ThePennsylvania Polka refers to a series of moves affecting thePhiladelphia Eagles andPittsburgh Steelers franchises in theNational Football League (NFL) from 1940 to 1941.

Art Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, sold his team toAlexis Thompson on December 10, 1940, and subsequently bought a 50% stake in the Philadelphia Eagles franchise from ownerBert Bell. At the time of the deals, a mini-draft took place between the two teams, using a pool of players from both rosters. This resulted in the Eagles acquiring seven players formerly of the Steelers, and the Steelers obtaining eleven players formerly of the Eagles. The1941 NFL draft was also held during this time.

Rooney later had second thoughts on the transactions, and made an agreement to swap cities with new Steelers owner Thompson on April 3, 1941. This resulted in the Philadelphia Eagles moving their team toPittsburgh and becoming the new Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Pittsburgh Steelers moving their team toPhiladelphia and becoming the new Philadelphia Eagles. Since NFL franchises at the time were territorial rights distinct from individual corporate entities, the Eagles and Steelers are each officially acknowledged by the NFL as single unbroken entities since 1933, especially since all of these events took place during the offseason. However, the players on the Eagles were basically traded to the Steelers in exchange for their players (with the exception of players who changed teams during the mini-draft, in which case those players "stayed" on the same teams). All players drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1941 NFL Draft therefore had their rights held by the Pittsburgh Steelers after the final swap, and vice versa.

Both thePhiladelphia Eagles andPittsburgh Pirates franchises were founded in 1933, afterblue laws in Pennsylvania were rescinded to allow organized sports teams to play on Sundays.^[1]Bert Bell andLud Wray founded the Eagles, andArt Rooney founded the Pirates.^[2] The Pirates became the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1940.^[3]

Wray coached the Eagles in their first three years from 1933–1935, with no winning seasons, compiling a 9–21–1 record. In that time period, the partners exhausted $85,000 ($1,926,055 in 2024 dollars).^[4] At a public auction in 1936, Bell became sole owner of the Eagles with a bid of $4,500 (presently, $101,968).^[5] Austerity measures forced him to supplant Wray as head coach as well,^[6] but Bell also did not produce a winning season, finishing the1940 season with a 1–10 record and a 10–44–2 overall career coaching record.

By 1940, the Steelers were on their fifth head coach in eight years. Like the Eagles, the Steelers had not posted a winning record in their franchise's history.Walt Kiesling entered his second season as head coach of the Steelers in1940. Before the 1940 season, Rooney said if the Steelers had another losing season he would be compelled to sell the team.^[7] The team started the season at 1–0–2^[8] before falling at home by a score of 10–3 to aBrooklyn Dodgers squad coached by local heroJock Sutherland.^[9] He had assumed the head job for the Dodgers that year after spurning a similar offer from Pittsburgh.^[10] The loss to the Dodgers began a six-game losing streak, before the team traded wins with the Eagles to cap a 2–7–2 season in which they scored a total of just 60 points.^[11] Over eight years, the team had compiled a record of 24–62–5 and had lost around $100,000 ($2.2 million today).^[11] Rooney was also concerned about the availability of players in the coming seasons due to the ongoingwar in Europe and the specter of amilitary draft.^[12]

After turning down several earlier offers to relocate or sell the team,^[13] in December 1940, Rooney sold the Steelers toAlexis Thompson.^[14] Thompson was a 26-year-old,Yale-educated heir to a steel fortune and an entrepreneur living in New York.^[15]

Thompson originally sought to buy the Eagles from Bell in November 1940, but Bell connected him with Rooney to make an offer on the Steelers.^[16][17] The Steelers hired Bell to negotiate the sale and promised him a 20% cut of the sale price if it sold within 30 days.^[18] The purchase price was reported to be $160,000 ($3.6 million today).^[19] This price was less than the $225,000 ($5 million today) theDetroit Lions had previously sold for, but the Lions had won anNFL championship.^[13] Bell earned $32,000 from the sale.^[20] The transaction was completed and announced on the same day that theChicago Bears pummeled theWashington Redskins by a score of 73–0 in the most lopsidedNFL championship game of all time.^[21]

Rooney immediately took $50,000 from the sale and invested it in a 50% interest in the Philadelphia Eagles franchise, which was owned by his friend Bell, and became vice president of the franchise's board of directors.^[20]

In an unusual twist Rooney, Bell, and Thompson pooled the rosters of the two squads and conducted essentially a mini-draft to distribute the talent. The 51 players which were signed to the Steelers and Eagles at the end of the 1940 season were shuffled between the two teams.^[22] In this transaction, the Rooney/Bell team added eleven players from the1940 Steelers: endsGeorge Platukis,Walt Kichefski andJohn Klumb; tacklesClark Goff andTed Doyle; guardsCarl Nery andJack Sanders; and backsBoyd Brumbaugh,John Noppenberg,George Kiick andRocco Pirro.^[23] In exchange, Thompson's team gained seven players: endsJoe Carter andHerschel Ramsey, tacklesPhil Ragazzo andClem Woltman, guardTed Schmitt, and backsJoe Bukant andFoster Watkins, all of whom had played for Bell's 1940 Eagles the prior year.^[23][24]

Thompson hiredGreasy Neale, whom Rooney had pursued to coach the Pirates in 1933, to conduct this player swap as well as to assist him with thedraft which took place the day after the deal with Rooney was finalized.^[15] Once he was released from his contract with Yale, Neale became head coach of Thompson's team to replace Kiesling.^[25] In January 1941, Thompson renamed his new squad the Iron Men.^[26]

Despite now being a full partner in the Eagles with Bell, Rooney had no intention of leaving Pittsburgh.^[17] It was thought that Thompson preferred to move his new team to be nearer his New York home, perhaps to Boston, which had been without an NFL team since the Redskins relocated to Washington in 1937.^[14] If Thompson had moved the team away from Pittsburgh, Rooney and Bell hatched a plan that would have seen their team split its home games between the two Pennsylvania cities and rename their squad the Keystoners.^[20] However, the other league owners blocked both moves.^[27]

By early 1941, Rooney was beginning to regret his decision to sell the Steelers. When he saw that Thompson had not yet established a local office for his team, as he had announced he would do by March 1, Rooney made an offer:^[28] he and Bell would trade territories with Thompson.^[28] This would put Thompson in Philadelphia, which was much closer to his New York base.^[28] It would also ensure that Rooney's team would stay in his hometown.^[28] On April 3, 1941, Thompson accepted the deal. Rooney and Bell moved their organization to Pittsburgh as the Pittsburgh Steelers. Thompson's Iron Men moved to Philadelphia, where they took on the Philadelphia Eagles moniker. This was described at the time as "one of the most unusual swaps in sports history".^[29] In fact, the Steelers' corporate name remained "Philadelphia Eagles Football Club, Inc." until 1945.^[30][31] Bell was named the Steelers head coach and Rooney became the general manager, with 10-year contracts worth $7,500 per year.^[32]

Because the entire strange turn of events all took place during the offseason and the Eagles and Steelers never actually missed games in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, respectively, the NFL considers each franchise as single unbroken entities since 1933.^[30] The transaction, which amounted in the end to Bell selling the Eagles and purchasing half-interest in the Steelers, as well as trading more than half of each team's rosters to each other, has been termed the "Pennsylvania Polka".^[33]

Both teams continued to struggle in 1941, with the Eagles going 2–8–1 and the Steelers going 1–9–1. However, the Steelers posted their first winning record in 1942 (7–4), while the Eagles finished 2–9. In1943, when manpower shortages stemming fromWorld War II made it impossible to fill the roster, the two teams temporarily merged to form a team popularly known as the "Steagles". The merger, never intended as a permanent arrangement, was dissolved at the end of the 1943 season. The Steagles posted a 5–4–1 record, giving the Eagles their first winning record as a franchise and continuing the Steelers' streak. The Steelers had to combine with theChicago Cardinals in 1944 to form "Card-Pitt"; the merged team lost all ten of their games that season. The Eagles went to threeNFL Championship games under Neale, losing in1947, and winning in1948 and1949. The Steelers did not win their first league title untilSuper Bowl IX in1974.

After the1949 season, Thompson sold the Eagles to a syndicate of 100 buyers, known as the "Happy Hundred", each of whom paid a fee of $3,000 for their share of the team.^[34] The Rooney family has remained the owners of the Steelers since its founding in 1933, with Art's son,Dan, taking over the team following his death in 1988.

• ^a Bell was the Steelers' head coach for the first two games of the 1941 season before Rooney told him to resign.Aldo Donelli, the football coach atDuquesne University coached the remainder of the season. Because he was still coaching at Duquesne, Kiesling filled in as Steelers coach when there were scheduling conflicts.
• ^b Neale was thebacks coach at Yale from 1934–1940.
• ^c McDonough, Niccolai, and Woudenberg were later traded back to the Steelers for the 1941 season.

• Claassen, Harold (Spike) (1963).The History of Professional Football. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Lyons, Robert S. (2010).On Any Given Sunday, A Life of Bert Bell. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.ISBN 978-1-59213-731-2.
• MacCambridge, Michael (2005).America's Game. New York: Anchor Books.ISBN 978-0-307-48143-6.
• Rooney, Art Jr.; McHugh, Roy (2008).Ruanaidh: The Story of Art Rooney and His Clan. Pittsburgh, PA: Art Rooney Jr.ISBN 9780981476025.
• Ruck, Rob; Patterson, Maggie Jones; Weber, Michael P. (2010).Rooney: A Sporting Life. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press.ISBN 978-0-8032-2283-0.

• Philadelphia Eagles
• Pittsburgh Steelers
• 1940 in Pennsylvania
• 1941 in Pennsylvania

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