20 August 1920: The National Football League Is Founded
On August 20, 1920, seven men gathered at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in Canton, Ohio, to organize what would become one of the most successful professional sports leagues in the world: the National Football League. Though the league was initially called the American Professional Football Conference and would go through several name changes before becoming the NFL in 1922, this meeting marked the true beginning of professional football as a major American institution.
Among the founders was the legendary Jim Thorpe, widely considered one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. Thorpe, who had won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics, was named the league first president, though his role was largely symbolic. The real organizational work fell to others, including team owners from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and New York who saw the potential for professional football to become a profitable enterprise.
The early years of professional football were rough and disorganized compared to today billion-dollar industry. Teams came and went, schedules were informal, and players often played for multiple teams in a single season. The first season included teams with names like the Decatur Staleys (which would become the Chicago Bears), the Akron Pros, and the Canton Bulldogs. Games were played in muddy fields before small crowds, and players earned modest wages while often holding other jobs.
The league survival and growth was far from certain in those early decades. Competition from college football, which dominated public interest, and internal conflicts among owners threatened to tear the fledgling organization apart. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s, with the advent of television and the emergence of star players like Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown, that professional football began to capture the American imagination on a national scale.
The merger with the rival American Football League in 1970 and the creation of the Super Bowl transformed the NFL into a cultural phenomenon. Today, the Super Bowl is the most-watched television event in America, and NFL franchises are worth billions of dollars. The league that began with seven men in an auto showroom now generates over 18 billion dollars in annual revenue and has become deeply woven into American culture.
The NFL centennial celebration in 2020 marked one hundred years since that fateful meeting in Canton, Ohio. The city remains home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where the greatest players and coaches in the sport history are enshrined. From those humble beginnings in 1920, professional football has grown into America most popular spectator sport, a testament to the vision of those early pioneers who saw the potential in organizing the chaos of early professional football.
