CANTON, Ohio — I’m as excited as anyone can be to watch the big throw down this weekend between Not-The-Browns and Also-Not-The-Browns, but regardless of who takes The Lombardi this season never forget that the league’s very FIRST team to win the Championship is from right here in Northeast Ohio.
Nope! Not The Browns. They wouldn’t officially join the NFL until 1950.
I’m talking about a little squad called the Akron Pros, the first ever World Champions of The NFL.
1920 was the inaugural season of the American Professional Football Association, renamed the National Football League in 1922, and The Akron Pros were among the original 14 flagship franchises alongside a bunch of other teams with awesome, old-timey football team names like:
- The Buffalo All-Americans
- The Columbus Panhandles
- The Dayton Triangles
- The Decatur Staleys (today’s Chicago Bears)
- The Hammond Pros (Come on guys. 14 teams and we have 2 “Pros”? Get it together, 1920 people)
- The Muncie Flyers
- The Rochester Jeffersons (someone make me this t-shirt)
- The Rock Island Independents
The Pros (Akron, not Hammond) Went undefeated in their first season, thanks largely to star running back Fritz Pollard who was, get this, the NFL’s first African-American player. The was more than 20 years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier!
They went undefeated that year with 3 ties, finishing the season 8-0-3 and securing the league’s first title.
So the real question is…HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!
Football-crazed Northeast Ohio is home to the World’s First Champion and I’m just finding out about it now?
Humiliated by my ignorance, I sought out professional counsel from the Director of Archives & Football Information at the Pro Football Hall Of Fame Jon Kendle, and got quite the history lesson.
I'd recommend any football fan or history buff give our conversation a listen.
GO PROS!
More from Mike Polk Jr.