Staten Island Stapletons

Our continuing search and research of football history has landed us in the Big Apple for a look at the very interesting story of a pro football franchise named the Staten Island Stapletons.

Before the NFL existed, and even after that, there was a squad of fellas who loved to play football that called themselves the Staten Island Stapletons. According to a very well-done article in the PFRA’s Coffin Corner in 1985 by Joe Hogrogian titled THE STATEN ISLAND STAPLETONS, the team first took the field in 1915.

The gridiron eleven was the brainchild of a man named Dan Blaine, known as Stapleton by his peers, and a group of his compadres who just loved playing the game of football together. Headquartered on Staten Island, they had many other nearby teams to play from the other New York City Boroughs. They even figured out a way to make a couple of bucks, a reported $10 per man for each game, giving them the semi-pro status at the time.

Blaine was a top-notch halfback born in 1891. Per the Military-History.fandom.com website, Blaine played on the Stapes from 1915 through 1924, interrupted only in 1918 when he suspended his play due to serving in the US Armed forces during World War I. Upon returning home from the war, Mr. Blaine took over the sole ownership of the Stapleton team.

The Stapes had won several local area championships. Alas, at the age of 33, after the 1924 season, Blaine had to retire from playing, but this allowed him to focus more on the team's running rather than running with the ball. Blaine was a successful businessman outside of football as well. He owned several local restaurants that did very well financially, making Dan Blaine rich. Allegedly some of these profits were from the eateries he owned being speakeasies during the prohibition era. There were rumors of Blaine being a bootlegger, transporting the illegal booze to his and other establishments.

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A couple of seasons later, after a devastating 33-0 blanking at the hands of the Newark Bears, Blaine heard something from the victorious Newark players that set his team in a new direction. The Bears players had not been paid in weeks, and the talented bunch was disgruntled. The Newark organization was in deep financial trouble, so Blaine swooped in and hired most of the Bears’ roster to play for the Stapes. This infusion of talent took the Stapletons to a new level of play. One of these former Newark players was Doug Wykoff, a talented rookie halfback from Georgia Tech. Wykoff would become the passing leader of the franchise and eventually the coach.

The Stapletons won the Metro area gridiron title over all of the other independent teams and were the talk of the town. That was the case until Tim Mara established his New York Giants franchise, which overshadowed the Stape's successes. In 1927 Wykoff defected to the Giants, helping them win the NFL title. Mara's G-Men blanked Blaine's eleven twice that season in head-to-head non-league games by 19-0 and 18-0. Staten Island did have a bright moment in 1927 when they knocked off Ernie Nevers and the Duluth Eskimos 7-6.

Thus a rivalry with the New York Giants arose with the new competitive fervor. Dan somehow lured Wykoff back to the Stapes in 1928, and also landed some promising recruits from local colleges. The Stapleton team went 10-1-1 in 1928, slingshotting them to bigger and better things.  In 1929, the Staten Island Stapletons became an NFL franchise, replacing the New York Yankees franchise. The Stapes were in the National Football League for four seasons (1929-32), and according to Pro-Football-Reference sported a 14-22-9 overall record in the League.

The Great Depression had hurt attendance for Stapleton games and the rest of the NFL, and financially, it became a tad too much for Blain and company to handle. Before the 1933 season, which saw, for the first time in years, new franchises entering the NFL fray (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati), Dan Blaine asked the NFL brass if he could suspend operations for a season. This was granted, but the Staten Island Stapletons never did recover to renter the NFL.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: Newspapers.com, The PFRA Coffin Corner, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com.

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of a football crowd.