Football History Rewind Part 73

Our year-by-year look at the history of American football takes us to the 1933 NFLl season. We dive into the top teams, and rules revisions of that season and find out who the Champion was as determined by the experts.

In 1932, we remember that the NFL was down to its lowest number of teams in League history, with just eight. Some things were stirring for growth in 1933, though.
The 1932 Title game and the close race excited the NFL so much that the League decided to make the post-season championship game a regular ending to crown a champ. To make things easier, they split the franchises into an East and West Division and have the winner of each vie for the title.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had promised to abolish a long-standing Blue Law of not having professional sporting games on Sundays. The law made it difficult for NFL to play their games in the Keystone State, just like former franchises Frankford and Pottsville. Bert Bell and his wife Francis Upton had bought the now-defunct Yellow Jackets franchise and rebranded it to the Philadelphia Eagles. On the other side of the Commonwealth, a sporting man named Art Rooney purchased the rights to start up his own eleven and call them the Pittsburgh Pirates, after the City's successful baseball team. The Boston Braves rebranded themselves as the Boston Redskins. The Town of Cincinnati joined the fray with the Reds. Unfortunately, the Staten Island Stapletons ended up leaving the NFL even though they still scheduled games against the member franchises.

The biggest NFL Football rule revision for the 1933 season was that the NFL had its own rules! Well sort of. From the start of the American Professional Football Association, the predeceeding name of the National Football League, through the 1932 season, the NFL used the NCAA Rules. The 1933 season was a point where Pro Football was starting a trend of setting out on their own (at last atempting to do so), to get out of the shadow of College Football.

Here are the 1933 Rules amendments that the NFL adopted different from the NCAA Football Rules of the same year.

1. Moving of the Goal posts from the end line to the goal lines. This is wherre they were prior to the 1927 Revision in College Football. They did this to try and promote scoring via field goals to reduce the number of ties in the offensively stagnate scoring of the League.
2. Add inbounds lines, hashmarks at ten yards off of each side line for the ball to be spotted at, keeping it in the middle of the field for the start of each play. This was very similar to the only College Rule Revision of 1933 that we talked about in Part 72.
3. It would be a touchback when a punt hit the opponent's goal posts before being touched by a player of either team.
4. It would be a safety if a ball that is kicked behind the goal line hits the goal posts, and rolls back out of the end zone or is recovered by the kicking team.
5. A legal forward pass could be thrown from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. The 1932 Impromptu Championship game Nagurski and Grange play created such a stor that they got rid of the "at least five hards behind the line " rule.

The season came down to two teams dominating the NFL in 1933. Fortunately, there was one in each Division. The New York Giants finished with an 11-3 record to win the East, while the Chicago Bears sported a 10-2 record to win the West. Ties in League Games were not counted in the standings, and the season culminated n the first-ever NFL Championship Game as the Bears defeated New York at Wrigley Field in a thriller on December 17 by the score of 23-21.

Here are some associated stories that you might find interesting. They tell another similar portion of NFL history to complimnet the one you on about 1933.

How the Washington NFL Franchise Originated

The story of George Preston Marshall and a Boston franchise in the NFL that would make history.

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Art Rooney Sr ‣ Steelers Origin

The story of Art Rooney Sr. is synonymous with the origin and early history of the franchise he founded, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Steelers origin story

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We thank all of the sources including Tip Top 25, Pro Football reference, Wikimedia Commons, and Newspapers.com for supplying us information and images to help tell this story.