Pro Football In The Beginning - By: Becky Long

The very first national professional football league started out in 1920 by seven owners and players known as the Ohio League. Before the national professional league was created, pro football was disorganized because it lacked a league-wide structure and guidelines. Players were continually moving from one team to another, with teams routinely bidding on players. The individual contracts for the star players ranged from $50.00 to $250.00 per each game, which at that time, was a sweet chunk of change. A number of college players assumed aliases so they may possibly earn some of that money by playing on Sunday afternoons with pro teams.

The Ohio League had the strongest professional teams before 1920, with legends such as the Canton Bulldogs and Olympian Jim Thorpe. The American Professional Football Association was the initial league name. This association consisted of 14 teams. The league officially changed its name to the National Football League, or NFL, at the finish of their football season in 1921. No championship was determined In the initial few years of the league, instead, a system was put in place to reward teams based on a gathering in which they voted for the top teams.

No playoff system was formed in the league at that time to determine} the champion team, it was not until 1933, and then it was not until 1936 that it was ruled all teams in the league are obligated to play the same quantity of games. In 1933, the NFL divided into a two-division alignment, with the voted winners of every division playing for the league championship at the conclusion of their normal season.

In the first 13 years of the NFL, the league lacked franchise stability, a good number of teams died out because of a lack of money or meager fan interest. There were nineteen teams that barely lasted one year, and another 11 teams managed to remain in existance for two seasons. Remarkably enough, there are two teams that were able to hang in there and are still in existence now, the Chicago Bears, originally named the Decatur Staleys and the second team is the Chicago Cardinals whose franchise resides in Phoenix, Arizona at present. The Chicago Cardinals resided in St. Louis as the St. Louis Cardinals before their move to Arizona. The Green Bay Packers are the third oldest team, which joined the league in 1921.

At present the NFL is separated into two conferences, the American Football Conference, or AFC and the National Football Conference, or NFC. Each of these conferences are made up of 16 teams and divided into four divisions, East, West, North, and South, in which each conference consists of four teams. It ought to be noted that these division titiles do not inevitably correspond to geographic parts of the country, An example of this would be the St. Louis Rams, they are in the NFC West, even though St. Louis resides in the center of the united states. Here is a breakdown of each of the divisons teams,

East Division: Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets

West Division: Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers

North Division: Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers

South Division: Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans

Today there are only 2 original pro teams that survived the turmoil in the beginning.

Jerseys -
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