1919 Founding of the NAPFC

There are several men who claim to be the first professional football player. The dispute over who holds that distinction may never be resolved, but there is no debate that by the late 1890s there were dozens of teams full of paid players across the United States. For decades, all of these teams were independent, and while some quasi-leagues developed by 1910 (with Chicago’s four-team Windy City Championship being perhaps the most famous), there were no formal organizations. Teams scheduled games against professional, amateur, and collegiate opponents, and generally used college rules, though there were slight variations depending on where the game was played.

World War I was hard on professional football, and a great many teams froze operations during the war or folded altogether, so when peace came in November of 1918, it was not clear that the sport had much of a future. However, a few days into the new year, representatives of 17 teams (mostly from the Great Lakes area) met in Detroit, 12 of which ultimately agreed to form the National Association of Professional Football Clubs. Aldrich Carrington, the owner of the Ann Arbor Gladiators and Professor of Antiquities at the University of Michigan, was selected to serve as the league’s first president.

With less than a year before the first game, the league didn’t offer much organization. They universally adopted the collegiate rule book and set no rules for scheduling – teams would operate much as they had in previous years, with the lone difference being that one squad, determined by a vote of all the teams, would be able to declare themselves NAPFC Champions at the end of the season.

The twelve founding teams will participate in the NAPFC’s inaugural season are:

• Ann Arbor Gladiators
• Bay City Bulldogs
• Chicago All-Stars
• Chicago Bulldogs
• Cleveland Athletics
• Detroit Robins
• Erie Lakers
• Gary Broadways
• Grand Rapids De Villes
• Oakwood Park Rollers (Kalamazoo, MI)
• Rockford Pros
• Toledo Tornadoes