The Sunday Game: At the Dawn of Professional Football (review)

Based on extensive research utilizing a variety of sources, this detailed study reveals the transition of American football from an independent semiprofessional game to a professional one. It is an impressive book, with evidence drawn from newspaper accounts, high school and college yearbooks, guide books, and archival sources. The thoroughness of Keith McClellan’s research allowed him to draw a complete picture of the teams and players, seasons and games of an era when professional football was an intimate part of community life in factory towns throughout the upper Midwest.

As a means of establishing professional football’s origins, McClellan makes a distinction between individuals who were paid to play football, commonly referred to as “ringers,” and teams designed to be money-making enterprises and comprised solely of paid players. From 1915 to 1917, twenty independent football clubs paid salaries, offered guarantees to visiting teams, and introduced former college players into their starting lineup on a regular basis. The teams not only played games with strong teams in other states but also began discussing the need for leagues, schedules, and longer player contracts. The best independent football teams took on the characteristics of the number of All-Conference and All-American college players recruited to play on their teams. The mere presence of better trained college players improved the quality of play on the field, thus facilitating the transition from independent, semiprofessional football to professional football.

Several factors contributed to this transition. First, the promotion of compulsory education, combined with the introduction of physical education into both high school and college curricula in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, promoted this transformation. Rising high school and college enrollments created opportunities for both coaches and athletes. Football became an increasingly important part of high school extracurricular life. Students liked football because it functioned independently of adults, provided entertainment and conversation, facilitated a spirit of teamwork, released surplus energy, and promoted a sense of community among new students, upper classmen and alumni. More important, McClellan points out that the movement toward professionalization drove independent team managers to hire former college players because they were the best trained football players available.

McClellan traces the ways in which a variety of successful pro football teams began. While some clubs emerged from sponsorship provided by railroad companies, others started as boys teams and grew into professional status as they got older. But community boosterism was the primary factor for the growth of most professional football teams. Medium-sized cities, like Akron, Canton, Massillon, and Wabash recognized football teams as a source of community pride.

A critical factor contributing to the transition from independent football to professional football was the development of rivalries with nearby communities. Intense community pride promoted rivalries with the opposing team’s city. For example, railroad teams, like Altoona and Pitcairn in Pennsylvania, had a natural rivalry, as did Wabash and Fort Wayne in Indiana. Both the Canton Bulldogs and the Massillon Tigers became rivals for the “world championship of professional football.” Their rivalry ignited a bidding war for players, leading to an escalation in player salaries.

Rivalries were also one of several ways football clubs were promoted. Teams looked to local rivalries and tried to create new rivalries in order to attract crowds. Interstate games became more common by 1913, and were well established by the best teams by 1915. Communities that gave independent teams good newspaper coverage provided a distinct advantage for their clubs. Team management was another crucial variable to a team’s success. Team managers had to organize teams, find places to play, schedule games, make travel arrangements, extract guarantees, advertise games, sell tickets, and account for and distribute gate receipts.

But the professionalization of football encountered a number of obstacles. The cost of “pay to play” escalated beyond the means of the small cities that pioneered the independent sport. Key players moved on to other careers or retired. Manager, owners, and sponsors grew weary of the...