During the height of the Great Depression, a group named Professional Sports Enterprises, Inc., a subsidiary of the local American Legion, hired a promotional expert as their manager named Harry Myers and handed him an astounding $10,000 to field the best team money that could buy. In 1936, Myers and others from LA attended the NFL meetings to set up exhibitions with NFL teams in the hopes of possibly earning franchise status. The Bulldogs were granted a probationary franchise by the league, and a handful of League teams made the long train ride to LA to play exhibitions against them. Myers went out and hired a top-notch coach to head the organization, Elmer "Gus" Henderson, from the University of Tulsa. Henderson not only previously coached Tulsa to prominence but earlier led the teams from USC. His offense featured and ran an early spread offense formation with both the Trojans and Tulsa. Then, the two leaders of the 'Dogs set about assembling enough quality players to make the team.
They signed some good players, too. Lineman Ray Richards, a former member of the Champion Chicago Bears, Ike Frankian, and End, who played for the New York Giants, were early key men who filled the roster. More veteran gridders like running backs Roy Berry, Ed "Crazy Leg" Stark, Frank Greene, and Hal Wickersham were inked, and even a former Tulsa lineman, Homer Reynolds, who played in Henderson's system, joined the fray.
Where the team nickname came from a contest in one of the local papers and the venerable Bulldog icon was selected. They played their home games both at Gilmore Stadium and at another LA field called Wrigley Field, that is not to be confused with the storied ballpark in Chicago.
The Bulldogs played as an independent in some seasons but were also members of the original version of the American Football League and later the Pacific Leagues, both of which were depleted by the growing popularity of the NFL.
The Bulldogs played and competed well against the NFL teams knocking off the Philadelphia Eagles, the Pittsburgh Pirates, Rock Island Tigers and even the Chicago Cardinals. They also had close losses to the Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Their local rivals throughout the years were the Hollywood Stars, the Salinas Packers and the Hollywood Bears.
For the 1937 season, the Bulldogs had won all of their scheduled 16 games without losing any. The LA team scored 345 points to their opponents' 116. Clearly, they were the best team in the country outside the NFL, and who knows, they could have been better than some of those franchises, too. But how could they prove it? As members of an outlaw league, they couldn't get games with NFL teams, according to a PFRA Coffin Corner article in the publication's 1984 Number 5 written and researched by Bob Gill. The Bulldogs' problems were solved to an extent in early 1938, when the AFL folded, undoubtedly in part because the Los Angeles team had destroyed the teams in their league and area and directly led to the group's demise. So the Bulldogs were champions without a league. Rich Shmelter claims that this team, along with the NFL's 1972 Dolphins and the AAFC's 1948 Cleveland Browns teams, were the only undefeated teams to win their leagues in pro football history.
I encourage you to read more about the Los Angeles Bulldogs history in the PFRA Coffin Corner article in the publication's 1984 by Bob Gill and our podcast guest Rich Shmelter's upcoming currently untitled book about the Southern Cal professional football teams.
