Throwback Thursday: Original NFL Teams

This Flicker was originally posted 5/16/19. 

The NFL's celebration of it's 100th season is going to bring a lot of football history fun. Part of that celebration will be honoring the small towns where professional football started.

From NFL Football Operations:

ORIGINAL TOWNS

Nearly 100 years after the NFL was born in Canton, Ohio, the league will honor the 13 Original Towns, which were home to the 14 teams of the league’s inaugural season.

City	Team
Akron, Ohio	Akron Pros
Buffalo, New York	Buffalo All-Americans
Canon, Ohio	Canton Bulldogs
Chicago, Illinois	Racine Cardinals, Chicago Tigers
Cleveland, Ohio	Cleveland Tigers
Columbus, Ohio	Columbus Panhandles
Dayton, Ohio	Dayton Triangles
Decatur, Illinois	Decatur Staleys
Detroit, Michigan	Detroit Heralds
Hammond, Indiana	Hammond Pros
Muncie, Indiana	Muncie Flyers
Rochester, New York	Rohester Jeffersons
Rock Island, Illinois	Rock Island Independents

A quick glance at those 14 original teams reveals no teams that play today. There's actually two. The Decatur Staleys are the Chicago Bears. The Racine Cardinals are today's Arizona Cardinals. 

Hockey has an Original 6. The NFL has an Original 2. The decade of the 1920s was a daily struggle for football teams that wanted to make it in the NFL. Professional football wasn't well received. Each year of that first decade was a revolving door of teams coming and going. 

1920: 14 teams

1921: 21-Green Bay Packers joined the fun

1922: 18

1923: 20

1924: 18

1925: 20-New York Giants joined the fun

1926: 22

1927: 12

1928: 10

1929: 12

The NFL was mostly populated with teams from small Midwestern towns in that first decade. While that was fun for those plucky towns there was a concerted effort by the NFL in the latter half of the decade to establish a presence in the bigger cities. It wasn't a good deal for the small towns but it was deemed necessary for the overall survival of the league. At the start of the next decade, few small towns remained. 

1930 NFL 

Green Bay Packers

New York Giants

Chicago Bears

Brooklyn Dodgers

Providence Steam Roller
Staten Island Stapletons

Portsmouth Spartans

Chicago Cardinals

Frankford Yellow Jackets

Minneapolis Red Jackets

Newark Tornadoes. 

In 1930, only five teams were competing in the NFL that are still competing today. The Portsmouth Spartans joined the fun that year and moved to Detroit in 1935 where the team became the Lions. The Spartans/Lions joined the Bears, Cardinals, Packers, and Giants as the “First 5”(?). 

The Boston Braves joined the fun in 1932. Their name would unfortunately be changed to the Redskins the next season. Credit racist owner George Preston Marshall for that. The team moved to Washington D.C. in 1937.

Through the league's first 13 seasons (1920-32), 36 teams had tried and failed to make a go of it in the NFL. 

The Pittsburgh Pirates (Steelers) and Philadelphia Eagles joined the fun in 1933. 

1933 was probably the first season in which the NFL finally started to resemble a league that might be a precursor to today's NFL. One reason for that was that the teen-aged league was split into East and West divisions. Another reason was that most of the teams survive today. Even if some of those teams have changed names and cities. There was finally some degree of stability. Eight of the 10 teams that competed in 1933 compete today. 

East

New York Giants

Brooklyn Dodgers

Boston Redskins

Philadelphia Eagles

Pittsburgh Pirates

West

Chicago Bears

Portsmouth Spartans

Green Bay Packers

Cincinnati Reds

Chicago Cardinals

The Cleveland Rams joined the fun in 1937.

The NFL finally experienced some consistency and increasing public acceptance in the 1930s. The league finally seemed to have a future. Just when it seemed like things were getting better, new challenges were coming. 

The World War II years were tough. Many players joined the fight. The public was preoccupied. Some teams had to join forces to get by but the league survived. The latter half of the 1940s brought a rival league. Unlike previous, short-lived rivals, the All-America Football Conference was a legitimate rival. So much so, that the NFL was forced to absorb three of the AAFC's teams to end the rivalry. The Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers were two of those teams. The Baltimore Colts were the third. The franchise history of the Colts is wacky. It's too wacky to detail here. The AAFC Colts team that was absorbed by the NFL isn't the Colts team that plays in Indianapolis today. The Colts team that survives today is actually the team that came out of the 1951 New York Yanks team that became the 1952 Dallas Texans. I'll leave it at that. 

1953 was the first year in which all of the teams that competed still compete in the league today. 

East 

Cleveland Browns

Philadelphia Eagles

Washington Redskins

Pittsburgh Steelers

New York Giants

Chicago Cardinals

West

Detroit Lions

San Francisco 49ers

Los Angeles Rams

Chicago Bears

Baltimore Colts

Green Bay Packers

The only changes since 1953 have been the addition of expansion teams and one big merger. And, unfortunately, the relocation of a few franchises. 

I've always found the early years of the NFL fascinating. The rag-tag nature of the league, the small town teams, the incredible characters that simply pushed, scraped, scratched, pulled, fought, and refused to let a dream die. It may have been the big cities (and Green Bay) that survived but the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Pottsville Maroons, Columbus Panhandles, Providence Steam Roller, Duluth Eskimos, Frankford Yellow Jackets, etc. helped make the NFL what it is today. Those teams don't survive today but they should be better remembered. The Pros won the first league title. The Bulldogs had the league’s first dynasty. The Steam Roller and Yellow Jackets each won a title. Those teams should be better known. It shouldn't take a 100 year celebration to honor those teams that competed, the players that played, the coaches that coached, and contributors that contributed to finally know about them. At least, it's fun that the league is finally doing it 100 years later.