The Tonawanda Kardex: A Forgotten Chapter in NFL History

A recent business trip up into western New York took me to the town of Tonawanda and reminded me of a famous story from Football Pass told by one of our guests just a few years ago.

We have this story coming up in just a moment on the Tonawanda Card.

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This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your Port on a Positive Football History and and welcome to another edition of Talking About Something Spectacular that Happened in Football History.

And this one is really a great story and from a few years ago.

Some of you may remember that we had Ken Crippen on, who originally comes from Western New York and is a very big historian with Football Learning Academy and a former PFRA president.

And Ken has some very interesting stories to tell and one of them is is about a very interesting team from where he grew up in a nearby area of Tonawanda, New York just north of Buffalo.

And here's what Ken had to say about the town of Tonawanda and their NFL experience and their claim to fame.

Our subject tonight is a team that's near and dear to your heart that you've become attached to probably from your upbringing in the area and the Tonawanda Card X.

Maybe you could just start off and talk a little about the card X.

So at that time frame they brought together a lot of all star teams for each of the different towns in the area.

And so Tonawanda had a team, Buffalo had a team, Niagara Falls had a team, et cetera.

All throughout the area they'd have these all star teams.

This is when what is now the NFL started.

The Buffalo had a really strong team, the Buffalo All Americans.

Surprisingly, there was a second NFL team in that Buffalo area and that's the Tonawanda Cardiffs northern suburb of Buffalo.

They had a few other games that were scheduled but were canceled.

They did have one non league game, but yeah, they're.

They have the distinction of having the shortest franchise history and pro football.

So one game.

Now do you know what some of the reasons might have been why they only played the one game?

Weather usually was an issue.

Nowadays you would play pretty much all weather.

You're telling me there's bad weather in Buffalo?

I, I don't believe that.

It's hard to imagine but.

And it wasn't snow that caused it, it's rain that usually caused the issue.

So games would end up getting.

If the field was too muddy, they would actually stop the games.

And actually their non league game that they played that year, they only played a total of 17 minutes and then they cut the game short at halftime.

So just having the muddy field was enough for them to stop the game.

Then I assume probably because of that they probably lost a little bit of their gate revenue which they're probably counting on and probably put them in a financial cyclone of failure probably.

I'm guessing that'd be true.

You didn't have the TV contracts like you do nowadays.

Right.

You're pretty much reliant strictly on gate receipts to try to keep your franchise alive.

And that's why so many teams came and went is because they just couldn't bring out enough revenue in order to keep the team afloat.

Now what do you think the difference is?

You know, like you just said, the Buffalo All Americans couldn't have been playing that far from, from Tonawanda.

And now is it just maybe the timing of the home games that Buffalo maybe was traveling that weekend or were they a little bit better financially set than Tonawanda and they were able to ride out the storm.

More financial backing plus also they had better players.

I mean the Buffalo is obviously going to attract larger stars and they can bring it in from a wider area.

The Tonawanda didn't have that type of poll, so they couldn't bring in the all stars like you would see on the, the Buffalo All American.

So we don't have the same level of talent.

You're not going to get the same type of audience.

And so you're not going to see the same type of revenue.

Okay, now maybe you could tell us a little bit about.

Were there any folks in particular that sort of the originators of the Tonawanda franchise or the.

Even the team before they became a franchise and maybe any star players you could talk about?

Really there's one of note, and that's Walter Tamrose.

He played back for the team and he's pretty much been with the team the entire time.

So he's really the only person that I could say was notable for that team.

All right.

I guess another question I would have is where we know the town of town is Tonawanda, but where does the rest of the name come from?

Is that maybe an industry that was up there that they were named after?

The American Card X Company is what they were named after.

So they picked up some of the sponsorship for the team.

And actually one thing that you rarely ever see is that they were kind of called the Tonawanda Niagara Cardinal.

And so what it was is because they couldn't bring in enough stars just in the Tonawanda area, they actually kind of merged with Niagara Falls.

And so that's how you came up with Tonawanda Niagara Tardex.

With Tardex sponsoring the team.

Well, that must have been hard to fit on a jersey back then, I'll tell you.

I thought he just put a T and that was it.

That's a smart move on their part.

That probably saved the seamstresses fingers there, I'm sure.

Now the one game that they did play, the 17 minutes or so, who did they play against?

This was against the Rochester Scalpers.

Actually.

It was the.

It was all Syracuse.

It was another Syracuse team, an all star team, and they played to a 00 tie.

But like I said, they had one quarter that was eight minutes long, another quarter that was nine minutes long, and then that was the end of the game.

Probably the.

The longest halftime in history, too.

It's still going right?

But that band's gonna get tired being out there playing, that's for sure.

Was there any ever.

Any knowledge that you have that maybe somebody maybe a few years later would try to just restart the team or rekindle the.

The Card X, or they just say, you know, after that, you know, enough's enough, and we're throwing in a Towel on us.

Really didn't have any success.

It didn't really stick at all.

I'm not sure of any other attempts beyond that.

So they would just take any of the top notch talent that was in the area.

Yeah, okay, that's.

That's very understandable.

Okay.

Yeah, you have a lot of decent sized communities around every.

When you have that one big center hub that has the attraction, it's like a magnet and it's probably a good thing for the community.

Can pull all the resources into one and have one bigger, better team maybe.

So maybe that's the silver lining for the team then.

So yeah, I would say that.

Then you've also got Rochester, which is only two hours away.

So between the two, you're not going to really get any other teams of any quality going beyond just Rochester and Buffalo.

Okay, now you mentioned that the team that they played was the Syracuse All Stars.

Did Syracuse have any luck of sustaining the rest of the season or playing in other seasons or is that just sort of a one and done for them as well?

I mean they played every year and you'd have these all star teams always playing every year, but really nothing of note as far as these teams being successful and really competing on any sort of level.

Mainly just for bragging rights throughout the city.

Maybe bragging rights in say, western New York Central, New York, something like that.

But you really didn't see any teams of any note beyond Buffalo and Rochester coming out.

Least played team, I guess we could call them the Tonawanda card X and appreciate you having you on today and joining us.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

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Take a knee and let this baby run out.

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