Chicago Tigers

Who were the Chicago Tigers football team, and why are they considered one of the original NFL teams? We may have your answers to these questions as we try and preserve pro football history in our story of the Chicago Tigers football team.

Considered one of the original 14 teams in the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1920 was the Chicago Tigers organization. They were a one year and done franchise and so there is not a lot of information on them, heck many folks don't even realize they ever existed in what would become the NFL.

The Tigers team was not formally a member of the American Professional Football Association, however the Tigers played enough games against APFA member teams in 1920 that they're generally included in the league standings. So it is basically a guilty by association type of entry into the League annals, but their interaction helps to spell out early National Football League history.

The Tigers’ owner was a man named Guil Falcon, who also played and acted as their coach and general manager. Falcon spent a total of six seasons, from 1920 to 1925, in the National Football League with the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Hammond Pros, Rochester Jeffersons and the Toledo Maroons. Guil also served a player-coach during his time with the Maroons much like he did with his Tigers team in 1920.

Chicago Tigers 30 Oct 1920, Sat The Dispatch (Moline, Illinois) Newspapers.com

Let's face it they were in a competitive market in the Windy City. The Racine Cardinals were in place in the City but others such as the Decatur Staleys and Hammond Pros who were in the area as well. We know the following season the Staleys would play in Chicago, and in 1922 become the Chicago Bears. The Tigers team was the first football program at the professional level to play Cub's Park, which would later become Wrigley Field. Legend has it that Chris O'Brien, owner of the Chicago Cardinals, felt there was room in Chicago for only one pro football team, so he challenged the Tigers to a game. The winner would remain and the loser would need to leave town or fold. Our friend Joe Ziemba in his book When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of The NFL, doesn't imply this at all. Joe's research spells out a scene where O'Brien was unsure if his somewhat knee-jerk reaction to join the APFA was a good choice. That is however until the big crowd (estimated to be ten-thousand by the Chicago Heral Examiner) in the meeting of the Tigers and Cardinals in what the papers touted as the Chicago Title Game, otherwise changed the Cardinal owner's mind and as Joe says "persuaded him to completely submerge himself in Pro Football."

The Cardinals won that tilt on November 7, in a close one by the score of 6-3. The Tigers scored first on a 27 yard drop kick. Paddy Driscoll scored the game’s only touchdown on a 40-yard run to put the Cardinals up. Eventually the Tigers eleven disbanded, becoming the first NFL/APFA team to fold, but they first played two more games against APFA members after losing to the Cardinals. 

A theory posed by the website American Football Fandom suggests that George Halas wanted to move the Decatur Staleys to Chicago however with the town crowded by the competition of the Tigers and the Cardinals, it would be an uphill climb. Thus, he may have challenged Guil Falcon to the same winner-take-all duel, which would take place on Thanksgiving. This game would determine who would share the league franchise rights to the city with the Cardinals. The Staleys won, the slugfest by the score of 6-0 and the Tigers dropped out of the league soon afterward. The final game of the Tigers was a game against the independent Thorn Tornadoes.

Against APFA opponents the Tigers were 1-5-1, their lone victory a 12-0 shutout of the Detroit Heralds. Little is recorded about the franchise's players but we do know according to the book Pro Football in the Days of Rockne, the Tigers main offensive weapon was its passing game. The archive refers to the passes thrown by Johnny Barrett and Milt Ghee to Jack Meagher and Oscar Knopp.

Little is written in newspapers if at all in the days leading up to the game against Thorn. Could that have been the other win recorded in their final record? Who did they tie in the APFA? These questions may be lost to time. If you have any other information on the Chicago Tigers please send it to us at PigskinDispatch@gmail.com and we will certainly record it.

The banner photo is courtesy of Newspapers.com from the Moline Dispatch October 30, 1920 edition of the 1920 Chicago Tigers.

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