By Darin Hayes Who was the most dominant team in Pro Football history? The popular choices range from the 1972 Miami Dolphins and the 1948 Cleveland Browns, both undefeated champions of their respective leagues. Other selections might be Lombardi’s Packers or even the ‘85 Chicago Bears. All of these are excellent candidates, but what if there was a team in mainstream professional football that excelled beyond any of those mentioned above?
The 1903 Franklin All-Stars got closer to a perfect season in American football than anyone else in the sport’s professional history. A young merchant constructed the team in revenge for gambling losses and went undefeated, unscored upon, with opponents crossing the midfield stripe
only twice and had an offense more productive than the famed collegiate point-a-minute teams.
This book tells the story of a wealthy Pennsylvania town and the legendary mercenary players who carried out the mission to make Franklin the World’s Greatest Gridiron Team. It contains bonus links to additional audio content from Football Historians Ken Crippen, Joe Ziemba, and Timothy Brown.
eBook version is out now. The Paperback version is Available November 18, 2023,
on PigskinDispatch.com and Amazon.com.
Darin Hayes, a lifelong resident of Western Pennsylvania, has been interested in football and its rich history. Hayes took this passion from playing the game as a youth to officiating it at the high school level for over a quarter-century.
Later, he turned this energy into the Pigskin Dispatch website, podcast, and other sports history-related projects. Hayes has interviewed hundreds of sports history authors on his podcast and now takes his turn at non-fiction Gridiron history with the release of:
The World’s Greatest Pro Gridiron Team: The 1903 Franklin All-Stars.