Football Daily

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July 10, 1926 - Hartford Blues franchise is accepted into the NFL and survives only during the inaugural season in the League. According to the ConnecticutHistory.org website the Blues were the only NFL team to have called the State of Connecticut their home, that is except for the New York Giants who played at the New Haven Yale Bowl in 1973 and 1974 awaiting their new Meadowlands stadium to be completed. The Blues team actually started in Waterbury, Connecticut according to writer Andy Piaskic in the article. George Mulligan a local sports promoter started the Waterbury Blues in 1924 as an independent pro football team. Mulligan in 1926 moved the team to Hartford and paid the NFL entry fee and they became a member in the League. It was a rough year as they played against some great players including Ernie Nevers and Johnny Blood of Duluth, Guy Chamberlin of the Frankford Yellow Jackets, Harry Stuhldreher (one of the famed Four Horsemen of Notre Dame) who played for Brooklyn in 1926, Steve Owen of the Giants,  and Pete Henry of Canton. They were supposed to also face Jim Thorpe when playing against the Bulldogs but he was injured for that game and did not participate. The Blues only manage to finish the season with a 3-7 record despite playing all home games save two. The NFL in 1927 wanted to shed some of its numbers thus after a vote Hartford was dropped from its ranks.

uly 10, 1926 - The Brooklyn Lions franchise formed in the NFL. The article talks of Brooklyn Lions President and Manager Eddie Butler signing up players to his recently founded Lions team. The team was put together there with support from the League offices so as to counter the first AFL’s deployment of their team the Brooklyn Horsemen. According to Wikipedia in the months before the regular season began, both leagues battled with each other for fan support and the right to play at Ebbets Field. The NFL emerged as the winner, as the Lions signed the lease to use the stadium on July 20. On November 12, 1926, the Horsemen withdrew from the AFL and merged with Lions. The new team created by the merger was initially called the Brooklyn Lions and competed in the NFL from November 22, 1926. The team used the Horsemen name for the last three games of 1926 to finish the season. After three consecutive losses, the Lions/Horsemen disbanded their franchise.

July 9, 1933 - The Frankford Yellow Jackets are sold and renamed the Eagles as the franchise is moved to Philadelphia, according to our interview with the legendary Upton Bell on our February 25 bonus podcast in tribute to his father, former NFL Commissioner Bert Bell.

Upton shared that his father and mother, Broadway starlet Francis Upton, walked into a Philadelphia bankruptcy courtroom and walked out owning the Yellow Jackets. Upton told us that since his father lost most of his wealth in the 1929 stock market crash, his new bride provided the funds to purchase the newly named team in the City of Brotherly Love. During a walk shortly there, they passed a sign advertising the purchase of U.S. Liberty Bonds, adorned with America's national bird. Bert Bell then looked at his new bride and said something to the effect, that is it! Our new team will be called the Eagles!

The Bells owned the Eagles until 1940 when the famous "Pennsylvania Polka" occurred. Bert Bell and Steelers owner Art Rooney did a series of transactions where, in the end, Rooney and Bell were co-owners of the Steelers. Alexis Thompson purchased the Eagles.

July 9, 1932 - Boston Braves/Redskins/ Washington Redskins franchise is granted by the NFL. A group headed by George Preston Marshall that included Vincent Bendix, Jay O'Brien and Dorland Doyle were given the remnants of the defunct Newark Tornadoes that folded at the end of the 1930 season according to the SportsTeamHistory.com website.

The professional rights of the franchise go further back than that even. According to Wikipedia, in 1929 Ole Haugsrud, the owner of Duluth Eskimos, sold his NFL franchise rights for the Eskimos to Piggy Simandl, a wholesale meat salesman and sports promoter from Orange, who named his franchise the Orange Tornadoes. The team struggled to a 3-5-4 record and then decided to move to Newark for a fresh start. The next season the team received more bad breaks as head coach Jack Depler left the team to buy the Dayton Triangles and promptly moved them to become the Brooklyn Dodgers, raiding many of his former players of the Tornadoes to fill his roster.

The Newark squad went through three different head coaches in 1930. Now back to the Boston group receiving the old Newark team remnants, well none of the Tornadoes team members ever joined the Braves that didn't start playing until a couple of seasons removed from the Jersey based twisters team. The team lost $46,000 in revenue of that first season hence all of his partners bailed on the team leaving Marshall as the sole owner.

George was a larger than life showman, who thrived on attention. The group  originally named the team after the Boston Braves baseball team that played there but after very little support Marshall knew he had to change things up a bit. Prior to the 1933 season the nickname was changed to the Redskins to give his team their own identity. The team had limited success in Boston, and didn’t get much support from the community. The lack of support by both the fans and the media really came to a head when Marshall noticed that a local field hockey team was getting more press coverage than his beloved Redskins. This infuriated Marshall so a change of surroundings seemed to be in order, and the move to the Nation’s Capital changed the course of the franchise as they were crowned the NFL Champions in their inaugural year in DC. 

It is for good reasons that the NFL does not consider the Redskins to be a continuation of the Tornadoes, just as it does not consider the Tornadoes to be a continuation of the Duluth Eskimoes. Recently the Washington Football Team was rebranded as the Washington Commanders.