Professional Football Opportunity Comes for George Halas

Sporting Chance Press Book

The following passage is from Pillars of the NFL  by Patrick McCaskey, Copyright Sporting Chance Press.

Halas was recruited to work at Staley Starch Company in Decatur in a dual management-training and athletic-director position. Staley had baseball, basketball, and football teams. Halas sharpened his sports management skills by running the Staleys football team. 

Scheduling games among unaffiliated teams was difficult; Halas sensed an opportunity to organize the teams that had been playing together to form a league. He sent a letter expressing such an interest to Ralph Hay of Canton, Ohio. Hay was working to improve the organization of Ohio teams. In many ways, Canton was the fertile crescent of pro football. 

Hay’s Canton Bulldogs had the 1912 Olympic Athlete Jim Thorpe as its player-coach at the time. Hay invited interested parties to Canton, where they outlined the basic league structure. On paper, the Staleys and 10 other teams pitched in $100 each and made up the new American Professional Football Association that would come to be called the National Football League in 1922. Halas said later that none of those at the meeting actually had $100 so the fee was never collected.

Like early professional baseball, professional football would be a precarious business investment. Popularizing professional Pillars of the NFL football was difficult because many Americans thought that college football was the highest form of the game and they believed professional football was a poor imitation of the sport that could have a corrupting influence. Halas’s Players Halas had seen many of the top players in action himself. He also traveled to  see others in whom he was interested. As professional football developed, Halas continued to look out for good recruits. He was drawn to tough competitive men who played aggressively.

Copyright Sporting Chance Press