | 70 | 55 | L1 | ||
| Dayton Triangles | 4 | 4 | 1 | .500 | 96 | 67 | L1 | ||
| Chicago Cardinals | 3 | 3 | 2 | .500 | 54 | 53 | T1 | ||
| Rochester Jeffersons | 2 | 3 | 0 | .400 | 85 | 76 | W2 | ||
| Cleveland Tigers | 3 | 5 | 0 | .375 | 95 | 58 | L1 | ||
| Washington Senators | 1 | 2 | 0 | .334 | 21 | 43 | L1 | ||
| Cincinnati Celts | 1 | 3 | 0 | .250 | 14 | 117 | L2 | ||
| Hammond Pros | 1 | 3 | 1 | .250 | 17 | 45 | L2 | ||
| Minneapolis Marines | 1 | 3 | 0 | .250 | 37 | 41 | L1 | ||
| Detroit Tigers | 1 | 5 | 1 | .167 | 19 | 109 | L5 | ||
| Columbus Panhandles | 1 | 8 | 0 | .111 | 47 | 222 | W1 | ||
| Tonawanda Kardex | 0 | 1 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 45 | L1 | ||
| Muncie Flyers | 0 | 2 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 28 | L2 | ||
| Louisville Brecks | 0 | 2 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 27 | L2 | ||
| New York Brickley Giants | 0 | 2 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 72 | L2 | ||
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| Date | December 4, 1921 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Cubs Park,Chicago, Illinois | ||||||||||||||||||
The Chicago Staleys (to be renamed theChicago Bears after the end of the season), led by wide receiverGeorge Halas, and theBuffalo All-Americans, led by quarterbackTommy Hughitt, were the two top teams in the league; each playing all of their games at home, Buffalo and Chicago amassed 6–0 records in league play. On Thanksgiving 1921, Buffalo played one of its only road games of the season, in Chicago, and prevailed 7–6. Chicago demanded a rematch.
The All-Americans agreed to rematch the Staleys on December 4, again in Chicago, on the condition that the game would be considered a "post-season"exhibition game not to be counted in the standings; had it not, Buffalo would have had an undefeated season and won the title. (Buffalo had played, and defeated, theAkron Pros just one day prior.) This was a fairly common custom of the time; both New York and Ohio's pre-NFL circuits put their marquee games on Thanksgiving weekend and cleaned up with mostly token opposition in the following weeks.
Chicago defeated Buffalo in the rematch by a score of 10–7. Halas responded that the second game was played on December 4 (well before teams in Illinois typically stopped playing games in those days), and the Staleys played two more games against top opponents, theCanton Bulldogs andRacine Cardinals after the second Buffalo game (though, at the time of the Buffalo-Chicago matchup, Chicago had played three fewer games than Buffalo).
The league counted the All-Americans game in the standings, against Buffalo's wishes, resulting in Buffalo (9–1–2) and Chicago (9–1–1) being tied atop the standings. The league then implemented the first ever tiebreaker: a rule, now considered archaic and removed from league rulebooks, that stated if two teams played multiple times in a season, the last game between the two teams carried more weight. Thus, the Chicago victory actually countedmore in the standings, giving Chicago the championship. Buffalo sports fans have been known to refer to this, justly or unjustly, as the "Staley Swindle," and have cited it as the first evidence of asports curse on the city.
Had the current (post-1972) system of counting ties as half a win and half a loss been in place in 1921, the Staleys would have won the championship with a win percentage of .864, while the All-Americans would have finished second with .833. If the above game was excluded as per Buffalo's wishes, the All-Americans would have won with .909, and the Staleys would have finished second with .850.
After the season, theGreen Bay Packers were suspended following their admission to usingNotre Dame players playing under assumed names during the season.[6] Green Bay would return to the NFL a year later with a new franchise led byCurly Lambeau.