1932 Impromtu NFL Title Game

It was decided that a final game to determine a champion would be played in a special Chicago at Wrigley Field on December 18, 1932. The NFL Title was supposed to be given to the team with the best record. This had been the case for over a decade in the young NFL. The 1932 season ended with the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans in a virtual tie for the top record in the League.

Rumor is that George Halas challenged the Spartans to play a game to settle the tie. They wanted no part of any Co-Champion bologna. Thus, we had the first NFL Championship! This first postseason game in NFL history had some massive twists and turns to make it a remarkable story, even though a game was going to be played to determine an NFL Champion. The first odd occurrence was that Spartans star Earl “Dutch” Clark could not play in the game because he had to work. Clark, who worked as the Head Basketball Coach at Colorado College, and his hoops team had a game on that December 18, and Dutch couldn’t get off work to make the football game in Chicago. The second crazy thing that happened was that due to a freak late-fall blizzard in Chicago, the game had to be moved inside the Chicago Stadium because Wrigley was covered with deep snow and frozen with dangerous sub-zero temperatures. The playing field had to be modified to play inside, so the game was played on a field only 80 yards long and some 30 yards narrower than the standard width the teams played on all season. The last item surrounding the game happened on the contest’s only touchdown. Bronko Nagurski threw a scoring jump pass to Red Grange, but the Spartans argued that Nagurski did not meet the requirement of legal forward passes in those days of being 5 yards or more behind the line. The play stood, and the Bears won the NFL title by 9-0. The Spartans franchise would become the Lions in 1933 when they moved from Portsmouth, Ohio, to Detroit.