Cleveland Tigers

In this edition of our series on early professional football teams, we explore the story of the City of Cleveland's first NFL team, the Cleveland Tigers .

Professional football at it's highest level in Cleveland, Ohio did not start with Browns, no sir and it didn't begin with the Rams either. About two or three decades before these NFL teams there was the franchise of the Cleveland Tigers. A man named Jimmie O'Donnell started the team just after World War I in the year of 1919, as he wanted to get involved in the action that he could see other local communities doing of playing football in the mythical Ohio League. Akron, Canton, Massillon and even Columbus were fielding teams to play against each other as well as challengers from beyond their local area.

When a group of these team managers and owners gathered for a couple of meetings in the late summer of 1920 in nearby Canton, O'Donnell bought in by entering his teams into the newly formed APFA. Author Chris Willis in his great book The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr, says that only four of these franchises met in Ralph Hay's offices at the Hupmobile Showroom on August 20, 1920. Besides Hay and his Bulldogs players Jim Thorpe, Frank Neid and partner Art Ranney of the Akron Pros, Cleveland Indians manager Jimmie O'Donnell with Public Relations director Stanley Cofall and Carl Storck manager of the Triangles.

The Tigers franchise of Cleveland are quite often referred to as the Cleveland Indians to help give a tip of the hat to the baseball team that resided in the city. Often pro football teams would do this for name recognition so as to ride on the coat tails of the much more popular and well established pro baseball teams of the era. The Tigers were the first Cleveland franchise in the American Professional Football Association which after two years became the National Football League.

Jimmie O'Donnell, also the owner of a semipro baseball team called the Tigers. O'Donnell along with his partner Stan Cofall, a former Eastern Ohio high school football star, also playing at Notre Dame  from 1914 to 1916, and professionally with the Massillon Tigers. Besides attending the Canton meeting to organize pro football during the first half of the 1920 season, Cofall was the Tigers' player/coach; he was also elected vice-president of the new league.

The Cleveland Tigers inaugural season was not pretty. The team scored only 2 touchdowns and lost 3 games by 7-0 scores, compiling a record of 1-4-2. In 1921 the Tigers decided to load up with some talent. Two future Hall of Famers joined the Tigers roster; Joe Guyon and player/coach Jim Thorpe. The team won its first 2 games, but in the second game Thorpe injured his ribs and was lost for the season. Though still competitve without their star player, the Tigers lost the next 4 games by the narrowest of margins. When Thorpe returned to action in a postseason game against the Giants in December, the Tigers returned to their winning ways.

Financial woes were evident in the organization though with the increased salary base of adding Thorpe and Guyon. In early in 1922, O'Donnell received league permission to suspend operations for a year, but when he was unable to post the $1,000 annual guarantee the NFL required, his franchise was canceled. The franchise was later purchased by Samuel Deutsch, who operated the team as the Cleveland Indians in 1923. That same year the NFL champion Canton Bulldogs lost money, and Deutsch purchased the team for $1,500 from a group of Canton businessmen. Deutsch later brought the Bulldogs to Cleveland in 1924 and merged them with his Indians team. These Cleveland Bulldogs won the NFL title that year with a 7-1-1 record. A third, unrelated Indians team also played in the NFL in 1931.

The picture in the banner above is from the Wikimedia Commons collection and is titled "Football", a 1912 painting in pastels by George Bellows. On display at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Tim Evanson from Cleveland Heights, Ohio shared the photo.