Unraveling the 1926 NFL Championship: A Historic Showdown

Championship football.

There's nothing better than it.

We're going to cover the team that won it and the exciting finish coming up right after this.

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

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

So as we come out of the tunnel of the Sports History Network, let's take the field and go no huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can Learn more at sportshistorynetwork.com hello my football friends.

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

We're going to talk about championships of the National Football League before the super bowl.

And it's inspired from some great play that was played for the first 45 years of the NFL.

And we're going to be covering those in basically two different segments.

They were all grouped into one big pile.

There was no divisions or conferences or anything like that.

And whoever had the best record would be submitted to the winter meetings of the owners.

And at that meeting they, that group would vote and tell you who the champion of the National Football League was.

They could claim the championship.

But everybody sort of knew at the end of the season who had the best record.

And that was probably going to be the team that was going to tend to be the champions.

I mean, it can't get much closer than when these two teams battled it out at the end.

And actually it was a 4, 5 team race right up till the end of the season.

But before we do, I just want you to know about a product you heard the advertisements on before the podcast for the last few months might even been longer than that.

You've heard of the Sterling Soap Company and some of their great products.

Well, they are bringing back shaving back the way it was, you know, back in the good old days when, when men were men and having these good close shaves and you're using some old technology to get some really close shaves and great skin on your face.

And I had the great opportunity that they shared some samples with me and I'll tell you what, they, they really had some cool products that you know, I never had really experienced before.

You know, when I was a kid, my father, my grandfather would put on the, you know, highly advertised aftershave lotions that stung like crazy.

You know, one like Cauley Culkin on Home Alone put on his face and had that famous appearance where he had both the hands on his face with a big open mouth thing.

Well, the stuff that Sterling Soap Company has is not like that.

They have a product called the Executive Men's Aftershave Splash.

And I'll tell you what, this stuff is not overpowering and smell but it's just a nice, you know, traditional smell of aftershave.

Put you put it on.

And boys, that refreshing after a nice shave you have on there.

They also have some very excellent shave balm that you get to put put on.

It's unscented.

And I'll tell you what, I shave in the morning before I go to work.

I put this stuff on and my face is like on fire.

It's not on fire bad way.

It's like crazy good tingling, wake you up, ready to go.

And, and then I pound it down with some Sterling Roastery coffee that they sent me and man, what a great way to start your morning.

You can check them out and they're great products@sterlingsoap.com that's sterling.

The great season that ended up coming right down to the end with two teams vying right to the end and actually a couple other ones that probably were pretty close.

And we're going to get into that here in a second.

But first we got to sort of lay the land of the NFL was going on.

The Brooklyn Lions, Hartford Blues, Los Angeles Buccaneers, the Louisville Colonels and the Racine Tornadoes came back into the league and they the Cleveland Bulldogs, they decided to sit out for a season.

And the Rock Island Independence, well, they defected and went over to the Red Grange League, the original American Football League.

So they had these 22 teams and it really came down to a wild finish with some, some great teams that were coming into that.

But it came down to a very pivotal game where the Pottsville Maroons, who are one of the four that were sort of vying for that championship, I'm sorry, one of the three that really got close.

They played the Chicago Bears and the game ended with a controversial kick where the, the Bears ended up winning the game.

And the Bears finished with a 121 and 3 record.

Pottsville Maroons finished with a 102 and 2 record.

83 and 833 winning percentage, the Bears 923.

But they, they were both outdone by a team that beat them.

Both the Franklin Yellow jackets, who finished at 14:1 and 2 with a.933 winning percentage.

Neither team would surrender a.00 to give Frankfurt that championship, if possible wins that game.

They're the champions.

The Chicago Bears, on the other hand, were so very close to winning that championship.

But they also had a tie on the last day of the year.

They had it on Sunday the 19th against the Green Bay Packers, a 3, 3 tie.

They beat the Maroons 9 to 7 just seven days earlier on Sunday the 12th.

But they had suffered on December 4th, a one point loss to the Frankfort Yellow Jackets by a score of 6 to 7 at Frankfurt.

And that really changed the fortunes of the league and set the tone.

And Frankfurt ended up winning that league because of that great win they had over the Bears and the tie they had with the possible Maroons at the end of the season.

So it really came down to that.

And of course the league meeting the next year.

This is the whole year when the AFL is going on and you know, the Philadelphia Quakers are the champions of the original AFL and the Frankfurt Yellowjackets.

Frankfurt is in Philadelphia.

They win the National Football League.

So two Philadelphia teams win the championship.

Just, you know, very similar to, you know, this year the Super Bowl.

59 Philadelphia Eagles win the National Football League championship with that big win in the Super Bowl.

So very big years for Philadelphia Football for sure.

And the Frankfort Yellow Jackets were the champs and they had to overcome a lot to get there and what a great championship it was for them.

And the first championship of National Football League for a Pennsylvania team.

So very interesting indeed.

We're going to be going right into these championship games right through the February, these games before the championship games themselves, the official championship games that were sanctioned.

And then starting the first week of May, the first Monday in May, March 3rd, we're going to go right into the championship games and we're going to be having guests on talking about these games.

Very interesting and fascinating stories there indeed.

And we're going to have a bunch of different guests and experts coming on from all these teams that won championships and cover the whole 45 year history of NFL Champions Game Championship games before the super bowl era.

So you got some great football history coming up.

Until next time, everybody have a great gridiron day.

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 experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics, pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and don't forget the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news in history.

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

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.