From Shadows to Spotlight: Leo Lyons and His Impact on the NFL

You know, there may be no better story than when somebody gets some credit that's long overdue.

And how about a century's worth of credit?

Or more?

Well, we have that story tonight by two authors that are coming to visit us that tell us about a story they've written about a gentleman that did a lot of things for the National Football League that he never got credit for.

Jeff Miller and John Stephanhagen, join us to tell us about Leo Lyons.

Coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And boy, we have a great episode for you tonight.

We have two guests that have been on our show before and really have some great information out there on some football history that we've touched a little bit on before.

But this is the Rochester Jefferson, one of the founding members of the National Football League and their founder, Leo Lyons.

And we have Leo Lyons great grandson John Stefanhagen and Jeff Miller, his co author that wrote a book recently.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah.

So, John, why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, just give us a brief history on Leo and you, you finding out that you know about Leo and you know what he was famous for.

Yeah, I've learned now when people say that, it's like, if you want, I need about 10 hours to tell you.

But the basis of it is, yeah, my great grandfather who passed away when I was nine, so I did know him, I used to go over to his house and there's a story, you know, George Ellis and Art Rooney were there one time as I was playing with my Hot Wheel cars.

So Leo was, he started from a very young age at 16, 18.

He had joined the Rochester Jeffersons and he was obsessed with the idea of pro football.

This is before the NFL, obviously.

So his kid, his son or his brothers and sisters would always be like, oh, baseball and how they would collect cards and stuff.

But Leo was like, why is there a football pro league?

So he had written down in his journal about, you know, starting a pro league.

So he ended up, he had written down a step by step program.

So he ended up making his team.

And then he challenges the Canton Bulldogs.

So he chilled Jim Thorpe.

And then he goes.

He goes out there and plays them, tells Jim Thorpe, you know, I really want to start a league.

And he's like, well, us guys out here are talking about it as well.

I'll contact you when serious plans are going to be made.

Jim Dalton to come out to Canton.

And then onward from there.

As a manager, coach, owner of a team, he's constantly in a battle with the Rochester city of Rochester, because they totally were against college players coming from all around the country to play for his team.

So as he would bring in competition or players to compete on a high level, the people stopped coming out, which in turn meant no money, which means not being able to pay the players.

So he stuck it up for six seasons in the NFL, which was so many teams had folded them.

But he ended up sticking up the six seasons.

And then after that, you know, he would be involved with collecting football memorabilia from the very day one of the NFL collected all that stuff.

And then he was behind.

Yeah, the opening of the hall of Fame.

It was his idea, going back to letters we have to Joe Carr, to Burt Bell and P. Roselle, just constantly saying, I got all this stuff.

I need to.

We need to form a museum to hold all this stuff.

So he was involved with the opening of that as well.

So that's some of it.

Yeah, that.

That is amazing.

The surface.

Yeah.

We sat at a Professional Football Researchers association convention and at the Pro Football hall of Fame.

And, John, you got up and you told.

I mean, that was the abridged version.

You told a story of Leo.

And that was the first time I ever heard the name Leo Lyons.

And I was.

My.

I think all of us, our mouths were on the floor.

And, you know, I know Jeff was in attendance at that meeting as well.

Jeff, is that the first time you heard and became familiar with Leo also?

Or did.

Oh, no.

So I kind of became familiar with Leo at that time.

And while I was writing that book, John.

And that's when John and I first met.

We became acquainted because somebody, somebody had passed me along his name as someone who was also doing some research into the same era.

And John loaned me a couple of photographs for my book.

And then we just became, you know, we began corresponding, we became friends over, over years.

And so, you know, I became more and more familiar.

But once we started doing this book, I mean, there was so much more that came out.

Like you said, it's like peeling the onion.

It wasn't just, you know, he was the founder of the Rochester Jefferson's and a co founder of the league.

You know, I mean, this guy was always thinking 20 steps ahead.

You know, Leo was a groundbreaker.

And none of this was, none of this was like, oh, well, we believe this to be real.

John actually has the documentation to back it up.

He's got the documents, he's got, you know, he's got pictures, he's got everything that backs up everything that, you know, that we're asserting in this book.

So, you know, there's a, there's a guy here who in my estimation may not be in George Hallis's stratosphere, but he's awful damn close because the things that he did were extremely important to the development of the league itself.

Yeah, that, that is definitely a fascinating story.

And John, I believe we had you on probably about four years ago and I think we were talking about, you know, Leo's story being an onion.

I think we were just maybe scratching the, the skin of the onion when you were on before because you, you like you just told me earlier, before we came on, you're learning stuff daily.

And even after you got done with the book, you're learning stuff.

And I guess before we go too far and you answer that question, why don't you give us the title book, John, and what.

Where people can get it.

Yes, it's titled Leo Lyons, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Birth of the NFL, Drew McFarlane Publishing.

All right, so yeah, go ahead and maybe tell us, you know, how this story just keeps evolving.

You know, what's maybe the most surprising thing that you've ever learned about Leo.

That'S even a joke?

I mean there's so much.

But I think probably the newer things that through research and finding articles and newspapers and, and I was always concentrating on sports.

But as I looked into like business things with him, he ended up finding that he was contacting, you know, gum companies, Wrigley Cracker Jack back in.

This is when he's only like 21 years old and he comes up with ideas for cards, trading cards.

And he's even saying there that the, he doesn't believe in the cigarette tobacco cards.

It should be more targeted for children, so why not bubble gum or candy to go with the card?

And I mean, and I've got the letters of him proposing it to Joe Carr and proposing it to George Eastman, who here in Rochester.

He's got the biggest photographic place.

I mean, he could have done so much.

And Rochester was the home of Chiclets at that time.

They're also a big gum manufacturer.

So to him it seemed very simple.

Let's, let's do something to try to promote the NFL.

But the NFL saw it as, we're too early in our stages of what we've been created.

People aren't going to buy them.

And he's like, well, why not?

Let's try.

And they would just shake their heads and no, okay, crazy idea.

But it was things like that, which I did not know and I did not know until probably five years ago.

And I think if I can jump in here, you know, the thing, the thing was, you know what he's talking about where Leo wanted to promote the NFL.

So he wanted to get people like Charlie Brickley and Jim Thorpe to you know, to basically, you know, use their image on a football card to promote just football.

Not professional, not necessarily professional.

It could have been college, whenever, just a game of football itself.

So I think that that's where Leo was really, you know, and then the NFL, they just never had the money like, like John was saying.

Yeah.

So he was trying to create a multi million dollar industry before, you know, anybody ever, you know, the trading cards are pretty big now, I, I hear.

Plus the thing with Leo is he never gave up.

You love football.

So.

And as that got turned down because of World War I, he got a lot of, well, we can't do this right now.

It's during World War I, we can't do this.

But then back into the 20s and even the 30s, you know, he's still sending out letters to these companies with actual diagrams which I have with the actual.

There's actually a Cracker Jack baseball card attached to one of these old pieces of paper, you know, and he's showing how to set it up.

So.

Yeah, very interesting stuff.

Well, gosh, he could almost invented the toy surprise in the cereal boxes then, huh?

In the Cracker Jack boxes as well.

I'm still researching.

Yeah, very interesting.

All right, so Jeff, during your research of Leo, you know, I, I know you were going back and trying to do some confirmation of some of the things that John was doing, digging into some of these stories.

What was maybe one of the more surprising things that came out of your research?

And to me it's just to look in there and see just how involved Leo really was.

Because we all hear about, you know, Joe Carr, George Hallis, maybe Carl Stork and a few other guys as all the movers and shakers of the league in, in those days.

But Leo was right there making, you know, second seconding motions and, and actually making proposals and talking about stuff.

Everybody talks about, well, George Preston Marshall came up with that idea.

Well, Leo, and I don't know if it was actually Leo's idea, but he's, he actually wrote it all down and I, I get the impression that he had something to do with that.

So, you know, he had a, like Buffalo, Rochester and these teams are going to be in the east and you know, the Chicago's and the, you know, all those other teams are going to be in the west and all these divisions and Leo was part of this, Leo was part of the, you know, the reshaping of the football so it's more aerodynamic.

He's got notes about how he wrote to George Hallis and said, Jim Thorpe and I have been talking about the football.

It's too big.

You know, we need to make, we need to streamline so people can throw it.

You know, this is, you know, gets the credit for that.

Other people, not Leo.

And to me that.

That was the kind.

That was the stuff that I found most fascinating.

Like this guy.

There's so much that he did or so much that he wanted to do, and if.

If it was something he never got accomplished, it's because he got stymied by the league.

And, you know, then that's the league that we all know, Lambeau, you know, but we don't know too much about Leo Lyons or the Buffalo Wall Americans even.

It's, you know, those other guys got all the credit because they were the mainstays.

Yeah.

You said something that reminded me a story that John, maybe you could tell us again.

You talked about how Leo would write things down and predict things.

And I believe you had a story when he was much younger, a teenager, and some of his.

What are his goals?

He was jotting down some of his goals.

Yeah, I mean, he had the.

The NFL logo, basically.

He had.

He could see that when he was in high school or younger age.

He said in his notes, like Jim Thorpe's uniform.

But he has.

He wrote it Major League Football across the.

Like, instead of the NFL, it's a Major League Football.

That was his idea for a name of Ali.

But this is again, six, seven years before the NFL existed.

I mean, he was.

Those are his ideas already way before.

And then when he proposed the logo, he wrote that in his journal.

He would.

Yeah, his details and notes were amazing.

The time, the weather, things like that, people that react, elections and stuff.

And so he said in 19, one of the meetings, we had the meeting minutes, but one of the meeting minutes, they were discussing the league and its recognition.

And Leo had brought up, why not a logo like Major League Baseball?

Like you have a identifier again.

And he wrote in his own notes, only because I'm not George Ellis.

And, you know, he had a lot of that in his notes.

He's like anybody else, they would have listened, but not from Leo Lyons.

So things like that.

I mean, we came across tons of things And a lot of the notes, eating.

I don't want to give too much up for the book.

There's so much.

I mean, eating dinner with Jim Thorpe three days before they form the league.

I'm like, and just as Rochester, in Rochester, in Rochester.

So now people are like, oh, come on now, that sounds far fetched.

Like he had dinner.

What would.

So he had me.

I couldn't find anything.

I'm like, I'm gonna give up.

I'm like, I guess we can't use it for the book because I can't prove that even the Jim Thorpe was in Rochester.

Then I came across one little note in the newspaper in Rochester.

Here.

Oh, Jim Thorpe in Rochester.

On that day, he was playing for the Akron Pneumatics baseball team at the International League.

And they were playing the Rochester Hustlers.

So Leo, here's Jim Thorpe in Rochester.

And not only does I find that out, I find out that there's another article I found in another newspaper, says Jim Thorpe meets with Leo Lyons of the Jeffersons.

And now this is again, three days before the league is beyond.

And yeah, just that stuff.

And so.

Oh, yeah, Jim.

Then we had the issue with dinner.

Okay, so they met together in Rochester.

But how would he have been.

Oh, spent the night in Rochester.

That doesn't make sense because they were playing pretty much every day.

So come to find out.

Oh, the Acro Pneumatics had a double header against Rochester and they happened to spend the night in Rochester.

So it was just like, I couldn't make it out.

Like these things are.

I find them.

And then I would have backups to my original story.

I'm like, this is like it's being written by itself.

It's like.

It was pretty cool the way, you know, like we would.

He would.

John would find something and, you know, I would say, well, we, we have to, we have to verify this.

And we were always able to find a note from Leo or a newspaper article or something else or meeting minutes that would back it up.

There was always.

So we knew that Leo wasn't full of it.

You know, I mean, he was.

There was always some.

We were able to back up every single story that we told in this book.

It's just incredible.

There were a lot of stories left out because we couldn't prove it.

There's a couple.

I got so mad at Jeff, I'm like, gotta put this in the book.

And he's like, we can't because there's no proof of it.

And we can't just go by what Leo was saying.

And it's like, you're right, because we gotta have it factual.

It's gotta be.

Yeah.

No question about it.

Now, Now, John, you were talking about the journal of Leo's.

Now, how extensive is this journal?

Does it go from him being a teenager till, you know, he's well into his adult years?

Or is this something that's sort of sporadic and you're just finding notes on cocktail napkins or something?

Well, no, the Saturday Evening Post, I guess, was his favorite place to write.

Like I think after football games or before football games.

But he would have the journal.

And that's amazing story because one of my aunts had it was.

She found it in a box.

It was all just loose little crumbly paper.

She thought it was like stuff to wrap stuff in.

So I told her, you got to go through every box, every detail.

I mean, the stupidest looking thing, just please look at it.

So she was older.

So I, you know, I knew that it wasn't going to be something where she could be, you know, pinpoint accurate.

But she had some of these notes and she just called me on the phone and she's like, what?

This note, it says something about met with Alice.

And now she's not a football fan.

She didn't know who hell is.

I'm like, what?

I go, can you please.

She was in Florida.

I was like, can you send me those papers?

So the journal, luckily they had numbers up at the top because they were all in a plastic baggie, all mixed up.

So we put them back together.

And the ones that didn't have numbers, we could tell by the weeks of what game he was talking about.

And then up until just after the football team 25, when they were done, it kind of ended there.

And.

And just his details of the grange.

We have notes in there where the NFL meeting minutes.

This is what Jeff caught, that Carl Stork recorded meeting minutes.

And it was for the.

The dates are wrong.

So we went back, we're like, let's make sure, you know, this is.

We're going to be contradicting the league minutes, you know, minutes of the league.

And sure enough, because Leo had said that he had left on Friday or Saturday.

And we went back, we got a calendar and looked and we're like, yeah, because the stork had recorded it.

Like, it's for Friday, but the date.

Is Stork out the dates wrong.

Yeah.

Wow.

So again, Leo had it in his notes.

He had it in his.

It's just non stop like the book could have been a million pages.

I mean, it's just, it never ends.

The great thing too was he.

He detailed.

And it's real.

We put it in great detail in the book.

Leo tried to sign Red Grange for the Rochester Jeffersons.

And he actually went and got funding from a mobster to do this.

Okay.

But he's got all of his details about, you know, his itinerary.

Like he drove, he took the train to visit with Doc Cooley, who was one of Grange's managers.

And then he met with, you know, his father and he got the father's word that Rick Grange would sign with Rochester.

And it's all detailed in the journal and it's, it's just incredible.

And we got, you know, we, we've got expenses, you know, like, you know, train costs, this amount of money.

And you know, we, it's just.

So we were able to, we were able to put together his entire week leading up to the day that Grace ends up signing with George Hallis and the Bears, you know, because Leo was still holding out hope that he was going to be able to sign because he has a check for $5,000 and the $5,000 came from the mob.

And I don't want to give too much away, I mean, but I mean the details of it are just fascinating.

So I mean like you have to read the story to see how it, you know, how it all unfolded.

Because it's just this sweeping story of, you know, you can't make it up.

It's like a movie.

It's like, it's almost like if you put, put that story against George Hallis story and you told it two stories at the same time in a movie.

You like, you go back and forth like it's this race to get Grange, you know, Ellis gets Grange.

But Leo was that close and it probably would have killed, killed him, you know, financially to sign Grange.

But still it was just, just a fascinating story.

Yeah.

And not to mention all that following that up of how, again, I'm not gonna give a lot for the book, but what happened, I mean, he literally details going when he played against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, how Tim Mara had talked to him about.

He also wanted Gray.

So I mean you had details of him talking to these guys before it actually happened.

And then we'll stop the track of thought.

But yeah, the details are just like how, I mean, how it's kept.

It's just, it's fascinating.

Oh, I know, I'm sorry, George.

So there's a lot of letters between the two.

And what was interesting, that when it was happening, Jim Thorpe or not, George Hales was telling Leo that he's not going to come to Rochester.

So here you got these two guys that are bidding for him, but they're friends and he's telling them he's not going to come to Rochester.

And Leo's like, I've got to try because I can't in my conscience I have to try.

Even though Leo had written later, I was like, I knew I would never get him and.

But he was there in that hotel room and George Hallis writes that in his autobiography that Leo Lyons was sitting in that hotel room trying to get them.

It's like he had no chance, I mean zero chance.

But just to even show how involved that, I mean there's like the Onion.

Even in a story, it has appeals.

Now he was that day the Jeffersons had a football game in Detroit that day that Thorpe was going to be at the Morrison Hotel.

So Leo jumped.

Grange is going to be at the Morrison Hotel.

Yes, yes, Granger be there.

So Leo jumps off the train on the way to Detroit, goes to where the Thor Grange was going to be signed to try to sign him and the rest of the team goes up to Detroit to play and then he the next day jumps on a train and goes to Detroit that morning to manage the team.

But just like his whole life was like that.

And when I see some people, you know, like, oh, this, this guy did this or this guy did this, this was this guy's life.

And it's just like for no one to know who he is.

It's mind boggling and.

It sounds like it.

Now Jeff, this question is for you.

So you have all these little pieces of story that you, that John's sharing with you and pulling out the Saturday Evening Post with the scribbles on it and the notes, everything.

How long did it take you two to research just to get all this information, organize it and verify it and then put it into book form.

Well, John probably had 75% of the research already done because he's been researching Leo all his life and you know, a lot of it was there.

Most of it was me, you know, verifying stuff.

I would try to verify stuff myself.

I'm a researcher myself.

But, you know, John enjoys that part of it, too.

So I'm.

He might give me something while I'm, you know, writing.

I'm doing most of the writing part of it.

And I'll say to him, okay, we got.

We're.

We're kind of stuck here because Leo's saying this, but I can't verify it.

And I.

And.

And I think that John relished that, like, I'm gonna prove it, you know, so to me, it was like putting this puzzle together.

And I'm sure I frustrated him at times.

He'll probably tell you that.

But.

But, you know, to me, I wanted.

I wanted to make sure that we were telling the most complete story but accurately.

I wanted.

If Leo says he did something, I wanted him, damn it all, to get credit for it.

You know, if that meant.

If that was talking about the hall of Fame or signing Red Grange or whatever, I wanted to make sure that we could tell this story and.

And.

And.

And no one could come to us and say, that's not.

There's no way.

John's got all.

All the documentation to back it up.

Yeah, very fascinating.

Now, I mean, something that impresses me, you know, John, every time I see you, you know, whether it's at one of Jeff's meetings up in western New York for pfra.

I know, a few years ago, you know, that I'm apologetically a Steelers fan, and I remember you had a tape measure sitting there in a table in front of you, and you said, oh, I've got a story for you.

Why don't you share that story, what you told me about that tape measure.

Well, yeah, the people don't know that.

My great grandfather Leo, he left me.

He left his granddaughter, my mother, you know, boxes and boxes of documents, which is.

This is what a lot of it's based on.

And, you know, league letters between commissioners.

And there was also a lot of things in these boxes, like a pair of cleats, an old football, even a tape measure, a first aid kit.

So my mom told me, don't ever throw this stuff away.

But that's what Leo told me, and just don't throw it away.

So when she gave it to me when I was a kid, of course I looked at.

And I'm like, it's just junk.

So it stayed in our storage room forever, like, up there.

And then when I moved out as a Younger man got married.

I brought the stuff with me, but I went straight to the closet.

It was like.

I.

It's like it looks just like junk.

I remember.

I'm sure your new bride was real happy about these old boxes of tape measures and cleats, right?

Yeah.

How many times she wanted me to just dump them, you know?

And I'm like, I don't know.

So things that I would have, like the first aid kit, I had that out in my garage.

It got paint on it, it got dents in it.

And then I would find out later on through inventory list that he had sent to P. Roselle.

Oh, that's first aid, kid.

The Jeffersons used the first six seasons of the NFL given to him by George Eastman because George Eastman thought pro football was a joke.

So he just ingest.

He goes, you want this cabinet on my wall?

You know, it takes it right off the wall.

Leo is like such a character.

I mean.

So, yeah, so the tape measure, again, that thing really could have been thrown because it's a small, old antique Lufkin tape measure.

The one with the round spool.

So that was there.

So I'm thinking nothing of it.

That was in the bottom one of the boxes.

So it says.

So I look at the thing and I said, there is something scribbled on it.

I'm like, oh, I can make out an AJR Arthur J. Rudy.

It's like I. I can see it.

It's not very easily recognized.

And there it is, and it says dash 33.

So I'm like.

I'm like, all right, so now I really gotta find this one because I wasn't really telling anybody about it.

Because I'm like, who's gonna believe me?

It's just an old tape measure.

I could have scraped the num letters in there.

It's like, who knows?

So then I start digging.

I kicked and came across it looking for something else.

But come to find out that Art Rooney's brother or uncle, some relative, worked on the Forbes field field crew for their first game against the Giants.

And it said in this article, was in a Pittsburgh little article in Pittsburgh newspaper, that after the game they were always ball busting on each other and.

And the Steelers lost.

And this guy, who I believe his last name is Fogarty, I haven't found the guy's name.

He hand, he gave Art Rooney this tape measure and said, you know, this is a consolation prize.

You didn't.

You didn't win.

But here's the tape measure.

Because I found out that day that the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team had played on that field on Forbes Field, and they had to get ready for the first double header.

It was a baseball football night.

So he used that tape measure to mark off the chalk lines for the field again, on and on and on.

And so again, I'm like, okay, I'm wondering how he got it.

And then later on, my uncle had told me about some things that Art Rooney had.

And Leo, being the historian of the league, had begged Art to give me.

Give me something from your team.

There's something like.

He was in his office talking about it in Rudy's office, and he said, you want something, Leo?

And he, like, you know, they're just smoking cigars, talking.

He goes into his drawer and pulls out this tape measure and says, this is from our first game against the Giants.

He's like, I'll take it.

Like, just take anything if you gave it to him.

And then, not only was that enough proof, Dan Rooney, our son, I contacted him probably 20 years ago, and we were talking about stuff and he's like, oh, yeah, Leo has spent a lot of time in Art's office.

They're always, you know, just talking about football and stuff.

And.

And Leo was always bugging him about, come on, give me this football or give me this thing in your office.

So I'm like, that would make sense that if he had an old tape measure, you know, he gave it to him.

So it's like, again, every story, like 15 layers to.

Was like ridiculous.

But good because, you know, it gave more credence of what these items were.

There was a lot of items on this list.

I'll tell you.

I probably got 16 of them.

But there were.

There had been.

There were page of the pages.

And I don't.

I've never seen these.

So they've either gone to the hall of Fame, they got thrown out.

There was a Red Rage football jersey from 19, 25 or 26.

I'm like, it could be his rookie uniform if it's 25.

Right?

I mean, oh, my God, we got only those.

But I know he.

He donated a lot of it when it opened.

Wow.

Jeff, tell us a little bit about how the book is structured.

Is there.

I mean, we know it's full of stories.

We're hearing that.

But do you have, like, images to go with it and, you know.

Oh, yeah, we use.

We have over 50 images.

You know, not.

There's several game action photos, but a lot of it is the documents to.

We, we want to make sure that the documentation we showed it so people wouldn't.

Couldn't question.

Or how do you know that, you know, Leo really had all these items that he claimed to have?

Well, we've got his inventory list that he personally hand typed and scribbled on, or his.

Or the, you know, the Saturday Evening Post cover that he wrote.

So we were able to take all this stuff and just kind of, you know, put.

Lay it all out.

So, you know, the, the.

It's a typical biography in that it's, you know, it follows a timeline of his life, but we, we were just able to use so many of these documents and just to say, well, yeah, you know, here's.

Here's a, here's a.

And there's a couple.

Once, once is Major League Football, once his national foot or NFL one says ML MFL or whatever.

Major League Football.

So, you know, I mean, we, we just kind of planted those things in there and it just kind of use them as signposts along the way so people know we're not full of it and Leo's not full of it, but.

Well, I was gonna say Leo's not full of it.

I know personally you guys are full of it sometimes, but that's, that's a different story altogether here.

Not the book.

Not the book.

So.

Well, guys, you know, this is really, really sounds like a great book here and what.

John, why don't you tell us again the name of the book and where folks can get a copy of it?

Yeah, it's by McFarland Publishing author Jeffrey J. Miller and John Stevenhagen.

The title of the book is Leo Lyons, the Rochester Jeffersons and the birth of the NFL.

And it can be found at McFarland Publishing, Amazon, and the ebook is available currently on Barnes and Noble, which we're doing a book signing soon here and.

But yeah, they're gonna.

I'm sure they're gonna get it in soon as well.

Okay.

And you're doing some book signings.

Do you have Like a website or anything that people can go to to find out where you guys are gonna be at signing books.

Barnes and Noble is going to post one.

It's during the Bill's mini camp or the training camp, which again has a tie in with Leo being the co founder of the NFL and then his daughter be the co founder of St. John Fisher, where the Bills are head, their training camp.

So again, everything just fit right in.

And thank God the newspaper had posted things about her being the founder because people would be like, all right, this guy's really stretching in here.

It's like the Bills are coming through his daughter, you know, so they're going to be posting things and I have www.rochesterjeffersons.org my website.

I'm going to be posting in that.

Because that just got finalized today.

And I.

And I have a Facebook.

We both have Facebook page.

We'll be posting our itinerary on that as they.

As the dates come up.

I want.

I wanted to say too.

I should have said it earlier, Jeff, his patience is like a saint because the things that we went through during those four.

Those four years.

I think it was four years.

About four years researching.

And you know, I would be.

I'd come across something in the middle of the night and I would call him, Jeff.

We'll go, I filmed this.

He's like, john, we'll look at it tomorrow.

Or no, no, look at this.

It would just drive him crazy.

He'd go, all right, we'll look into it.

And then I would be doing it all the time.

And then, yeah, it drove him crazy.

So I just want to say thank you, Jeff, because.

No, but, you know, we share the.

We share the passion for getting, you know, seeking out what happened and telling an accurate story.

And, you know, that's, you know, I know John didn't want to write a book that, you know, just told stories and somebody could question.

So when he.

When he had something, I knew that, you know, it was important.

And it's good because I'm sorry.

Just gonna say that.

Yeah, it was important because our friend.

We have so many friends like Darren, I would just.

So many historians and researchers are friends.

It's like, we know that, you know, it'll be awkward if we said something that they were like, that's not true, you know, so we knew he had to be, you know, a lot more.

We don't even know his.

But they'll know, you know.

Yeah.

You know, we have a wide circle of friends who are football historians, Darren, you know, and you know, a lot of them, and, you know, they're the ones who are going to know, you know, the.

The average reader who might just say, well, I'm interested in Rochester history or football history, they might read it and just say, oh, this is great.

But, you know, if you know somebody who's really, you know, steeped in knowledge about the NFL, like Ken Crippen or, you know, George Bazika or TJ Troop or Chris Willis, they're going to look at that and they're going to go, no, no, no, no.

So we wanted to make sure that it was.

It was accurate.

And quite frankly, I think.

I think this book is 100 airtight.

This.

Everything we're saying in this book is accurate and can be proven.

It's just.

It's amazing.

This guy is a Forrest Gump of the NFL and never got the credit he deserved.

That's all.

That's the way I describe him to people when they're asking me, what are you writing about?

Because, you know, you can tell people you're writing about George Hallis, they'll know that, or Ralph Wilson or Art Rooney, but nobody knows Leon Lyons until now.

And we're going to change that.

Well, that is a great mission, and it's always great to hear when people are preserving football history and especially giving folks the credit that they're due, even though it's, you know, 100 years later after they've done it, or more, in his case, with Leo.

And.

And we are sure glad that you guys have put this together.

And folks, if you.

You missed the name of the book or where to get it, we're going to be posting some of those links in the show notes of the.

The podcast and on the YouTube channel, show notes.

And also try to get some links in there to get connected to Jeff and John's social media so, you know, their upcoming events that are coming up.

Gentlemen, we really appreciate you coming on here, sharing this book with us in the story of Leo in your book, and coming on here tonight and helping preserve football history.

Thank you so much.

And we appreciate you doing what you're doing.

I mean, again, keeping history alive.

I mean, that's my main reason for the book is like, I'm so sad that these people spent their whole lives doing things, accomplishing all this.

No one ever knows about it.

So you do a great job with your podcast and things that you do, your books.

I'll keep it alive.

And people don't know this, but Darren has come to our Western New York conferences on a couple of occasions to give presentations.

So we appreciate that, Darren.

Thank you guys.

All right.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our.

Website pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history but to explain experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip Fleetmarks Comics.

PigSkindisPatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and don't forget the Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our time podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports.

History Network, your headquarters for the guest of the year of your favorite sport.

You can learn more at sportshistorynetwork.

Com.