 Official program | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | January 14, 1951 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Memorial Coliseum Los Angeles, California | ||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Otto Graham (Cleveland Browns) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 53,676 | ||||||||||||||||||
| TV in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | not televised | ||||||||||||||||||
The1951Pro Bowl was theNational Football League's inauguralPro Bowl which featured the league's outstanding performers from the1950 season. The game was played on Sunday, January 14, 1951, at theLos Angeles Memorial Coliseum inLos Angeles, California in front of 53,676 fans, with the American Conference squad defeating the National Conference by a score of 28–27.[1][2]
Players were selected by a vote of each conferences coaches along with the sports editors of the newspapers in the Los Angeles area, where the game was contested.[3]
The National team was led by theLos Angeles Rams'Joe Stydahar whilePaul Brown of theCleveland Browns coached the American stars. The same two coaches had faced each other three weeks earlier in the1950 NFL Championship Game in which Brown's team had also defeated Stydahar's. Both coaches employed theT formation offense in the Pro Bowl.[4]
Cleveland Browns quarterbackOtto Graham was named the game'soutstanding player.[5]
The NFL's annual Pro-Bowl game began according to the model of the league's other annual exhibition, theChicago Charities College All-Star Game, initiated in 1934 under the auspices of theChicago Tribune. This game, played in the summer ahead of the league's pre-season slate of exhibition games, pitted a select team of college all-stars coming into the league against the NFL's champion of the previous year. With proceeds of the game dedicated to charity, the Chicago College All-Star Game had become an institution, drawing vast audiences and priming fans for the football season to come.
The Pro-Bowl was initially envisioned as a comparable post-season spectacle, held in sunny Southern California in January in the capaciousLos Angeles Memorial Coliseum following conclusion of the regular season and World Championship Game. With the size of the NFL boosted in 1950 from 10 teams to 13 through absorption of three teams from theAll-America Football Conference, the time seemed right for an exhibition contest between the year's stars of the NFL's two newly-realigned conferences.
As with the Chicago game, newspapers were to play a prominent role in the game's organization, with the Los Angeles Newspaper Publishers' Association the chief organizing body. TheLos Angeles Times had already sponsored NFL All-Star games after the1938,1939, and1940 seasons,[6] with the eruption ofWorld War II bringing an end to this first series of January games.
The decision was made to relaunch the All-Star games under the "Pro Bowl" moniker by the league's 13 owners, meeting in Philadelphia over the first weekend of June 1950.[6] Three organizations submitted bids to host the event — the Los Angeles Newspaper Publishers' Association, theAl Malaikah Shrine of Los Angeles, and promoters fromHouston, Texas — with NFL CommissionerBert Bell expressing the view that the league was "morally obligated" to return to the Los Angeles newspaper publishers over the other potential sponsors.[6]
Bell specified that provision must be made that each participating player should receive at least $500 plus traveling expenses for the game to be formally approved by the league office.[6] The door was left open by Bell to co-sponsorship of the event by the publishers and the Shriners, with a July 1 deadline for a working agreement to be hashed out.[6] Ultimately, no such joint sponsorship followed.
The 31-man Pro Bowl squads consisted of the following players:[2][7]
Roster Notes:
Note: these numbers include players selected to the team but unable to play as well as replacements for these players, so there are more than 31 players in each conference.
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