Before we get into today's quest, I wanted to acknowledge something interesting from the last one. When I wrote about the Bryden Horse Shoe Works in my native Catasauqua, I mentioned that there are six PHMC markers in the borough - and this is, at present, accurate. However, both Karen Galle of the PHMC and borough resident Ben Ferenchak reached out to let me know about the seventh marker, which was news to me. The Davies and Thomas Company has been approved for a marker, but it hasn't been installed yet due to the road construction which has been going on for some time. Hopefully that project will be wrapped up sometime this year and I'll be able to attend the marker dedication ceremony. Thank you, Karen and Ben!
Meanwhile, today we're going to be looking at a subject that doesn't usually interest me: football. After all, this is Super Bowl weekend coming up! Sure, I cheered as much as anybody else when the Eagles won the 2016 Super Bowl, because I live in Eagles Country after all; but I'm really not a big sports enthusiast as a general rule, although I did spend my final two years of high school as a member of the varsity football team. (No, really, I did. I was the equipment manager.) However, today's story is one that I find pretty intriguing despite my usual apathy for the topic, because the controversy has endured for nearly a century. Who really won the NFL championship of 1925?
Meanwhile, today we're going to be looking at a subject that doesn't usually interest me: football. After all, this is Super Bowl weekend coming up! Sure, I cheered as much as anybody else when the Eagles won the 2016 Super Bowl, because I live in Eagles Country after all; but I'm really not a big sports enthusiast as a general rule, although I did spend my final two years of high school as a member of the varsity football team. (No, really, I did. I was the equipment manager.) However, today's story is one that I find pretty intriguing despite my usual apathy for the topic, because the controversy has endured for nearly a century. Who really won the NFL championship of 1925?
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| The marker is located just outside the Schuylkill County Historical Society building at 305 N. Centre Street, Pottsville |
Well, depending on who you ask, the answer should be the Pottsville Maroons.
They started in 1920 as the Pottsville Eleven, a group chiefly comprised of members of the Yorkville Hose Company of firemen. In those days they weren't part of a league, merely playing against other local teams in the coal region; within a few years they had added a few professional players, thanks to their sponsorship by area businessmen, but they were still mostly just Pottsville guys having fun. By that point they were known as the Pennsylvania Miners. Then, in 1924, local surgeon John G. "Doc" Striegel purchased the team for $1,500, and the Pottsville football circuit began to get a little more serious.
Schuylkill County apocrypha states that Joe Zacko, a local sporting goods supplier, was given the order for new jerseys for the team, and was told that the color didn't matter. He responded with twenty-five jerseys in a deep shade of maroon. Whether that's true or not, they definitely did wear maroon jerseys and from that point forward, they were known as the Pottsville Maroons. They became one of the five teams in the newly-formed and short-lived Anthracite League, playing against the Gilberton Cadamounts, the Coaldale Big Green, the Shenandoah Yellow Jackets, and the Wilkes-Barre Barons.
The Anthracite League is an interesting bit of history in its own right. It was inspired by the fledgling NFL, but its real purpose was to stop the various independent teams from stealing each other's players. It also allowed the teams to set up a more cohesive schedule for games. The league barely lasted for the entire 1924 season, owing to disagreements between the team owners; but one thing which is observable from the records is that the Pottsville Maroons were the stars, boasting twelve wins. Three of the other teams won four games apiece, and the Wilkes-Barre Barons mysteriously seem to have vanished from history - they lost one game to the Maroons, who beat them 34-0, and no records exist of any other games they played in the league. The Maroons were named the league's first (and only) champions, and the league afterward collapsed entirely.
The following year, Doc Striegel paid the money to put the Maroons in the NFL. From what I've found, he was a pretty good team owner - he paid his players very well, to the point that they earned more in a week than most of the people who attended their games earned in a month. Home games were held in Minersville Park, a high school stadium in nearby Minersville, which was situated on what is now Route 901 where Kings Village Plaza shopping center now stands, and people would turn up in their Sunday best to root for the home team.
By December 1925, the Maroons had an impressive 9-2 record; the Chicago Cardinals, whose record was 9-1-1, were just barely ahead of them in the rankings. The two teams played each other on December 6th, and Cardinals manager Chris O'Brien - with help from the Chicago Tribune - promoted the event as something of a world championship. The Super Bowl didn't exist at that time, but the game was compared to a football version of the World Series, which did. The Maroons took the victory, and spent the next few years wearing jackets identifying them as "World Champions 1925." Everything seemed to be coming up Pottsville.
And then came the controversy.
It was actually something of a double controversy, really, because both teams did something they shouldn't have. The Cardinals scheduled a post-season game against the Milwaukee Badgers, but because the Badgers had already disbanded for the season, they couldn't pull together their full team. So the Cardinals got some high school players to join the Badgers, which was a big no-no. The Maroons, however, scheduled a game against all-star players from Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, including the legendary "Four Horsemen."
(I had no idea what that meant and had to look it up. For those of you in the same boat, these were four of Knute Rockne's best players - Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. During their time with Notre Dame, the team lost only two games, and they were given the nickname as a sort of tie-in to the recently released film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Wikipedia has more info.)
The game itself was not the problem. There was nothing in the rules that said a pro team couldn't face a college team; in fact, the Frankford Yellow Jackets had been expecting that they would be doing just that. But when the Maroons pulled ahead of the Yellow Jackets in the NFL standings, they won the rights to play the All-Stars. The problem came in when Doc Striegel arranged for the game to take place not at Minersville Park, which could only hold around five or six thousand fans, but at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Yellow Jackets put in a complaint with the NFL, because this was encroaching on their designated territory. The NFL agreed with the complaint and warned Doc Striegel that playing in Philadelphia would result in the Maroons being suspended. Doc went ahead with the game, later insisting that he had received permission over the phone from the NFL to do so. Whether or not that was true has never been resolved.
The good news for Pottsville: the team won the game, 9-7. The bad news: the NFL commissioner, Joseph Carr, made good on his threat and suspended them from the NFL. The Cardinals were also sanctioned for stuffing the Badgers with high school students, but they weren't suspended, and with the Maroons out of the running they officially had the best record of the 1925 season. Thus, they were awarded the championship; however, their manager Chris O'Brien declined to actually accept it. So the answer to the question at the beginning of this post is, in a way, nobody.
There are those who claim, even today, that Pottsville was robbed. Even Red Grange, arguably the most famous of the Chicago Bears and later Hall of Famer, took that view. He was quoted once as saying, "You know, I always believed the Maroons won the NFL championship in 1925... but were robbed of the honor."
A few things are certain; the rest is speculation, legend, and debate.
The Cardinals continued to refuse to claim the title until 1933, when their new owner, Charles Bidwill, decided to do so. His descendants still own the Cardinals, which later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, and are now in Arizona. It's also true that the Cardinals have won only one NFL championship since that time, in 1947, and there are those who believe this points to some kind of curse on the team for their disputed victory.
As for the Maroons, they were reinstated to the NFL in 1926. Red Grange and his manager, being denied a team in New York City because it would infringe on the territory of the Giants, had started the American Football League. The NFL, uneasy about the existence of the AFL, made a number of quick changes and reinstated the Maroons out of fear that they might defect in retaliation. Unfortunately, the team continued to have problems; it boasted an excellent 1926 season, placing third in the rankings, but had financial troubles near the end of the season. Reports surfaced of a strike among the players.
The 1927 season saw their performance start to wane, due to some of the team's star players retiring from the game. Doc Striegel relinquished control of the team for the 1928 season, but it was their worst one. 1928 was the last year the Maroons were in Pottsville; all of the players received commemorative anthracite coal football charms. Doc sold the team to a New England franchise, and the Maroons were relocated to Boston, where they were renamed the Bulldogs. They didn't last, nor did the two teams which followed them, the Redskins and the Yanks; Boston would never have a successful NFL team. They did eventually get a good thing going in the AFL, though, with the rise of the Patriots in the 1970s.
As a footnote to the whole thing, a few efforts have been made to put an end to the controversy surrounding the 1925 title. In 1963, it was put to a vote at a meeting of team owners, who voted 12-2 to keep the title with the Cardinals. That same year, the remaining Maroons carved a trophy for themselves out of anthracite coal, which is still displayed today in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another attempt was made to revisit the subject in 2003, this time with Pennsylvania's then-Governor Ed Rendell taking up the cause. It was again put to a vote among the NFL team owners, though of course the Cardinals' owner lobbied hard to keep the title, and it again lost, this time by a disheartening 30-2.
(The two teams whose owners voted to give the title to the Maroons? The Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers.)
You'll have to decide for yourself if you believe that the 1925 title belongs to the Cardinals, the Maroons, both, or neither. But if you should ever find yourself in Pottsville, rest assured that 95 years after the fact, the Maroons are still considered champions by their hometown.
Sources and Further Reading:
Fleming, David. "Marooned in Arizona." ESPN.com, date not given. Includes a photograph of the Maroons team from 1925.
Fleming, David. Breaker Boys: The NFL's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2007.
Toland, Bill. "In Pottsville, Maroons are still champs." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 16, 2003.
City of Pottsville official website
The Schuylkill County Historical Society
The Pottsville Maroons at the Historical Marker Database
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
They started in 1920 as the Pottsville Eleven, a group chiefly comprised of members of the Yorkville Hose Company of firemen. In those days they weren't part of a league, merely playing against other local teams in the coal region; within a few years they had added a few professional players, thanks to their sponsorship by area businessmen, but they were still mostly just Pottsville guys having fun. By that point they were known as the Pennsylvania Miners. Then, in 1924, local surgeon John G. "Doc" Striegel purchased the team for $1,500, and the Pottsville football circuit began to get a little more serious.
Schuylkill County apocrypha states that Joe Zacko, a local sporting goods supplier, was given the order for new jerseys for the team, and was told that the color didn't matter. He responded with twenty-five jerseys in a deep shade of maroon. Whether that's true or not, they definitely did wear maroon jerseys and from that point forward, they were known as the Pottsville Maroons. They became one of the five teams in the newly-formed and short-lived Anthracite League, playing against the Gilberton Cadamounts, the Coaldale Big Green, the Shenandoah Yellow Jackets, and the Wilkes-Barre Barons.
The Anthracite League is an interesting bit of history in its own right. It was inspired by the fledgling NFL, but its real purpose was to stop the various independent teams from stealing each other's players. It also allowed the teams to set up a more cohesive schedule for games. The league barely lasted for the entire 1924 season, owing to disagreements between the team owners; but one thing which is observable from the records is that the Pottsville Maroons were the stars, boasting twelve wins. Three of the other teams won four games apiece, and the Wilkes-Barre Barons mysteriously seem to have vanished from history - they lost one game to the Maroons, who beat them 34-0, and no records exist of any other games they played in the league. The Maroons were named the league's first (and only) champions, and the league afterward collapsed entirely.
The following year, Doc Striegel paid the money to put the Maroons in the NFL. From what I've found, he was a pretty good team owner - he paid his players very well, to the point that they earned more in a week than most of the people who attended their games earned in a month. Home games were held in Minersville Park, a high school stadium in nearby Minersville, which was situated on what is now Route 901 where Kings Village Plaza shopping center now stands, and people would turn up in their Sunday best to root for the home team.
By December 1925, the Maroons had an impressive 9-2 record; the Chicago Cardinals, whose record was 9-1-1, were just barely ahead of them in the rankings. The two teams played each other on December 6th, and Cardinals manager Chris O'Brien - with help from the Chicago Tribune - promoted the event as something of a world championship. The Super Bowl didn't exist at that time, but the game was compared to a football version of the World Series, which did. The Maroons took the victory, and spent the next few years wearing jackets identifying them as "World Champions 1925." Everything seemed to be coming up Pottsville.
And then came the controversy.
It was actually something of a double controversy, really, because both teams did something they shouldn't have. The Cardinals scheduled a post-season game against the Milwaukee Badgers, but because the Badgers had already disbanded for the season, they couldn't pull together their full team. So the Cardinals got some high school players to join the Badgers, which was a big no-no. The Maroons, however, scheduled a game against all-star players from Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, including the legendary "Four Horsemen."
(I had no idea what that meant and had to look it up. For those of you in the same boat, these were four of Knute Rockne's best players - Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. During their time with Notre Dame, the team lost only two games, and they were given the nickname as a sort of tie-in to the recently released film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Wikipedia has more info.)
The game itself was not the problem. There was nothing in the rules that said a pro team couldn't face a college team; in fact, the Frankford Yellow Jackets had been expecting that they would be doing just that. But when the Maroons pulled ahead of the Yellow Jackets in the NFL standings, they won the rights to play the All-Stars. The problem came in when Doc Striegel arranged for the game to take place not at Minersville Park, which could only hold around five or six thousand fans, but at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Yellow Jackets put in a complaint with the NFL, because this was encroaching on their designated territory. The NFL agreed with the complaint and warned Doc Striegel that playing in Philadelphia would result in the Maroons being suspended. Doc went ahead with the game, later insisting that he had received permission over the phone from the NFL to do so. Whether or not that was true has never been resolved.
The good news for Pottsville: the team won the game, 9-7. The bad news: the NFL commissioner, Joseph Carr, made good on his threat and suspended them from the NFL. The Cardinals were also sanctioned for stuffing the Badgers with high school students, but they weren't suspended, and with the Maroons out of the running they officially had the best record of the 1925 season. Thus, they were awarded the championship; however, their manager Chris O'Brien declined to actually accept it. So the answer to the question at the beginning of this post is, in a way, nobody.
There are those who claim, even today, that Pottsville was robbed. Even Red Grange, arguably the most famous of the Chicago Bears and later Hall of Famer, took that view. He was quoted once as saying, "You know, I always believed the Maroons won the NFL championship in 1925... but were robbed of the honor."
A few things are certain; the rest is speculation, legend, and debate.
The Cardinals continued to refuse to claim the title until 1933, when their new owner, Charles Bidwill, decided to do so. His descendants still own the Cardinals, which later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, and are now in Arizona. It's also true that the Cardinals have won only one NFL championship since that time, in 1947, and there are those who believe this points to some kind of curse on the team for their disputed victory.
As for the Maroons, they were reinstated to the NFL in 1926. Red Grange and his manager, being denied a team in New York City because it would infringe on the territory of the Giants, had started the American Football League. The NFL, uneasy about the existence of the AFL, made a number of quick changes and reinstated the Maroons out of fear that they might defect in retaliation. Unfortunately, the team continued to have problems; it boasted an excellent 1926 season, placing third in the rankings, but had financial troubles near the end of the season. Reports surfaced of a strike among the players.
The 1927 season saw their performance start to wane, due to some of the team's star players retiring from the game. Doc Striegel relinquished control of the team for the 1928 season, but it was their worst one. 1928 was the last year the Maroons were in Pottsville; all of the players received commemorative anthracite coal football charms. Doc sold the team to a New England franchise, and the Maroons were relocated to Boston, where they were renamed the Bulldogs. They didn't last, nor did the two teams which followed them, the Redskins and the Yanks; Boston would never have a successful NFL team. They did eventually get a good thing going in the AFL, though, with the rise of the Patriots in the 1970s.
As a footnote to the whole thing, a few efforts have been made to put an end to the controversy surrounding the 1925 title. In 1963, it was put to a vote at a meeting of team owners, who voted 12-2 to keep the title with the Cardinals. That same year, the remaining Maroons carved a trophy for themselves out of anthracite coal, which is still displayed today in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another attempt was made to revisit the subject in 2003, this time with Pennsylvania's then-Governor Ed Rendell taking up the cause. It was again put to a vote among the NFL team owners, though of course the Cardinals' owner lobbied hard to keep the title, and it again lost, this time by a disheartening 30-2.
(The two teams whose owners voted to give the title to the Maroons? The Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers.)
You'll have to decide for yourself if you believe that the 1925 title belongs to the Cardinals, the Maroons, both, or neither. But if you should ever find yourself in Pottsville, rest assured that 95 years after the fact, the Maroons are still considered champions by their hometown.
Sources and Further Reading:
Fleming, David. "Marooned in Arizona." ESPN.com, date not given. Includes a photograph of the Maroons team from 1925.
Fleming, David. Breaker Boys: The NFL's Greatest Team and the Stolen 1925 Championship. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2007.
Toland, Bill. "In Pottsville, Maroons are still champs." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 16, 2003.
City of Pottsville official website
The Schuylkill County Historical Society
The Pottsville Maroons at the Historical Marker Database
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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