Football History Rewind Part 42

If you are a fan of close finishes to championships, with top teams contending and maybe a little gamesmanship, twisting of the rules, and some underhanded controversy then the 1921 season will be of interest to you!

The APFA 1st Post Season Meeting

As we eleuded to in the Football History Rewind Part 41, the American Professional Football Association met on April 30, 1921 in Akron, Ohio to handle some items of business after their first season. One such agenda piece was to award the Akron Pros, the team with the best record, the inaugural APFA Championship Title. Beised this the Association was reorganized, with Joe Carr of the Columbus Panhandles named as president. Remember that Jim Thorpe had been the president in year one and the group was years away from having a commissioner according to the ProFootballHOF.com. With Carr being named as the head the Association's headquarters was moved to Columbus, Ohio, and a league constitution and by-laws were drafted, giving teams territorial rights, restricting player movements, and developing membership criteria for the franchises. The league would play under the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Foot Ball Rules of 1921, and official standings were issued for the first time so that there would be a clear champion. Probably the most significant revisions to the by-laws were that only games played against fellow league teams would count toward the standings. This single change inspired two forms of growth and unity because it both encouraged outside independent teams (such as those from the Ohio League and the NYPFL) to join, but also caused those that did not join to fold within a few years, because NFL teams, particularly those competing for a championship, would be much less willing to play what were effectively exhibition games against teams that would not help them in the standings. More on the APFA in a moment...

Rules in 1921

According to the Spalding’s National Collegiate Athletic Association Foot Ball Rules (yes it was two separate words back then) for the 1921 season there were a list of revisions that would be instituted in the upcoming season.

The first item was that the Committee would no longer recommend but would “urge” that all players be numbered. Looking some of the old photographs provided with this article the reader can see how most plyers wore so specially identifying numbers to allow officials and fans alike to distinguish one player from another. This change was found at the end of Rule III but a rule right above it though not a change in 1921 is none-the-less very interesting.

Rule III -section 3 “No player having projecting nails or iron plates on his shoes or any other metallic or hard substance on his person shall be allowed in the game. If head protectors are worn (writer’s note: they were not yet called helmets), no sole leather, papier mache, or other hard or unyielding substance shall be used in their construction. All devices for protection must be arranged and padded as, in the judgement of the Umpire, to be without danger to other players. Leather cleats upon the shoes shall be allowed.”

That is all the rules that applied to mandatory equipment in 1921! I know that the materials technology was not invented yet but what do you suppose may have happened if a player in 1921 showed up to a game wearing a modern composite helmet with a face mask and a pair of vulcanized Nike cleats from our era? Per the letter of the rules the Umpire may deem that player’s equipment to be illegal! How far we have advanced in the last 86 years. The writer would assume that some player must have tried to play at one time or another with nails protruding from the bottom of their shoes! Thank the Lord that the Rules Committee disallowed this “flash of brilliance.”

The penalty clause for the pre-mentioned Rule III on equipment is “Suspension (assumed to be the violating player), unless the fault is corrected within two minutes.”  Wow! That is a pretty lax penalty. Does this mean our genius who hammered the penny-nails in the soles of shoes goes unpunished as long as he could change his foot wear in less than 120 seconds after getting caught?

1921  Rule III, section 2 

Moving backwards in the 1921 NCAA Foot Ball Rules (why would this crazy writer stay in sequence?) We find another very interesting written rule that would be quite foreign to our present rule on the topic of substitution.

“A player may be substituted for another at any time, but before engaging in play he must report to the Referee or Umpire.” The 1921 verbiage goes on to state, “An incoming substitute shall not communicate in any way with any of the other players upon the field until after the ball has been put in play.”

This means that the relay of information by substitutes in between plays was illegal! This is even re-emphasized by a note at the end of the rule that declares, “The Committee deprecates putting in of substitutes for the purpose of conveying information.” It is not verified but it is believed that coaches were still not allowed to yell, signal in or otherwise communicate plays to their teams either. The play calling generally fell upon the quarter-back (yes, once again it was spelled this way). The QB needed to be a very trusted and dependable player then and probably even more so than the modern position. In essence the coach did all of his work before the game and at halftime according to the rules.

There are many legendary tales though of how coaches cheated the system by some very clever means. Inconspicuous signals such as coughs, coaches body positioning and other interesting secret codes bypassed the intended rules. The Committee wish for the game and its strategy to be placed solely on the participants without outside interference was not always the what truly occurred.

The 1921 rules are very interesting indeed and we will look at more of them in the next installment of this series coming soon to your favorite website Pigskin Dispatch.

Collegiate Champions of 1921

The 1921 college football season had no clear-cut champion. Officially the NCAA Division I Football Records Book lists that the California Golden Bears, Cornell Big Red, Iowa Hawkeyes, Lafayette Leopards, Washington & Jefferson Presidents, and Vanderbilt Commodores all share the 1921 title. Only California, Cornell, Iowa, and Lafayette claim national championships for the 1921 season.

It should be duly noted that California and Washington & Jefferson met in the 1922 Rose Bowl. That contest was a hard fought a scoreless tie, so it did not help settle anything. That game was also the last Rose Bowl to be played at Tournament Park. More Rose Bowl history was made too as Washington & Jefferson is the smallest school to ever play in a Rose Bowl.

The 1921 APFA season

There was some controversy in sore for the American Professional Football Association. The dilemma was that according to rule, the league champion would be the team with the best record. Well what do you do in the case of a tie? The Chicago Staleys finished with a 9-1-1 record while the Buffalo All-Americans finished with an almost identical 9-1-2 mark. It wasn't quite like that to many experts, especially in the Buffalo area.

The Championship controversy on 1921 became known among some sports historians as the Staley Swindle. The ever clever and coniving George Halas evidently talked the All-Americans into playing an exhibition game on December 4, 1921.  Buffalo had finished the season with a 9-0-2 record, meanwhile Chicago captured second-place with their only loss coming against Buffalo on Thanksgiving.  From the All-Americans point of view, Buffalo owner, Frank McNeil, had already scheduled the team's last game for December 3 against the Akron Pros. Win or lose against Akron, McNeil figured they had the advantage over the Staleys due to the Turkey Day head to head victory over them.

The Staleys had refused to play any road games that season. The made an exception for the Thanksgiving game tilt against the then-undefeated All-Americans, who also had played all of their games at home. Staleys owner/player/coach, George Halas then challenged the All-Americans to a rematch.  McNeil agreed to play this one last contest on the condition that it be considered only a "post-season exhibition match" and not be counted in the standings. McNeil also made a point of telling the Buffalo media that the game was an exhibition and would have no bearing on the team's claim to the AFPA title.  He even said to the press that the Akron game should be an exhibition as well. The second Buffalo vs. Chicago game was scheduled the day after the All-American team's final game against Akron. Therefore after a game, scheduled for December 3 against the tough Akron Pros, McNeil's team would take an all-night train to Chicago to play the Staleys the next day. Tired from playing two days in a row and traveling all night via rail to the Windy City the Staleys outlasted the Al-Americans 10-7 to win the rematch. McNeil believing his team was the AFPA's 1921 champion, invested in tiny golden coated footballs for his players to commemorate milestone. Even with the loss, should it have counted, Buffalo would still have won the league title. Buffalo was still 9-1-2, and Chicago was at the time still 8-1, The Staleys were a half-game behind Buffalo in the standings because the All-Americans played more games in the season. 

Crafty George Halas saw a loophole opportunity, and quickly scheduled two additional, previously unscheduled games in December. One against the Canton Bulldogs, and the other against their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cardinals. Should the Staleys win both, that would have propelled Chicago to 10-1 record int he League standings, a half-game ahead of Buffalo and assuring the team of the championship. The Staleys defeated Canton, 10-0, on December 11, but managed only to reach a scoreless tie with the Cardinals on December 18. Thus, the two teams were now tied at 9-1. An APFA rule did not allow ties to count in the official League standings at the time.

Halas declared publicly that the APFA League title belonged to Chicago and began a dastardly campaign to persuade the other owners in the league to give his Staleys the title. Halas based his claim for the championship on his belief that the second game of the Buffalo-Chicago series mattered more than the first. The Staley boss also contended that the aggregate score of the two games was 16-14 in favor of the Staleys. McNeil insisted that the Buffalo was the champions and maintained that the last two games his team played were merely exhibitions.

At the persuation of Halas a new APFA rule was established that a second game was worth more credit to a record thatn the first was. The Buffalo contention that the second meeting in Chicago was an exhibition was overturned and the Buffalo All-Americans unintentionally surrendered the 1921 APFA Championship title to the Chicago Staleys. 

The banner photo is of Herb Davis, halfback for the 1921 St. Xavier football team with the original Photographer not identified.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, PrFootballHOF.com, Football Foundation.org, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com