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RED GRANGE - THE PLAYER WHO MADE THE NFL

By Hugh Wyatt

I was interviewing George Halas and I asked him who is the greatest running back you ever saw. And he said, 'That would be Red Grange.' And I asked him if Grange was playing today, how many yards do you think he'd gain. And he said, 'About 750, maybe 800 yards.' And I said, 'Well, 800 yards is just okay.' He sat up in his chair and he said, 'Son, you must remember one thing. Red Grange is 75 years old.'          Chris Berman, ESPN


Pro football didn’t begin to make an impact on the big cities of the East - and capture the attention of its newspapers - until late in the 1925 season, when the most celebrated, most exciting college football player who had ever played was enticed to turn pro.

His name was Harold "Red" Grange, and the number he wore - 77 - was almost as famous as he was. His remarkable feats as a running back at the University of Illinois had earned him the nickname the “Galloping Ghost.”   In 1924, his junior year, 67,000 people - the largest crowd up to that point ever to watch a sporting event in the Midwest - celebrated the dedication of Illinois' new stadium, then watched in awe as Grange scored four touchdowns against Michigan on runs of 96, 65, 54 and 48 yards  - in the first quarter! 

Until   his senior season, though, the speedy and elusive Grange   had never been seen outside the Midwest.  In those days, long before jet planes, colleges rarely played outside their region, so most fans knew of Grange  only through newspaper accounts and the short, jerky black-and-white “newsreel”  highlights shown in movie theatres. 

But in 1925 the Fighting Illini travelled to Philadelphia to play Penn. Penn, now an Ivy-League school, was then a major eastern power and defending national champions (modern-day power Penn State was then considered by big city elitists as the state's Cow College). Skeptical eastern writers played up the game as Grange's first real test, implying that although he had been playing against the Midwest’s best, he hadn't yet faced real opposition. Seeing was believing, they wrote.  Now,  we would finally get to see how good this Grange really was.
 
Grange wasted no time showing them, stunning a huge Franklin Field crowd by dashing 55 yards for a touchdown on the opening play from scrimmage. Rushing for 363 yards in the Illini’s 24-2 win, he made believers of the eastern doubters. No longer was there any question - anywhere - about Grange’s greatness. Or about his ability to draw large crowds.

In that pre-television era, an age that worshipped its sports heroes, the only way to see a sports hero - other than in the newsreels  - was in person.  In the case of Grange, who had become a star of the same magnitude as contemporaries Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, it seemed obvious that even though his college career was at an end, countless people would still pay to see him play.

That fact hadn’t escaped the notice of an Illinois promoter named C.C. Pyle. (The C.C. would later only half jokingly be said to stand for "Cash and Carry")  As Grange’s college career drew to a close, Pyle, who owned a chain of movie theatres, persuaded Grange to allow him to act as his "personal manager." 

Long before the invention of the modern-day sports agent,  Red Grange had acquired one. Furthermore, it appears that Grange had committed what today is considered a cardinal sin – signing with an agent before his college eligibility had ended.)

With Grange under contract, Pyle then secretly negotiated a deal with the Chicago Bears.   It called for Grange to join the Bears immediately following his final college game. That way, he could play for them in the remainder of their games that season, instead of waiting for his class to graduate and joining them the following year, as was then the accepted practice. 

The plan was for Grange not only to play in the Bears' remaining 1925 regular season games, but then to accompany the team on a hastily-arranged post-season barnstorming tour designed to cash in on his fame and drawing power.  In return, the Bears would guarantee Grange $3,000 a game plus a percentage of the gate.

It seemed like a great deal all around. The Bears would get badly needed help at the gate, and Grange would have an opportunity to start making money.

"I see nothing wrong in playing pro football," he said at the time his signing was announced.  "It's the same as playing professional baseball, it seems to me."

But much of the public and most of the sporting press saw it differently, because in those days, when pro football's reputation among the sporting public  was only slightly better than boxing's is today, it was by no means a given that even a renowned college player would turn professional.

And even then, shouldn’t he wait until the next football season? they asked. Modern-day sports-talk radio would have feasted on the controversy.  The battle raged in the sports pages and even spilled onto the editorial pages, with large numbers of fans deploring Grange's immediately turning pro  as crass commercialism.

Grange had the last word,  expressing an opportunism - and wisdom -  that any present-day athlete would admire. "I have to get the money now," he said, "because people will forget all about me in a few years."

So Grange joined the Bears following his last college game, and after a pair of games - and big gates - in Chicago, the team hit the road.  Their itinerary called for  them to play eight games - five of them league games and three  of them exhibitions scheduled on short notice - in a twelve-day period. On a rainy Saturday  in Philadelphia, they played the Frankford Yellow Jackets before 35,000 people, and the next day, their uniforms still wet and muddy,   they faced the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds.

That game would prove to be a watershed in pro football history. 

The Giants up to then had gone largely unnoticed by New York fans and newspapers, and as he neared the end of his first season as owner,  Tim Mara  was  deeply  in the red.    And then Grange arrived – and his appearance drew 73,000 people to the Polo Grounds. In one afternoon, Mara was out of the hole financially, and professional football had begun to earn respect among New York’s influential sportswriters. 

The Bears won the first four games on the tour and attracted large crowds, and  Grange,  with a contract calling for him to get a percentage of the gate, was already on his way to becoming a wealthy man. On the field,  though, he was paying a heavy price.   Opposing players didn’t look at the big picture - of what Grange’s presence might mean for the future of professional football; playing for pittances themselves, many of them saw Grange’s lucrative contact as a professional affront, and stopping him became a professional challenge.

Adding to Grange’s problems, hometown referees seemed willing all too often to overlook the frequent cheap shots that  welcomed him to professional football.

Grange's contract stipulated that for him to earn his share of the gate, he had to play at least 25 minutes of every game,  so despite playing in considerable pain,  in the best tradition of show business, he played on.

Finally, when he was unable to play against the Detroit Panthers, Detroit  management had to refund 9,000 of the 15,000 advance tickets it had sold. The Bears limped home, winners of the first four games of their tour, but losers of the last four.   

They weren’t given long to lick their wounds, though; after only a brief rest, the Bears and Grange headed west on a ten-game swing.    This tour, against a succession of sometimes hurriedly-thrown-together  "all-star" teams,  was a huge success both on the field and at the gate. The  highlight of the tour was a game in Los Angeles that drew 75,000 people.  

In less than three months, Grange played 18 games, and earned  more than $125,000,  a fortune at the time.  More importantly, though, pro football had begun to earn a place as a legitimate sport.

But in their haste to capitalize on Grange’s popularity,  the Bears had created a problem that has vexed the NFL ever since.   America's colleges, and many prominent sports writers, had decried the Bears' signing  of Grange before his graduation.   Other college players soon followed Grange's lead and turned pro before graduation, and the college football people were alarmed.
 
Despite the smashing success of Grange's tour, professional football was not yet in any position to challenge the colleges, whose following was far stronger and more influential.  The pros realized that continued early signings, if left unchecked, would be seen as threat to the college game, and the consequences could prove disastrous to the professional game just when it was beginning to  gain some acceptance.

The Bears appeared clearly to have  violated League rules, which stated "No man is eligible as a member of a League team while a student in any academic institution in which he holds amateur standing." 

But the Bears claimed to have violated nothing.  Their loophole?  Grange was not “a student in any academic institution”  when he signed with the Bears - he had dropped out first.  Nevertheless,  at the league meeting in Detroit that February,  in an attempt to pacify the colleges, the NFL clarified its position:

"It is the unanimous decision of this meeting," the League announced, "that every member of the National Football League be positively prohibited from inducing or attempting to induce any college player to engage in professional football until his class at college shall have graduated..." The penalty for any transgressor could be severe: a fine of "not less than One Thousand Dollars, or loss of its franchise or both." 

For nearly 60 years, the NFL would abide by that policy, and it would serve as the barrier to any player’s leaving  college early to play in the NFL.

Now, with the colleges mollified, and with the drawing power of Red Grange, the NFL’s members looked forward to 1926 and prosperity at last.

But C.C. Pyle had a surprise for them. It turned out that he, and not the Chicago Bears, actually owned Grange's contract. And when, following that first  season, he approached Bears' owner George Halas, demanding for Grange not only a generous salary but one-third ownership of the Bears,   Halas, who had managed to keep his struggling franchise alive by practicing a form of thrift that some called stinginess,  refused.

(To illustrate his “thriftiness,” the story was told that Halas once mistakenly dropped a dime into a urinal. Hesitant at first to reach in and get it, he tossed in another dime, and then proceeded to retrieve them both. “I wouldn’t do that for 10 cents,” he is supposed to have said, “But for 20 cents…”)

Rebuffed by Halas, Pyle next took his case for team ownership to the league, informing the other owners at the NFL’s  winter meeting  that, now that he had proved to them that he owned the rights to the greatest attraction in the history of the game, he wanted an NFL franchise of his own. And he wanted it in New York. In Yankee Stadium.  Anything less, he threatened, and he'd start a league of his own.

But New York wasn’t available. The Giants' Mara held exclusive NFL rights to New York. (A bookie by trade, Mara had paid $500 for his franchise, telling all who scoffed at it as a waste of money that the exclusive right to do anything  in New York was well worth  $500.)    Mara had just struggled through his first year as an owner, saved from financial disaster  only by Grange's appearance, and now, having experienced Grange's drawing power first-hand, he had no desire to compete head-to-head with him in his own city. No way, said Mara.

The other owners backed him – up to a point.   But they didn’t want to lose Grange. They were well aware of what his drawing power meant to the NFL and to their financial health, and there was reason to believe that on the strength of his contract with Grange, Pyle might actually carry out his threat to start a new league.  So they proposed a compromise:  Pyle could have his "New York" franchise, in the strictest sense of the word – he would have to play his home games in Brooklyn, which, true, was a part of New York City, but not the “New York” that Pyle had in mind. But Pyle had already gone so far as to rent Yankee Stadium; he rejected the NFL’s offer  and set out to make good on the threat.

Make good he did. With New York  as its flagship franchise, Pyle put together the American Football League, which besides his team, the New York Yankees, included the Boston Bulldogs, Brooklyn Horsemen, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Panthers, Newark Bears, Philadelphia Quakers and Rock Island, Illinois, Independents.
 
A ninth team, the Los Angeles Wildcats, was designated a "road team,"  representing Los Angeles in name only.   In those days, before jet planes made coast-to-coast travel feasible for sports teams, the Wildcats  remained on the road and played only away games.

Once the league season was under way, Grange lived up to his reputation and drew well wherever he played.  In Philadelphia, 22,000 turned out to watch his Yankees play the Quakers;  only a week later, an NFL game in the same stadium between the Frankford Yellow Jackets and the New York Giants drew just 10,000. 

But not even the magic of  Grange's name could keep the American Football League alive. By the end of its first season, only four teams remained - the  Yankees, the Quakers, the Bulls and  the nomadic Wildcats.  The Quakers, with a pair of wins over Pyle's Yankees, won the first and only American Football League championship, then scheduled  a post-season exhibition against the NFL’s New York Giants.

The first inter-league game on record, it revealed a lot about the relative strengths of the two leagues, as the Quakers, champions of the American Football League, lost to the Giants, the NFL's seventh-place team, 31-0. (A side note: since the Frankford Yellow Jackets, considered to be a Philadelphia team, were the NFL champions that year, 1926 marks the only time in pro football history  that the champions of rival leagues were based in the same city.)

After that one disastrous year, Pyle's American Football League closed up shop, and the Yankees were awarded the NFL franchise that Pyle had originally asked for. The NFL owners could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by giving in to Pyle’s demands in the first place, but in supporting Mara, despite the high cost of doing so, they had struck an important blow for the integrity of the league and the value of an NFL franchise.

While the short-lived war was fatal to the American Football League,  no NFL club escaped a financial bath, either, but the NFL survived the challenge, the first of numerous ones it would face in its history.  Grange had done his job. For him, the rest of his career was anticlimax. In 1927, playing for the Yankees,  he was injured in a game against the Bears, and missed the entire 1928 season. In 1929 he returned to the Bears, and played with them, mostly as a defensive back, through 1934, when he retired.