Exploring the Akron Pros’ Legendary 1920 Season & What If Scenario

You know, the very first NFL season.

Was a crazy time.

You had 14 teams get together and form a league of organized professional football for the first time in history.

And nobody knew what was going to go on.

But there was some great fireworks at the end.

Join me as I dive into crazy hypothetical and try to figure out what would have happened if the Akron Pros, the champions of the first NFL season, would have played just one more game in Chicago.

And what may have happened to change.

The course of history.

It's all coming up in just a moment here on the Pigskin Dispatch.

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

He's a pigskindispatch.com Happy New Year.

Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal or positive football history.

It is a what if series where we're going to go back and look at pieces of history that had some very interesting items and events happening in football history.

And how could they have been changed just by one play play or one player or one game and could have changed the course of football history forever?

We're gonna get into one of those tonight.

The very first season at the National Football League, before it was called the National Football League, it was the American Professional football association, the APFA.

And it spurned into this first APFA season.

APFA for two years.

Third year, it was called the National.

Football League with the name change.

So we had, you know, just a great season that transpired then.

And you ended up having a total of 14 teams that joined the APFA.

There was one that only played one.

Game, I know, not really part of.

It, but they're in the standings.

But the Akron Pros of Akron, Ohio ended up being the national.

The first NFL champions are considered.

With only 11 games on their schedule, they didn't have as many opportunities to prove themselves as some of their rival teams did.

This may have been through design back in those early days of pro football, the schedule was not laid out prior to this season.

It was unveiled almost daily, week by week.

Teams were just throwing games together and, you know, calling somebody up or telegram a letter and saying, hey, you want to play this Friday?

Okay, we'll meet you wherever at a.

Certain time and our two teams will play.

And the teams had more experience and more talent.

On top of that, the pros were dealing with some internal issues like player disputes and financial struggles.

And it's a wonder they were able.

To achieve as much as they did given the circumstances.

But despite these challenges, the pros still managed to put together a respectable season.

They finished with an 8, 0 and 3 record record.

Ties didn't count in the standings.

Remember, the NFL did not have a championship game.

It was the team with the best win loss record, win percentage per se, in at the end of the season.

As determined and it was, went to a vote at the owners meetings that.

Winter, a few months after the season had completed.

So it really wasn't super organized.

But college football wasn't organized till just.

Recently to come up with a national champion.

So the NFL, it took them a.

Good dozen 13 years to finally figure.

Out, hey, we got to play a.

Championship game to do a title.

But those first dozen years, no, two years, the APFA, 10 years of the.

NFL, they had to figure it out by the team with the best record.

And they didn't have preset schedules.

Everybody playing the same amount of games like we said.

Now they did at Nakam.

Pros have was a lot of unknowns.

But there were some pretty good players.

On that teams too.

You know, Fritz Pollard, a pioneering African American player and coach, would go on.

To become a Hall of Famer, and.

Paul Robeson, a talented end who would go on to have a successful NFL career himself.

These two men, minority players, really did.

Played a major part in the success of the Akron Pros.

This was sort of a laughing stock of the college game, looking at this bunch of professionals being put together and being they were really being scoffed at.

You had men like Amos, Alonzo Stag and Bob Zupke and even Walter Camp sort of denouncing professional players and for the professional game, saying the college game was the pure sport of, of men playing without pay just Playing for the love of the game.

And that really held true and it really held a lot of weight because.

The college game was much more popular.

Than this fledgling NFL APFA thing that was coming about now.

The Canton Bulldogs were led by the president of the league, the face of the franchise, the face of the league, Jim Thorpe, who played for the Bulldogs that first year.

And some of the biggest names of the sport on a Decatur Staley's who would eventually become the Chicago Bears a couple years later they were already starting to establish themselves as powerhouses.

The APFA was a league that was still finding its way but already producing some amazing talent.

And the Akron Pros right in the thick of it, competing against the best teams and the players.

Now that record which you see here up on your screen has the finishing of the APFACs and the Akron Pros at 8, 0 and 3.

The Decaylock Tater Stales finished at 10.

1 and 2, a 909 percentage.

Buffalo All Americans were 91 1.

The Chicago Cardinals and Rock Island Independence and Dayton Triangles all finished with respectful.

Records with two losses on their two ties and five or six wins each.

And Rochester Jefferson's were right behind him at 6, 3 and 2 and Canton.

Was 7, 4 and 2.

Played a few more games but they were right in the thick of things also.

Well, it came down to there was.

A game that was supposed to be.

Played in on the season for the.

Akron ended on December 12th with a scoreless tie indicator to seal that season.

They ended up playing the Akron Pros, did the Decatur Steelers and the Buffalo All Americans in their last two games.

And it really sort of determined what was going to happen on her.

So December 5th they played the Buffalo.

All Americans at buffalo.

And then December 12th, seven days later they went traveled to Decatur, Illinois to play the Decatur Stales.

These are two teams that they're in.

Direct competition with, which was kind of a thing that really happened a lot here in the early NFL.

And we went, you know, through that quite a bit.

The game with the the Decatur Stales.

Was kind of interesting right down to the end when Dutch Sternuman missed a field goal from the 15 yard line.

And it ended up in a tie game.

And that's what, you know, sort of got the Akron Pros over with not having a loss.

But Sternuman nails that field goal from the 15 right at the end of the game.

We're talking, you know, seven and one Akron Pro's team and a 11 and one or yeah, 11 and one and one.

Decatur Staley's team It sort of flips.

The script there a little bit and it puts the Buffalo all Americans back into the play too because now they're 91 and 1.

So kind of an interesting thing.

So what if Stirneman would have nailed that that kick?

Even more interesting was that they were.

There were talks that the there would be one more additional game between Decatur.

And Akron played in Chicago the following week on the 19th.

It could have had a huge impact on the pro season.

So let's assume the season ended like the games ended like they did the Akron after December 12th in the Decatur they tie.

So they're those records like you see.

But then they have one more game coming off on.

So you know it could have been extremely interesting given Decatur one more chance to prove themselves against the top tier opponents and potentially upset that balance of the apfa.

Who knows, maybe the Decatur Staleys would.

Have won a championship or with their win maybe that would have pushed Buffalo to become the champions.

It's impossible to say for sure, but one thing is for certain, that game would have had a huge impact on the pros legacy and on the early days of professional football.

But it didn't.

Chosen as a champions.

That's your little piece of football history and a what if scenario that gives you a little bit of insight how football was run and at the pro level back over 100 years ago.

Hope you enjoyed this little bit of football history.

Hope you have a very happy new.

Year and hope you enjoy this series.

As we go through.

Not only our what ifs but we have and we're going to talk more about our books that have come out.

Franklin, Pennsylvania All Stars that had a tremendous season and we pinned them as the world's greatest professional gridiron team ever.

Check that out.

Also recently we had When Greasy met the Wonder coach.

The greasy Neil led Washington Jefferson presidents and the Andy Smith led Cal Wonder teams of the Cow Golden Bears.

Just a tremendous story with two great coaches, two awesome teams and a fabulous Rose bowl game, one of the greatest in history.

Hope you check that out.

We're going to hold that little secret in our back pocket here because I think you're really going to enjoy that.

There's going to be some really big news coming up here in the next few months, so hope you enjoyed this.

Check us out for some more great football history, our YouTube channel, our podcast, and on pigskindispach.com where we have football history every single day.

Till next time, everybody have a great, great iron day.

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

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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