History of Early Professional American Football Leagues
In 1892 the first ever professional football contract was signed for $500. This contract followed others as the game shifted from a sport of amateurs and leisure for students to one played by professional for hire. By 1920 the first of the professional leagues was founded. The American Professional Football Association began. Then the National Football League two years later. These leagues were mostly comprised of Midwestern industrial towns where the sport was popular among the residents and played among many of the working class.
The first professional football game was played between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeanette Athletic Club in 1895. Professional teams began to sprout up here and there after that with the addition of Morgan Athletic Club in 1899 which would eventually become the Chicago Cardinals and later the Arizona Cardinals. Ohio became the center of the pro football universe with teams sprouting up all around including the famous Canton Bulldogs. In 1915 Canton signed Jim Thorpe. By 1920 Thorpe was elected president of the American Professional Football Association. There were teams in Akron, Buffalo, Canton, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Decatur, Detroit, Hammond, Muncie, Racine, Rochester and Rock Island. Many of those teams lasted only a short while before folding. In 1921 however there was anew batch of teams that would stick around including the famous Green Bay Packers. The Decatur club would move to Chicago and become the Bears. By the mid 1920s there were 25 NFL teams. Eventually other leagues would form including the AFL which would eventually merge with the NFL in 1970, the short lived World Football League and the United States Football League which would have a lasting impact and be extremely popular but would only last three seasons. The USFL would play three seasons and produced many hall of fame members including Steve Young and Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly and Reggie White. Many of the USFL players would go on to have extremely successful careers in the NFL after the league folded. The mighty NFL would prove tough to beat for the upstarts.
