Increasing Awareness of Guy Chamberlin and His Contributions to Football

Guy Chamberlin won his NFL championships in the 1920s and he was also was a player-coach for championship teams that no longer exist: The Canton Bulldogs, the Cleveland Bulldogs, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets.  The NFL provides a tremendous amount of notoriety for players and coaches, but history is sometimes forgotten. And history for teams that don't exist today can be hard to find.

Chamberlin has a fan base in Nebraska where the University of Nebraska Chamberlin Award has been given out each year since his death.  At Sporting Chance Press we joined local efforts to work towards more "awareness" and we also published a great book on ten of the greatest coaches in NFL history: Pillars of the NFL: Coaches Who Have Won Three or More Championships. Chamberlin's grandson was a substantial help to us and he provided a few photographs. There were some hard-to-find newspapers stories and other sources that Rob helped point us toward. 

Folks back home at the Gage County Historical Society, the Wymore Library,  and now his home town, Blue Springs have worked to see Chamberlin recognized and remembered.  A monument in Chamberlin's honor was recently constructed and placed on ground near where the High School that Chamberlin attended once existed. 

A Facebook page was created for the monument and many posts were added especially back in 2014. We still have plenty of books in case anyone wants to buy them. Pillars of the NFL is a perfect way to preserve the legacy of Guy Chamberlin in the home and community.  His coverage in the book was certainly a labor of love by the author and many others who helped us along. 

Pillars of the NFL: A Superb HIstory

A Superb History of the NFL

The pillars of the NFL include George Halas, Guy Chamberlin, Curly Lambeau, Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Joe Gibbs, and Bill Belichick. These are the coaches who have won 3 or more NFL Championships and the subject of our book, Pillars of the NFL. We have connected with several families of the NFL pillars. Our book is written by Patrick McCaskey who is a Chicago Bears executive/owner and the grandson of Papa Bear George Halas. I don't want to drop names, but another grandson of another Pillar was presented with a copy of the book and then came back and ordered more. So I am happy about how the book was received by the families. 

Since we published the book in 2014, Bill Belichick just keeps on winning championships, but the Pillars remain the same. There is no  active coach who is close to joining the list. 

I am proud of the Pillars book because it provides a history of the NFL from the perspective of the lives of the best coaches and their teams. You might be a big NFL fan, but if you don't know anything about the history of the game, you are missing some information that you might find compelling. The beginning years of the game were rough. Football fans will likely find it fascinating in the same way baseball fans find interest in the early days of baseball. Some things are similar to today's game, many things are not, but the players, coaches, and owners had winning on their mind.  

As publisher, I spent a long, long time, working on Pillars. And it remains one of those books that I refer to often. Buy a copy, you won't be disappointed.