1920 Season

The first game in NAPFT history took place on Sunday, September 28, 1919, when the Oakwood Park Rollers hosted the Ann Arbor Gladiators in Kalamazoo, MI. It wasn’t a particularly exciting game, ending in a 3-3 tie that was scoreless for the last three quarters, but nevertheless, a new league was born.

It didn’t take long for the season to get eventful, though perhaps not for the reason that anyone associated with the league had hoped. A week before opening day, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers went on strike. This put the Gary Broadways in an awkward position, as the players were all steelworkers, and were paid to play football by their employer. They cancelled their season opener, which was scheduled for October 5^th. The next day, a riot broke out in Gary that was so severe the National Guard took over the city and declared martial law. In the chaos, Broadway Stadium burned to the ground.

The team would eventually play two games in Chicago in November – with the players making arrangements themselves to be paid from gate fees. They performed surprisingly well given the circumstances, narrowly losing to the Bulldogs and pulling off a stunning last-minute 10-7 upset of the All-Stars, but didn’t schedule any further games after U.S. Steel threatened a lawsuit.

In its inaugural year, the league proved to be highly uneven. The Erie Lakers absolutely dominated the competition, going 10-0-1 (with the lone tie coming in a 14-14 November matchup against the Toledo Twisters which several Lakers missed due to illnes). They led the league in scoring with 221 points and finished fourth in points against with 35. Individual player stats were not tracked, but it was widely believed that Francis Jacobs alone was responsible for more points than half the teams in the league.

There was some grumbling among Ann Arbor fans about the fact that their team played a much more difficult schedule than the Lakers. This was true – Erie played only two games against league opponents with winning records, one of which was their tie against Toledo. They then padded their record with four games against the bottom three ranked teams in the league (including two against winless Cleveland), and five non-league opponents, who are generally seen as weak competition – NAPFC teams went a total of 20-6-5 against non-league clubs. Overall, the Gladiators played 10 league games against opponents with a combined winning percentage of .570, while the Lakers played 6 opponents who combined to go .341. Lakers fans countered that, as the easternmost team in the league, travel expenses made it difficult for them to play more league games, and team owner W.V. Holtz denied intentionally setting an easy schedule.

At the year-end meeting, Ann Arbor’s Aldrich Carrington diffused the possibility of scandal and tension in the fledgling league by presenting the Kieran McManus trophy to Holtz. After the meeting, Holtz and Carrington jointly announced that their two clubs would face off in Ann Arbor on Thanksgiving Day in 1920.

With the first season in the books, it is clear that the NAPFT is here to stay. Sixteen teams have applied to join the league as the new decade dawns, though a few of the founding members, most obviously the Gary Broadways, are unlikely to return for the second year. Meanwhile, fans across the upper Midwest, particularly in Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, are already dreaming of the chance to claim the crown.