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1 The First Pros Super Bowl XLV between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers took place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on February 6, 2011, to determine the champion of the National Football League. Attendance was 103,219, just a few hundred shy of the Super Bowl record. Another 111 million saw the game on television. It was the biggest television audience in U.S. history. In 1920, the first season of the American Professional Football Association (renamed the National Football League in 1922), average attendance at games reached just over four thousand, with the largest crowds estimated at between ten thousand and twenty thousand. Because of uneven scheduling, the League Championship was not decided on the field, but rather at the winter meetings in Akron, Ohio, in April 1921. A vote resulted in the awarding of a loving cup as league champion to Akron, who “defeated” the claims of both Canton and Buffalo.1 The journey from Akron to Arlington has been a long and convoluted one. Its roots are found primarily in the late nineteenth century among the professional and semiprofessional teams and leagues spread across the Ohio Valley and westward. These teams constituted the core of those entrepreneurs who formed the NFL after World War I, driven by growing optimism and prosperity and building upon the intense interest in high school and college football. In the 1890s in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, football at the semipro and professional level was easy to recognize as the game in its modern form. The field was a bit smaller and narrower; there were no hash marks and no end zone. Goal posts were on the goal line, 18½ feet apart, as they are now, but only ten feet high. Passing was not allowed. The players were small by current standards, as the average lineman weighed 171 pounds, while backs averaged 151. Equipment was limited, the game was rough, and there was no substitution except for injury.2 Crepeau_text.indd 3 7/1/14 11:29 AM T h e F o r m at i v e Y e ar s 4 Throughout these early years, football rules continued to evolve, with colleges taking the lead. Following the college football crisis of 1905 precipitated by eleven deaths on the field of play, the schools adopted rule changes designed to make the game safer and more attractive to spectators. The professionals accepted those changes, which included allowing the forward pass.3 The first documented case of pay for play occurred on November 12, 1892, when the Allegheny Athletic Association paid William “Pudge” Heffelfinger a reported $500 plus $25 in expense money to play for their club against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Three other players were also paid for this game, and by the late nineties there were at least five professional teams in Pennsylvania . Denial of professionalism was so much a part of the sporting culture that Heffelfinger spent the remainder of his years denouncing professionalism in football.4 The transition from amateur to professional football was driven by the desire to win, and nowhere was that more apparent than in central Ohio, where the rivalry between Massillon and Canton led both teams to pay players as they pursued Ohio supremacy. Massillon was the first to cross the line, with a $1,000 payroll for the 1904 season. This opened the professional era in Ohio football. It also led to the signing of the first African American to a professional football contract when Charles Follis was inked by Shelby in 1904.5 Professional football in Ohio stabilized by 1910. Driven by boosterism and a willingness to spend a bit of money on ringers, and fueled by gate receipts and betting profits, a few teams were able to win championships and turn a small profit in the process.6 By the end of the 1890s, professional football had spread across America. It was a reality in Butte, Montana, where a wealthy copper mining entrepreneur decided to become a professional football owner. There were athletic clubs in California, Oregon, and Washington sponsoring professional football teams. Coleman Brown of the Santa Barbara AC and the Los Angeles Stars was one of the first African American stars on the West Coast. Many considered him the best back of the decade.7 The success of pro football depended on management, community support, and newspaper coverage. Managers handled all arrangements: they hired players , built schedules, arranged playing venues, negotiated guarantees, made travel arrangements...

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