Early Western PA Pro Ball

In this edition we go through and review the significant early professional players and teams that called Western Pennsylvania their home.

Western Pennsylvania is no stranger to professional football, yes when people first hear that they immediately think of the modern obvious choice of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. That is true as they have been the dominant professional team of the last 80 some odd years, but pro football on the sunset side of the Keystone State has been around for 130 years. Heck paying players to play ball with the pigskin started here.

In this edition let’s go through and review the significant early professional players and teams that called WPA their home.

In the beginning…

William Walter “Pudge” Heffelfinger was born on December 20, 1867  in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His parents Christopher B. Heffelfinger and Mary Ellen Totton were born in Pennsylvania so the roots sort of start there, even though they were from York county which is closer to Philly than it is to the Western side of the Commonwealth. Heffelfinger's father went by riverboat to Minneapolis, eventually joining the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War. He was wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg, and after the war started the family shoe manufacturing business. During Heffelfinger's lifetime, the family rose to prominence in Minneapolis so much so that they could afford to give their children, including their son William a formal education.

Pudge as he was called since early childhood, played both baseball and football in high school. Occasionally, during his junior and senior years of high school, he also played for the University of Minnesota, as a catcher for the baseball squad, and a halfback for the Gopher football team. As he grew he became a pretty good-sized man of the time. The footballfoundation.org website bio describes Heffelfinger as being 6’-3” tall and weighing in at 195 pounds during his college-aged years. Originally the lad had planned further his education at the University of Minnesota, but in May of his senior year in high school, a local Yale alumnus who recognized his athletic talent convinced him to play for Yale instead. This Eli graduate tutored Pudge to the point where he could pass the challenging Yale entrance exam. On Heffelfinger's first day of freshman practice in 1888, the captain of the varsity team, "Pa" Corbin, spotted the menacing Frosh on the field and gave him a position on the varsity line. He was raw and his mid-western upbringing on the gridiron did not have him mean enough to thrive in the East’s bludgeoning style of play.

By the time the season of 1888 came around Yale finished with a stellar campaign of 13-0-0 while Harvard (12-1) and Princeton (11-1). Yale was in its first season under Head Coach Walter Camp and sported an unprecedented scoring advantage of 694-0! This dominant Eli eleven scored 126 touchdowns and kicked 69 goals from touchdown and eight goals from the field. Its roster included Pudge Heffelfinger, William Wurtenburg, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Lee McClung, Charles O. Gill, Frederic W. Kid Wallace, Pa Corbin, John A. Hartwell, and Ashbel Barney Newell. Yeah Pudge went on to play a few more years and was the best player on Yale and possibly in all of college football.

Fast forward to the early 1890s and Pudge was playing for the Chicago Athletic Association as an amateur who received the very common double expenses compensation. It was really not considered pay if an organization merely compensated the individual for what it cost them to live in the area plus a little more. In our time that is exactly what pay is but they made it just a bit grayer of an area back in that era. Meanwhile, in the Pittsburgh area neighborhood, sports clubs were forming in different locales and were challenging rival clubs in their area to play in competitive sporting events, including baseball and football. Soon wagering started on these games and as the pots grew, well so did the desire to gain advantages over opponents increase. On November 12, 1892 in what is now Pittsburgh, but a section that was called Allegheny City at the time, the very first professional football game took place. As Pudge Heffelfinger received $500 to become the first paid football player by the Allegheny Athletic Association. The AAA team in fact wins the game 4-0 over the Pittsburgh Athletic Club with great assistance from Heffelfinger. This was really somewhat of a hearsay secret until papers were uncovered over a hundred years later to prove the AAA paid Heffelfinger.

But we had reports of pay in the news for years

A few years later September 3, 1895, the very first openly paid player in a football game is played as quarterback John Brallier is paid $10 plus expenses to play for the Latrobe Athletic Association. Latrobe's starting quarterback Eddie Blair had a prior commitment to play in a baseball game, so his Latrobe club approached the 17-year-old Brallier, that was about to start school at Washington and Jefferson College to play in his place. Brallier was reluctant as he did not want to get injured before starting a promising college career, so Latrobe made it worth his while. The Latrobe team won 12-0 over the rival Jeanette Athletic Association and Brallier went on to have a great season at W&J, while also playing a few more games for Latrobe too. The next season after fielding offers from multiple colleges and clubs to play ball, he settled on playing for West Virginia University. After only a few games for the Mountaineers, he left the team due to what he described as "financial difficulties" of the school not taking care of players and returned to Latrobe to coach and quarterback the club.
The late 1890s and early 20th Century saw many professional teams sprout up, especially after the Allegheny Athletic Association in 1896 was made up entirely of paid players, making it the sport’s first-ever professional team.

Teams are paid

Before too long though the best pro team in 1900 was most definitely the Homestead Library team. We have talked before about how William Chase Temple took over the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club, becoming the first individual team owner in professional football in 1898. By 1900, most of the Duquesne C & AC players were hired by the Homestead Library & Athletic Club, by offering them higher wages than their previous employer would but that was because William Chase Temple, who also had a minority ownership stake in the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, took over the payroll of that squad. Temple paid his players a reported $50 to $100 per game and the results of this expense were clearly rewarded with the first of two undefeated seasons.

According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame's website, there was an NFL, decades before 1922 when the American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League. According to the timeline of ProFootballHOF.com in 1902:

Baseball's Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, and the Philadelphia Phillies joined the Pittsburgh Stars along with another New York state team, Watertown Red Blacks to form a professional football group, that they named the National Football League. After that season ended the brass at New York's Madison Square Garden organized a World Series of Football as part of its holiday season festivities.

Another World Series of Football was organized for 1903 but a new powerhouse paid team had emerged. In 1903 North of Pittsburgh two communities, Oil City and Franklin both of Western PA got into an escalating scandal for football supremacy over each other which resulted in the big money from Franklin going all-in and hiring every substantial player from not only the Pittsburgh area but from Philadelphia too. Their team was so stacked that they had trouble finding opposition but they did end up winning the 1903 Football WS.
Soon thereafter professional football started shifting one state west as Ohio became the hot seat for players wanting pay to go. Pennsylvania pro football was diminished to a handful of semi-pro teams and it pretty much stayed that way until 1933 when Pennsylvania voters overturned a blue law, by permitting sports to be played on Sundays. This was big news for both the new franchises of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Pirates, who would later be called the Steelers. The NFL awarded franchises to both cities earlier in 1933 based on the speculation that the voters would choose to repeal the Pennsylvania Sunday Blue Laws in that year's general election. 
And that is the abridged story of Pennsylvania’s early contributions to professional football.

The banner photo is from The book of school and college sports (1904). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons and taken by tan unknown.

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