Duluth Eskimos

In this edition of the Football History of Early Pro teams, we discuss the legendary accomplishments and contributions of the Duluth Eskimos.

It is hard for us to fathom in today's Billion Dollar juggernaut of the NFL to have franchise that had very few home games. Always a road team and the home fans hardly ever catching a glimpse of their gridiron heroes. Imagine that for a moment. We it happened in early football in a couple of instances but none may be more famous than that of the Duluth Eskimos franchise.

Inspired by a 2015  Professional Football Researchers Association article written by  Michael Moran in the organization's Coffin Corner Magazine, may I present the story of the pro team from Duluth, Minnesota.

The famous overcoats of the Duluth Eskimos on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio

The story of the franchise starts just after the American Professional Football Association changed their name to the National Football League. Two young football enthusiasts Dewey Scanlon and M. C. Gebert decided to put together a team of professionals to play in the town of Duluth, Minnesota. Scanlon was a former collegiate player at Valparaiso University in Indiana. His buddy Gebert was the owner of the popular Kelley-Duluth Hardware Store in town. Gebert felt that it would be great for business if his store sponsored the team so in an effort to get his store brand name out there to the public the team was initially founded as the Kelley Duluths. That was their offical name anyway when they joined the NFL in 1923, but the public rebranded to squad in the normal sequence of city first, and called them the Duluth Kelleys.

The Kelleys unfortunately had bad weather to contend with so their seasons were greatly shortened. They are northern most franchise ever in the NFL. In the inaugural year the team's record was 4-3 ranking them in 7th place of the NFL playing 3 games at home. In 1924 the team fared much better as they posted a 5-1, 4th place finish and put thier skills on display for the home crowd twice, one was the 6-3 victory over the Green Bay Packers.  The 1925 season was a disapponting 0-3 slate, falling twice at home. Gebert, not willing to suffer anymore financial woe pulled his sponsorship of the club. The ownership now was in question and it fell back to the League. One man stepped up though to save the day, a sports promoter from Wisconsin named Ole Haugsrud, who bought the struggling Duluth Kelleys from the NFL for a dollar.

Haugsrud had some good knowledge on how to run a sports orgainzation and he also had some great football connections.

Ole, embraced to cold weather tradition of Duluth and aptly rebranded his new club as the Duluth Eskimos. The logo was appropriately an igloo to reinforce the cold weather montra of the club.

We said Haugsrud had connections, well how about perhaps the greatest football player of the mid-1920s in Mr. Ernie Nevers from Stanford University! As our friend author and historian  Joe Ziemba points out in an article on the Sports History Network:

"..back in 1926, there was no NFL draft. Teams could identify key players of interest and then contact them with promises and hopes of playing time, and even a part-time job, that might be enough to convince the player to consider joining that particular club."

The traveling truck of Nevers on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio that I took a photo of in 2021

Nevers shared the backfield glory as an All-American at the same time with Red Grange. His coach at Stanford was Pop Warner, who we have talked about quite a bit here on Pigskin Dispatch lately. Warner claimed that Nevers was the greatest collegiate player of All-Time, and remember Pop coached Jim Thorpe earlier in his coaching career at Carlisle!

Nevers gained national attention on New Year's Day 1925 at the Rose Bowl. Ernie and his Cardinal teammates were matched against the powerful Notre Dame Fighting Irish squad that featured the 7 Mules, the Four Horsemen backfield and a legendary coach in Knute Rockne. Ernie’s performance was memorable and courageous as he was only five days removed from having a cast removed on a broken ankle, and with his foot bound tightly in a brace, Nevers dominated the game. Nevers established a Rose Bowl record with 34 carries as he gained 114 yards, only 13 less than the combined total for Notre Dame's legendary backfield. His brilliance in the contest did not stop there as Nevers averaged 42 yards punting as a bonus. Unfortunately for the Cardinal faithful, the Irish were just a bit too much as Stanford fell 27-10.

Yes Nevers was football royalty at the time and when Haugsrud talked him into playing in Duluth, it put the Eskimos as a must see team. Ole knew that he wouldn't draw the big crowds and gate in Duluth so he made the decision to barnstorm the NFL as a road team, much like the Bears had done the season earlier in showcasing Red Grange at the end of the 1925 season. 

After their home opening victory over the Kansas City Cowboys the Eskimos went on an unprecedented 29 games in four months traveling over 17,000 miles! Erin Swartz of the Minnesota Vikings explained years later in an interview on Fox9 Sports that:

“Everywhere they went, they were met by crowds. They wore these iconic mackinaw jackets. Train stations were lined with fans cheering for them everywhere they arrived, not just because of this great marketing, but they were good,”   

The Eskimos officially posted a record of 6-5-3 to count in the NFL standings as many of their games were of the exhibition variety. 

The marketing genius of Ole Haugsrud does not stop there as the team is credited as being the first to wear a logo, the first pro team to huddle before plays and they also held the first NFL training camp. Trends that caught on in the League and are commoonplace in today's game.  It is also said that the barnstorming of Ernie Nevers helped popularize the NFL brand of football and without it the League may have very well folded.

The season of 1928 though did not fare so well for the Eskimos though as they could put together only one win. Haugsrud had no choice but to lick his financial wounds and sell the franchise back to the NFL with the promise of the right to some ownership stake in any future League franchise in Minnesota.

The Chicago Bears and the Duluth Eskimos game on December 11, 1927 proved to be the last ever played by the Eskimos. It was a 14-27 loss, but the silver lining was that Bear's owner George Halas promised the visitors $4000 for traveling and playing in the Windy City. It doesn't appear that Halas made out on this deal even though his team won, as the Bears showed a loss of over $3000 for the season on their finacial ledgers.

The NFL went to work on selling the Duluth franchise after reaquiring it. They found their buyer in Edwin Simandl, a promoter in Orange, New Jersey who bought the now defunct franchise on July 27, 1929.  During the 1929 season Simadl used the club to promote his decades-old Orange Tornadoes to the big leagues of pro football. The NFL, however, did not consider the Tornadoes to be the successors of the Eskimos. The Tornadoes moved to Newark for the 1930 season before going back to the semi-pros.

Ole Haugsrud ended up passing on an ownership bid with the Minnesota Marines but in the 1960s he jumped on the chance to have a 10% stake in the Minnesota Vikings. What a wise choice that was!

Ernie Nevers ended up moving over to play for the Chicago Cardinals organization. To learn more about his career with the Red Birds franchise you need to follow the podcast and read the books by our friend and Cardinals hiostorian Joe Ziemba. Also special thanks to the Fox9.com, Mike Moran and the PFRA for the great work they all have done in preserving this great football story.