Canton Bulldogs Part 6

The conclusion to our 6 part series (7 if you add in the Cleveland Bulldogs post) on the Canton Bulldogs football team. 

It may seem as though we skipped a year in Canton Bulldog's history since we last visited in Part 5 of this series. However much like pro football in Canton, we skipped to the Bulldogs' year-by-year saga to The Cleveland Bulldogs for the 1924 season. 

We noted that Cleveland businessman Sam Deutsch bought the Canton franchise in the spring of 1924 and then after winning an NFL title that year, he must have had his fill with owning a football team because in May 1925, he sold the Cleveland team to a wholesale meat company owner named Herb Brandt. The new Cleveland team merged players who re-signed with reinforcements from the college ranks. In somewhat of an odd business dealing Deutsch also sold the some of the rights of the Bulldog franchise back to a group of Canton investors for $3,000 and the Canton Bulldogs were back in the NFL with a few former Bulldog players returning to Canton, wanting to play as an independent team. 

Some of the players that returned to Canton to play as the Bulldogs in 1925 were Pete Henry, Link Lyman, Rudy Comstock, Pete Calac (played last for Canton in 1920), and Ben Jones.

The Canton Bulldogs started the 1925 season on September 27 with a victory over the visiting Rochester Jeffersons. The Jeffs put up an early fight and it took all the Canton could muster to score two late TDs to overcome Rochester by the score of 14 -7.  The next tilt of the season was an October 4 game with the Dayton Triangles traveling to Canton. The Bulldogs dispatched this opponent by the score of 14-0 to move to 2-0.       

Things got a bit tougher though as on October 10 the Bulldogs went to Phildaelphia to play the Frankford Yellow Jackets when were now coached by an old friend, Guy Chamberlin. Chamberlin took his great play and strategy that had won two titles in Canton and one in Cleveland to help the Jackets knock off the Dogs 12-7. The very next day they fell to another strong Eastern Pennsylvania eleven the Pottsville Maroons by the score of 28-0.

Licking their wounds from the road games the Canton squad then faces another tough customer when the Akron Pros whipped them 20 to 3 at home on October 18.   They took a few weeks off to recover and get ready for a bit of a grudge rivalry with the Cleveland Bulldogs. In this contest on November 8, Canton played great defense and won the game 6-0.  They then followed that up with another victory on November 22 blanking the Columbus Tigers 6-0.

That was a pretty popular score as the team closed out their season in Cleveland in a rematch from a few weeks earlier on December 6 for a final score of Canton Bulldogs 0 to the Cleveland Bulldogs 6. The record stood at 4-4, finishing in a somwhat disappointing 11th place in the NFL standings.

The 1926 season saw the Bulldogs of Canton return to the NFL, but it things got worse for the franchise. After a dismal record of  1–9–3 in 1926, under future Hall of Fame coach Pete Henry. One bright spot was a player named  Jack Sack played for the team. Before the 1927 season though, the League decided to purge itself of some of the weaker franchises to help the NFL survive financially. Twelve teams were jettisoned, including Canton and three other charter members of the APFA. Besides Canton the removed franchise teams were Kansas City Cowboys, Los Angeles Buccaneers, Detroit Panthers, Hartford Blues, Brooklyn Lions, Milwaukee Badgers, Akron Indians, Racine Tornadoes, Columbus Tigers, Hammond Pros, and the Louisville Colonels. As a result, the league dropped from 24 to 12 teams, and a majority of the remaining teams were centered around the East Coast instead of the Midwest.

This was the last of the Canton Bulldogs, but their heritage and memory were carried on when it was decided, because of the legacy of the team and fact that owners from all around pro football convened at a meeting in Canton in September of 1920, that the Pro Football Hall of Fame should be built and reside there as a testament to the vision.

As we have seen the Canton Athletic Club started so long ago from a rivalry with nearby Massillon and they thrived early and then suffered in scandal under the Blondy Wallace era, rose from the ashes with Jim Thorpe and Guy Chamberlin only to see transition of movement to Cleveland and eventually falling under the expansion and growth plans of the NFL, seeking financial viabilty.

The banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of Canton Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers Betting Scandal was the first major scandal in professional football. It refers to an allegation made by Massillon newspaper charging the Canton Bulldogs coach, Blondy Wallace, with throwing the 1906 Ohio League championship game against their rivial the Massillon Tigers. This is a photograph from that game.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites :

OhioHistoryCentral.org

Pro FootballHOF.com  

Stats-Crew.com